How to play games in 3D from your cloud gaming rig
Previously in the cloud gaming series we looked at how to play Windows games on an iPad using the Moonlight app hooked up to a paperspace backend. It got me thinking: if we can stream to an iPad, could we stream to an iPhone? In side-by-side stereoscopic 3D and use a VR headset?
Indeed we can! Tridef is a little proprietary Windows application that does just that. If you boot a game that otherwise doesn’t support VR via Tridef, it will somehow intercept the calls to DirectX and force a scene to be rendered twice from two vantage points. Or if that’s not possible, access the depth map of a scene and attempt to generate the second image.
Here’s the list of supported games and a handy youtube tutorial to get started. Note that the company behind Tridef has gone bankrupt earlier this year and it’s now impossible to both buy Tridef, activate a free trial, or, most egregiously, activate a license you’ve bought in past like I did. Check the Tridef user forum if you’re interested in, er, alternatives.
So, how well does it work? So first of all, there’s no headtracking. This is stereoscopic 3D only, and you have to use the analog stick to look around. I actually quite like it, you can just lay in bed while you play and it doesn’t induce motion sickness.
I recommend trying Alien: Isolation, it’s by far the game that works best in 3D of those I’ve tried.
I‘m also using a Destek v4 headset. Apart from the fogging it works pretty well. I tried an iPhone 7+ and an iPhone X.
