Demo: Ace Combat 7 with SBS on PC, 3840x1080, 60fps, framepacked 3D version
0⚠️ This is the framepacked 3D version that does require VR/XR/anaglyph glasses and mebbe something like xr-video-player. See • Demo: Ace Combat 7 with SBS on PC, 38... for a plain SBS version.
I learned about “SBS” (Side-By-Side) mode a few days ago, that my XR glasses support. I tried this with the game Elite Dangerous first, since this has an SBS mode built in too, and was mind blown. My current favorite time stink is Ace Combat though so I started digging.
Turns out there is this Reshade tool that would forcefully enable such a mode for basically any game with the right shader. Several exist but the first I found, “SuperDepth3D.fx”, seems to do the trick. Enabling it split the 1920x1024 in half with two slightly different view ports, one for each eye. There are many options to fine tune this and I’m still fiddling with this to find the perfect settings but results look great already.
My glasses do Full SBS though and have a resolution of 3840x1024. I read somewhere that wide-screen is possible with more DLL shenanigans with Ace Combat 7 too but I run the game on a Linux PC anyway, where we utilize a tool named “gamescope”. This allows basically to configure a virtual display for each game and override the game resolution in various ways. It also has a stretch option, which is exactly what I needed to get the “compressed” SBS view from 1920 to 3840, where the aspect ratio would fit again. BTW: This also has FSR built in so any upscaling looks good enough too. I’m not entirely sure but I think there’s a similar tool on Windows called “Virtual Deskop”?
Anyway, I already managed to get my head tracker working by mapping the output to a virtual gamepad on the look-around axes before. I also found a mod that enables a wider FOV. Imagine my stupid grinning when everything fell into place: Full SBS with head tracking, a more sane FOV and yes, I jumped all the hoops to get my HOTAS and rudder pedal of my old ViperPit working (which is a different story because my devices are so old that I had to upgrade em to USB before, which involved some Arduinos, programming and soldering). I guess that makes me a member of multiple niches at once 🤓