Activision and developer Treyarch are adding a new dimension to the Call of Duty series, bringing stereoscopic 3D visuals to Call of Duty: Black Ops for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.
The option will be coming to the next marquee Call of Duty game "day one, out of the box," says Mark Lamia, studio head at Treyarch. Stereoscopic 3D visual effects will be available to players in all of Call of Duty: Black Ops modes—campaign, multiplayer, Combat Training, Zombies—as long as they own a 3D-ready HDTV or NVIDIA 3D Vision-ready PC, using active shutter glasses technology.
"For me, seeing was believing," Lamia tells Kotaku. "We saw it, thought it was really cool, but even though it was really cool, it had to work with the game and make sense."
The team at Treyarch had been researching and developing a stereoscopic 3D display option during the course of Call of Duty: Black Ops' development, Lamia says, adding that the game's 3D special effects felt like a "natural" fit for the blockbuster franchise. And despite their enthusiasm—and the opportunity to buy a half-dozen new 3D TVs for the office for further research—Lamia says he had his doubts about the feature.
"I would say I was a pretty reasonable skeptic," Lamia said. "I'm a pretty hardcore FPS guy. I was really concerned about eyestrain, but it was really immersive." Lamia says the experience is "seamless for gamers to use with a simple menu option to enable stereoscopic 3D or disable it at any time."
For the millions of Call of Duty players without a pricey 3D TV in our homes, Lamia says he hopes that they'll get to experience the mode someday.
"We hope people will be playing Black Ops for a while," Lamia said. "So even if you don't have a 3D TV now, that's fine, when you do, you can pop in Black Ops and it's good to go."
Call of Duty: Black Ops will ship for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 9.