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Stop being duped by the 3D scam

Link to original post:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/stop-being-duped-by-the-3d-scam/7983

3D is not a scam, it is just being done badly. One problem is that producers and directors are used to working in 2D and changing to 3D requires different composition and filming. This problem is similar to the change from B&W to color, the directors were using shading to set the drama in B&W and using the same techniques in color did not work as well.

Even further back, the change from silent films to sound tracks on film changed the way the audience percieved the actors. Some silent film actors that were wildly popular could not make the change to sound because their voices did not fit the sound expected by the audience.

3D done well can be a very immersive experience, 3D done badly will cause eyestrain and headaches. There are also the 3D gimmicks such as pointing an object at the audience that was lampooned by Second City Television many times.

It would be better to point to the successful 3D movies and games than to brand the whole thing as a scam. It will take time for the industry to work out better ways to view 3D and that is happening now. What the 3D movie industry needs is a director with the caliber of Hitchcock to craft the scenes to have depth that pulls the audience into the film combined with technology that gives the audience feeling that they are viewing a natural form of 3D.

That means that other 3D movies are gut wrenching horrible or your definition of excellent is absolutely different from mine. This is not a XOR tho...
Seriously were you being sarcastic?

Hopefully your comment was tongue-in-cheek. I doubt that the entire, multi-billion dollar per year movie industry hasn't realised that they can simply apply an in-built effect of every video editing software under the sun to solve this problem.

they want to save money so they do the cheapest option available. money pits forever remain money pits

Can you really expect a difference in your viewing experience? The flat screen is the flat screen! There are multiple studies that have been made that 3D actually makes people sick, gives them head aches and may cause other issues for certain people. 3D is really a scam to lure people into thinking that they need to upgrade their video equipment again.

So it takes headaches and a drop in picture quality before a small proportion complain. I haven't had enough experience of 3D to give a definitive answer.

However if you go to an imax show in 2d/3d you'll find that 4:3 (fullscreen) is actually far superior for immersing than widescreen. Our pupils are round, theories put forward by some universities about holding fingers and peripheral vision are absolute rubbish, it's physics . And as if those black lines top and bottom, can't be avoided. I have a theory that hollywood wants you to have a far better experience in the cinema to increase their revenue and so will do things to make tv and home viewing worse. This may well now include 3D.

IMAX HD's (the current best IMAX standard that you'll see in most theatres that have IMAX 3D) aspect ratio is 2.20:1, which is a much closer ratio to 16:9 (widescreen) than it is to 4:3 (not widescreen). And, by the way, 4:3 is absolutely NOT more immersive than 16:9 - that's crazy. Films have been shot in widescreen for a long time because it IS more immersive. The only reason that 4:3 even still exists as a standard is because the first TVs were square. It also has nothing to do with pupil shape, widescreen is closer to "real life" (and therefore more immersive) because your eyes are lined up horizontally - you see farther left/right when looking straight forward than you do up/down. If we had one eye or our eyes were laid vertically, then yes 4:3 would be more immersive.

I don't know where you watch your IMAX, but you should consider another venue if they're projecting in non-widescreen aspect ratios!

Man was I ever disappointed with "The IMAX experience". Having seen REAL IMAX here in San Diego at the Reuben H. Fleet (Originator of the format known as OmniMax) I couldn't believe that shoving a screen into the faces of the audience and using a pair of 2K projectors to pull the aspect ratio closer to television was supposed to be anything like 70mm film projected on a huge screen. The "Screen Door" effect was appalling, and adding 3D to it as an afterthought is a second step backward. I will take 2D on a Sony 4K projector over ANY IMAX, 2 or 3D, any day of the week...

I have seen many attempts at 3D and IMAX kicks all other technologies to the curb! IMAX was the 3D pioneer and they continue to put others to shame.

Dude, your pupils are round indeed, and each one INDIVIDUALLY provides a roughly round image with alone would fit better with a square screen. But most people have 2 eyes, positioned horizontally, the image the brain assembles from this 2 round samples is longer horizontally than it is vertically, and this not taking into account the obstacles that your own face provides like the nose. Specifically, humans have max FOV of 200?? horizontal - 140?? Vertical, and that's a rectangle.

140/200 = 0.7
3/4 = 0.75
9/16 = 0.5625

Based on your FOV numbers, that should mean that 4/3 aspect ratio is much closer to normal vision than widescreen 16/9.

It seems perfectly reasonable therefore to suggest that 4/3 (all other things being equal) actually would give you a more immersive experience than 16/9.

There are many that will never be able to "adjust," as you put it, to 3d. My wife has tried several of the different techniques they're employing (including the glasses-free version), but every time it has triggered a massively debilitating Migraine, which even her strongest meds cannot touch.

I will never purchase a 3d tv or go watch another 3d movie.

@dgalbreath

I'm sorry but I have to call bull pucky on this claim. Are you speaking from anecdotal accounts or can you cite a source for this claim? The leap from B&W to color is not analogous to leap from 2D to 3D.

Be that as it may, to claim that one merely needs to "get used to it" is factually inaccurate as well. Do a search for Roger Ebert's entry on 3D titled: "Why 3D doesn't work and never will. Case closed."

3D technology is functionally incompatible with the way we see and the way our brains process information.

You know I'm really sorry some people can't watch 3d without getting a headache but I have never gotten a headache watching 3d. It must not be "functionally incompatible" with my vision or all the other legions of people who watch without a problem. Even if Roger Ebert says so! Case closed.

You have already. First to analog television... the brain got used to poor color, flickering, etc. At least in most cases. TV was an overwhelming success. It changes again at the dawn of the digital age... poor quality MPEG was very hard to watch at first. But the brain adapts very quickly.. not in a handful of viewings, certainly, but over the course of regular exposure, of course it does. Its a survival mechanism... the brain works around any changes in sensory input, much as possible. Obviously, someone with a medical problem that makes long exposure difficult will not give the time to adapt, just as a person lacking depth perception won't bother.

All of that is entirely different than the business issue. For Hollywood, sure, 3D is the latest way to get you into the theater. And yeah, they have abused it (not with "Toy Story"... that film wasn't shot, period, it was modeled and rendered, and the 3D version was re-rendered with the proper stereoscopic prespective). But they need something to get me into the theater. After all, while they have been shrinking screens and switching from film to 2K video projectors, I have put a 71" TV in my house, with 7.1 surround, 2K video (standard HD), much better seats, etc. And the popcorn doesn't cost $5. 00 a bucket.

As for the CE industry, they're still high on the cash generated from years of the shift to HD. I have bought four HDTVs, on PS3, four HD tuners for satellite, five HD camcorders, countless bits of software, BD-R drives, etc. To get myself into HD video viewing and creation, over the last 8 or so years. Now I'm prettyy much done.

And not looking to repeat this for 3D any time soon. I don't think home 3D is worth the investment yet, even as a viewer, even given that I need only upgrade my TV. Active shutter glasses are not a good answer, neirther is alternate line polarization. But its fun to watch what they come up with. This early stuff will be collecting dust soon enough, just as early HD gear is today.

Besides, I'm waiting for home 4K....

The first color broadcasts (I was there to see them) were really poor. The color appeared to be nearly all green or red tints, for one thing, and the clarity was muddy. I can understand if someone got a headache watching it, although I don't remember anyone in our family getting headaches. For one thing, people will sit and watch new technology even if it's bad, just as long as it appears to be better than what it replaced. I imagine if it did give people headaches that they still sat and watched...

The early color TV's were very sensitive to color settings, and would drift over time. The color settings (done with a variable rheostat on the back of the set) did need frequent adjusting as the CRT aged. It wasn't the fault of the broadcasts, it was the sets. As the technology matured, things got better. Improved electron guns, better masks, transistors instead of tubes with less 'drift'. the list of improvements goes on and on. TV in 1980 was much better than in 1970, with crisper lines, better resolution. In turn, TV in 1970 was much better than color in 1960, which was fuzzy and often 'off color'. In fact, it was the late 1960's before TV shows were all broadcast in color. In the early 1960's, a black and white show appeared sharper than a color show on the same set.

Progress. There is room for a lot of it in 3D. Maybe in 20 years or so.

I can remember seeing my first color TV broadcast. A neighbor had bought a color TV and invited his neighbors, including my family, to see the Rose Bowl Parade. Everyone who watched was WOWED. WHY, we were not comparing the picture to real life, we were comparing it to B&W. For all of us, for the first time in our life, we got a glimpse of what seeing the Rose Bowl Parade in person was like. As for those that say 3D is not lifelike enough, watch an outdoor scene on your TV, then look outside and try to tell me the picture on your TV is just as good as what you see outside.

3D technology as it is presented today is functionally incompatible with the way we see and the way our brains process information.

Fixed.

To say 3D is incompatible with the way we see and function is to say you live in a 2D world. So, unless you live quite a ways from the rest of us (dimensionally), I'm betting that's not the case.

"Color TV actually made older folks sick"

Source(s) please.

We see in 3D every day with our own two eyes. Does that mean that everyone is sick? and twisted? Err, I mean... have headaches?

the problem is in timing. You don't consciously see a different timing in the frames when looking at a 3D movie, but the timing difference is still there.

At a subconscious level, the neurons still have to deal with it. You see at the same time in real life, in a 3D movie your two eyes are seeing with a difference of a few milliseconds. This creates a jitter in the visual cortex. Your brain has to smooth it all out. More sensitive people will have trouble adjusting to the differences. This flicker can cause headaches, or even seizures in some people. It is a real physical problem. Increasing the frame rate up to over 400 FPS should solve the problem. But that would require the movie to double the bit rate and storage.

Considering that the standard timing is 24 FPS in movies and 60 FPS in broadcast TV. That the timing in 3D is doubled to account for the alternating left eye, right eye viewing, so that each eye views at the same framerate as in 2D. There is something "Wrong" with your math or your logic.

Snickering at people who get ill from flickering lights is just stupid, ignorant and very unmature!

When I was young we looked at stereoscopic pictures, but now it is called 3D, which is a misnomer, as we don't have three eyes, thus elevation information is not that good with just two eyes. Computer-generated, or recorded, so called 3D can easily make a lot of us dizzy or sick, as the resolution is poor, the colours are poor, and the update frequency probably is low (just a guess, but quite possible), which for those with fast retinas is a problem - I got terrible headaches running certain games on my Risc-OS machine as they had a lower CRT update frequency than normally. 40Hz was just about where my eyes still tried to keep up, higher frequencies and I had no problem!

We, the wife and I, have a few 3D films (you need glasses of the green&red type for those), non very impressive, as the colours are worse, as are the resolution, compared to the normal versions.

If you have the modern type of 3D glasses, with Kerr-cell shutters, the TV has to be able to output images very fast (over 200Hz), to not be felt flickery by those with fast retinas.

So if you have fast retinas your eyes try to keep up with the flickering light of the TV, or cinema - in a cinema normal frequency is 24 pictures per second, aka 24HZ, but if you're going stereoscopic (aka 3D), you need 48 - quite a tall order! I guess the movie companies cheat some way, or other, and then the flickering becomes worse, and those with fast retinas will get nasty headaches, just as with fluorescent tubes, which flicker a lot, but most people don't notice, but some do, due to their fast retinas trying to keep up with the flickering - the rest give up at once! Those with fast retinas develope headaches in fluorescent tube light, while the rest, like me, with sadly slow muscles in their eyes don't notice anything special!

Just because I'm not affected doesn't mean I fully understand other's problems! Only a young oaf, who thinks he knows all, would be sacastic when someone tells about their wives problems. Get mature, kid, grow a beard, get a girl, and be a little bit civilized, PLEASE!

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The standard movie timing is 24 FPS and broadcast TV is 60 FPS. That the timing in 3D is doubled to account for the alternating left eye, right eye viewing, so that each eye views at the same framerate as in 2D.

My children, my friends and myself all enjoy 3D movies,I payed $700 for the 71" Mitsubishi 3D, and buy all the movies used, for $15 or less.I've yet to meet these people who get sick, but I feel for them. Out of the box th
TV needed a contrast, edge, and brightness adjustments, but Avatar 3D on demand via Comcast was the best movie filmed in 3D

I have not yet seen a successful 3D movie or Game. When you can point me to a Multiple projection unit that kicks a hologram out into a Tank, or even onto a table for viewing, THEN I will think 3D has progressed beyond the simple layering of today.. It sux. Period.

I tend to agree with the author that 3D is a gimmick (I don't agree that it's a scam - I think that's too strong an assertion).

I don't think your examples of moving to sound and then to colour are equivalent to the move to 3D. Introducing sound and colour were significant, undisputable steps forward. The same can't be said of 3D. As stated by the author the picture quality is worse.

I also don't buy the argument that directors just aren't using the medium well enough. 3D has been around for decades. Do we really believe that the medium id great, its just that no director in the past twenty years has been able to get it right? And even if you do believe that, does it matter? The end result is normally a worse experience. It doesn't matter if it's a worse experiece because of the medium, or the director's inability to adapt... it's stil la worse experience.

Personally, I'll continue to go along to the movies twice a year and will gladly watch something in 3D. I find it to be a gimmick, it looks cool in places but overall I find it detracts from the movie because I'm constantly aware of the fake effect.

Avatar got away with its 3D viewing because it was new. The scam part is forced path to 3D, just like the forced path to Wide screen. I like the large screens but never liked wide screen. Wide screen flatens the most movies not shot for wide screen. And wides screen doesn't add much more scenery. I dread the day when all HDTV are 3D unless they're true holographic images then I'd great.

If you're watching non-widescreen movies and they're "squished", you don't know how to use your TV. Worst case scenario should be the movie's picture doesn't take up the whole screen, but it should still be proportionally correct with black bars at the sides. Therefore, you're not losing anything. Plus, if a significant portion of your home movie collection is not widescreen, well that's jsut a stupid choice! You should've been able to tell for many years now that the standard was going to be widescreen and you might as well see the whole image rather than pan & scan 4:3 bullcrap that we used to have to deal with.

Many movies from the 50's onward were widescreen movies, and 16:9 is not nearly as wide as they were. A projection machinist one learns that there have been hundreds of formats, but luckily, just a few are common, but 16:9 is not! Go see The Bridge on the River Kwai in a cinema, and then on a HDTV, and you see that the TV is much squarer than the movie - Patton is another one that xomes to mind. Presently 21:9 TVs are the 'in' thing, not 4K.

At least the guy who wrote the article cited some examples. Put a list of your top 5 products for the technologies you mentioned.

I should know personally that changing the way the brain thinks or sends thoughts can hurt. I had my skull split open exposing my brain. I thus lost all memory or as I phrased it I lost contact with the memory matrix my brain built chemically in the brain cortex. As I started to learn things, the little things like language and how to eat and have the food end up in my tummy not my lungs was easy and not painful, it could have been medicine that did not let me experience pains of re-educating my brain. 2 years after I got out of the year long hospital stay I started going to Collage to learn again how to program computers. In high school I had educated myself how to do this. In my second year I started getting massive pains in my head as I was reconnecting with my memorys of HP BASIC and Pascal . I also got pains as I recalled personal memory's. For 3 years I was digging through my head for memory's. After that I stopped mainly because a PET scan revealed why. It was a lack of blood to parts of the brain that needed to reactivate existing memory's in dormant chemical chains of memory's and the process of making chemical chain links to these memory's. I also got these pains as I learned to walk again, I had to train my brain to use a visual balance system since the the vestibular organs in my inner ears where damaged beyond repair.

Much of my recover efforts were from my desires, the doctors just pointed me in the correct direction, and I desired to figure out ways to recover. Or I would have remained a Veg in bed as they expected.

I doff my hat to you, sir! Impressive, no qustion about it! I just suffered a traffic accident in 1990 that turned me into a cripple - the doctor said that 'You'll never drive a bus again', but I've now been doing it for close to 15 years. So while the road towards the old life is long and cumbersome, it also gives you a lot of new insights and experiences.

I actually think my traumatic experience was good for me, even if I never again can go trekking. It made me a humbler, wiser person, quite different from the bitter me from before the accident, that kept me away from my job for eight years.

I think a traumatic experience in life is good for you, too many, and you become no wiser! I would love to have two normal legs, but I can live well with what I've got!

A single display blasting out 3D really isn't going to do it. I want to turn my head left and right and see the scene unfolding around me if it's going to be more immersible than 2D. When the car rushes down the road, I want to look left and right and see guard rails rushing past, I want to look backwards and see cars and road disappearing behind me. Make the action take place on the front screen but results trace naturally above, below, beside and behind.

And, do it in such a way that not wearing the headgear or lacking the second view point to measure depth results in a perfectly viewable 2D image.

3D TV has been trying since the sixties (I think I read that was the first go around for it). We may be better off to simply put that effort into immersion rooms or proper VR.

As Neon rightly (to me, at least) states, the magic of 3D comes from being able to look at what I want to see - so looking at the desk rather than the lamp should allow me to see the desk in 3D - unfortunately, the director wants me to look at the lamp, so only the lamp is shown in focus and the desk is blurred - it is this, amongst other things, that causes the headaches - our eyes are constantly on the move taking in information and sending impulses to the brain to interpret - when we move from one object to another our eyes adjust focus automatically. 3D movies don't allow us to do that, so instead our eyes overwork to bring focus to something that can never be brought into focus.

VR experiences are different - the interaction between the glasses and the 'environment' always ensures that whatever the glasses are virtually pointing at is in focus - shifting your eyes without turning your head produces the same result as a 3D movie - out of focus objects.

The only way that 3D can ever be truly immersive is for the glasses to contain an optic reader to determine what you, the user, are looking at, and then through relevant logic processing bring that object into visual focus - a challenge considering the brains processing speed, and the speed that the eye can move from object to object.

Personally, I love 3D for what it is at present - a richer, slightly flawed, visual experience that is far from maturity, but on an amazing journey over the years to come.

Hey, but what do I know....?

Traditionally, the author / director / producer (whatever) is in control of what is to be the focus of the story. This is true regardless of medium. Books describe objects and people, giving you relevant info and only providing enough background detail to give you a sense of the environment. Same with movies, music, plays, stand-up comedy, you name it.

In a complete 3D environment, the view would have to change based on what you're looking at -- in the x, y, and z axis. This would be very difficult to do in live action, because of the need to capture all angles of all objects on-screen(?), and of course the sets would have to be 360 degrees around the viewer. Also, I'm going to assume actresses in dresses would be out of the question.

In rendered worlds it would be easier, but how much time do you spend modeling items the viewer was never meant to examine so closely? The burden would be immense!

It seems to me true 3D would really only be possible when you can feed a computer the objects in a scene, and it can visually create that environment in complete detail, in real-time, at a resolution high enough that our ability to discern flaws is below our threshold for suspension of disbelief.

So, maybe still a gimmick for now.

If you haven't seen a football or basketball game in 3D in your living room, you're missing out. You can actually see how the players are positioned on the line of scrimmage, in a way that lets you see the plays unfold in a totally immersive way. With basketball you can see bad calls, like when a player swipes at the ball, gets called for a foul and he never even made contact. I have played Bioshock 2, Crysis 2 and Mass Effect 2 on my PC which is night and day in the level of immersion. On the PS3 I have played GT5 and Batman in 3D, both of which add another layer of realism that you can't get any other way. We already have 7.1 DTS sound, 1080P visuals, 3D is the next frontier for more realistic movies, TV and games in the home. Obviously I am one of the VAST majority that don't suffer headaches when watching even after several hours!

This is well said. 3D is being done badly. You would think that after the 50 years that 3D has been around (yeah, I saw some of those 3D horror movies in the 1950's) that they could do away with those darned blue and red glasses! Finding another way to do 3D would be real innovation...

On Apr 22, 2011 @ 7:36 AM (PDT) sboverie@... posts - headed "DISAGREE" -

"It would be better to point to the successful 3D movies and games ..."

but sboverie@... points to nothing, while attempting to contradict an article with specific examples.

Come on fella, It's time to put up or ...

The author stated his opinion and I stated mine.

You say you disagree, it's not a scam, its "just being done badly".
So, what is your deffinition of a scam...just curious

This is similar to audiophiles moving from mono to stereo. Early on, the push was simply to showcase the technology. The technology worked, but content producers felt compelled to make us listen to ping pong effects alternating between speakers. It took years, but once content providers (and consumers) got tired of the simple novelty, we finally started getting good content. Today, nobody expects anything other than stereo. Time will tell whether 3D survives, but if it does, it will have to win on content and a truly more satisfying experience - just as stereo finally did.

I think this is a far better example than the b/w to colour and silent to audio examples.

If you've ever listen to those "stereoized" beatles recordings they sound horrible. For a while the industry tried to produce stuff that showcased the new technology with varying results. Yet the industry finally settled down after the initial gimick stage and started producing content that is now the standard. This was done without any real change in the underlying technology.

3D could go either way, but some of us enjoy the gimmick and will be happy to see it played out. Eventually I think we will move fully to 3D just because the profit motive for companies. Consumers want 3D and are willing to pay for it and I don't think that is going to change on a large level. The only question is will it be a vinyl to CD sort of change or a mono to stereo change.

BTW I always thought the main motive for 3D was that it was harder for 'pirates' to copy as it is only distributed on bluray (which is meant to have better cp) and you can't exactly take a camera into the movies to copy it.