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Movie Theaters Aim for Live 3D Sports
teutonic_leech writes "ZDNet has an article claiming that movie theater operators plan to be screening live 3D sports events by 2007 in a bid to lure sports fans away from their home theater systems and bolster sagging mid-week ticket sales." From the article: "Other chains are looking to much-improved digital three-dimensional projection for an experience theatergoers can't get at home. But while the projection has greatly advanced from the early 3D days, special glasses must still be worn to achieve the full effect."
Why hasn't "3D" technology advanced in the last 15 years?
It's severely lagging behind all the other technologies. Where are holograms?
So they are actually going to be selling beer in the movie theater for sports?
The cinemas brought in vendors to stroll the aisles with hot dogs, peanuts and beer
Will the prices be the same as at the ball park?
If so, I would reckon that it won't be a big hit. The main reason I do not go to the movies is the price, and not just of the tickets. I would pay $8 or so a ticket if I could get a 42oz Coke for under $2 or so.
I was promised a holodeck many, many years ago. What gives?
Q: "Why hasn't 3D technology advanced in the past 15 years?" A: "It isn't marketable." Prediction: "Desperation does not improve the marketability of 3D technology." May the wind be always at your back, -TimCeeteSmith
Who needs 3D glasses when I have my beer goggles !!
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
Well i reckon it's a good idea, they could extend it out to other genres too
i reckon war doco's would be cool, but how cool would Nascar be... or V8 supercars for those of us down under
Trolling along, singing a song...side by side
I already wear special glasses!! When is the screening?? :)
i can imagine watching ice capades this way (dark room, stadium seating) but not competitive sports.
how are you supposed to watch sport in a movie theatre? are you supposed to be loud? order drinks? heckle the other fans? get up to the bathroom, step on someone's toes and block their view? it seems very awkward, formal, and not very relaxing.
The appeal to watch a sports game on a huge screen is very appealing.
The appeal to watch sports in 3d is nonexistant.
When people get together to watch a game they are always cheering booing, having fun, being noisy.. This is what you would find at a sports bar where it is acceptable.
I can't imagine this going over very well inside a theater where you are confined to your small seat.. the atmosphere is a lot different and I can see a lot of people getting annoyed at other people for being loud.
I've got 1 word
PORN
It built the net
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
...else you'll only see it in, uh, one half dee.
in a bid to lure sports fans away from their home theater systems
Welcome to the Land of the Fat.
Kif: The Holoshed's on the fritz again -- the characters turned real!
Zapp: Damn! The last time that happened, I got slapped with three paternity suits!
...when Janet Jackson's boob flopped out at the Superbowl?
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
I would love to see this happen, just as long as they don't focus on only football/baseball/basketball. Formula 1, Champcar, WRC would be awesome in the theater. Especially because I can't see it on TV without paying $100+ a month (which is literally impossible for me). Unfortunately, I bet the only auto racing they show is NASCAR. */me spits on NASCAR's antiquated technology and boring tracks*
...at a cinema in St Kilda (Melbourne) at 4am with 400-500 other people. The atmosphere was absolutely fantastic. People were standing up, cheering, waving flags (no firecrackers or flares, at least). I'd definitely do it again. In fact, I did. I organised about six games to be shown live in the University cinema where I was working. Even though it wasn't brilliantly advertised, the cinema was pretty much full each time and people really enjoyed the group atmosphere and got into the swing of it.
Trust me, a sports telecast in a cinema is very different from seeing a normal film, at which people are expected to be quiet (unless it's a 1950s b-grade, I suppose). It's a lot more like being at a stadium than watching a television.
If I could go to a cinema on a Sunday night and see a live Formula One race (no waiting around for a delayed telecast), I'd be there every race.
I heard that your library burnt down and destroyed your only two books - and one was not even coloured in yet.
Also, they would be Google.com and Digg.com, both seem to offer better and thorough reporting maybe I'm just trolling, maybe I'm just dropping flyers from a plane.
You decide.
They've got the 3d part right but it's not 20th century sports we want to watch. It's 21st century video games. I would seriously love to go watch Counterstrike or Doom3 in a theater in 3d. The games don't have to be played live but if they wanted to go the extra mile, there's a lot of potential. For example, supply wireless controllers, create games that use them cleverly and the theater could turn into an amazing 3d interactive environment.
I've been a long-time proponent, that HD wasn't the next logical step in video, but stereo vision. Our eyes use 2D with lighting coming from different angles at two receptors to build three dimensional images using our mind. We don't truly see in 3D. Portble movie players like the video ipod will not take off with a 2" screen... but with a special pair of glasses that use a 1/4" lcd projection onto the lenses to create a 3D stereo effect with the device(s) connected via bluetooth broadcast... now we are taking advantage of technology. Super-low power consumption, 3d video, share the experience with your friends... it's how portable video was meant to be. Add a charging pad similar to many digital cameras for the glasses.. no wires.. you've got the ipod video killer. Now if only i could patent a stereo-video encoding format...
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
Special glasses must still be worn to achieve the ANY effect. :)
A company I was contracting for flew me down to L.A. two summers ago to pick the minds of Hollywood 3-D talent before engaging in the production of a complex 3-D corporate production up here in Canada.
(The experts I talked to were mostly Canadians themselves. L.A. seems to have more Canadians than Canada.)
At any rate, that's when I heard all about James Cameron's new manga-derived massively budgeted 3-D feature ("Battle Angel", if memory serves), George Lucas' plans to 3-D invigoroate all six of his Star Wars picturers, and learned that Fox has been recording Superbowls and other big, big sporting events in 3-D for a couple of years now, in order to create a library of games for 3-D viewing.
The company I consulted had even developed a high-definition 3-D Steadicam-like unit, and I got to see the test footage they'd shot at a recent football match. The cameraman could literally wander right into the field, with somebody tapping his shoulder whenever he needed to get out of the way of play.
To repeat a 3-D cliche, IT WAS LIKE YOU WERE ACTUALLY THERE, ON THE FIELD.
I have no interest in sports but it was obvious that someone who was into sports would definitely think it was the coolest thing they'd ever seen.
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
Many 3D systems make you feel rather nauseous when you watch them without glasses :-)
after they've seen YouTube.com? Wait'll 3d clips are shown on the internet. DUMP PARAMOUNT!
well. With sports isn't that the idea? It is truly awesome, you see everybody reaching from their seats to grab items that appear right in front of their eyes, but when the motion gets to fast then it gets blurry. It happens even at their newest 3D movie Mickey's PhilharMagic. All the parks have a 3D movie and I enjoy seeing them over and over because the effects are so awesome and the air conditioning is great!
I thought they needed special theaters to show these movies but the family just saw Chicken Little in 3D at a regular theater. It is impressive. The glasses are just polarized lenses at 90 degree offset.
I don't know if this is the system they are talking about here, but Disney is typically on the cutting edge of this stuff and they have been doing 3D for years. Kodak sponsors the exhibits.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
I was just to a 3D Imax. They use perpendicularly oriented polarized lenses, and I assume polarized metallic strips on the screen, with active projector targeting.
That's all very nice, and very immersive. However, there was something a bit disquieting about it for my vision -- as if my retina had to be out of sync with my focus (which indeed is the case).
I'm not sure that's a bad thing -- maybe it would help my nearsightedness, or maybe not. But I can say it bothered me just slightly, and my 1.5-year-old son prefered no glasses (though I held them on him) for half the show, and then simply ignored the screen for the second half of the show.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
2D screens also suffer from this problem, but to a lesser degree, because there is another layer of abstraction there. We aren't trying to trick ourselves into thinking it's real - we just go to watch a show. I'd prefer to spend more time looking at natural objects, anyway. Mmmmm. Boobies.
... and then they built the supercollider.
At the 3D attractions at Walt Disney World, like "Honey I Shrunk the Audience," and that Muppets one and the Bug's Life one and the other one with Donald Duck, there are smells put out and wind generated to enhance the experience, along with the occasional spray of water or cascade of bubbles. Maybe they should do that with the sporting events.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
It is surprising to most people, but some of us can't see 3D illusions. I remember watching some horror movie (Friday th 13th or Nightmare, I don't rember which) in 3D in the theater, everyone was screaming, and I asked my date, "Do you really see things coming out of the screen?" She said, "Yes." All that was happening to me was that I was getting nauseous. Later, the same thing happened in one of those curved IMAX theaters that are supposed to "feel" 3D. I ended up having to close my eyes or get sick. My father has the same problem.
It's funny, because I have perfectly normal depth perception, and I don't normally get motion sickness. I love sailing, and perception-dependent sports like dogeball, volleyball, skiing, and driving. A good percent of people have this problem, and our brains cope with the missing perception with other visual cues. We just can't see most 3D illusions.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
Sure, it sounds neat: watch things in 3D at the movie theater (or "cinema," I guess). But, the question is: how long until something like this gets ported to the home sector? Someone won't want to pay $10 to get into the theater, and companies like DirecTV (not necessarily DirecTV) will pay the companies that run the 3D cameras to upload the stream to their feeds, and offer the package to home users. I guess the best way to gauge that is to look at Pay-Per-View vs. box offices.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
-Will they allow you to drink beer and eat wings? Probably not
-Will they let you pause the DVR so you can take a phone call or take a piss? Definitely not
-Will you be allowed to scream obscenities at the top of your lungs when you team screws up? Most likely not
Sports viewing in public belongs in Bars. A movie theater seems like a lousy place to watch a game.
Sound waves should be free!
What is this sports and where can I buy some
And make sure you squawk and cluck and complain if the person next to you dares talk on the phone.
Paying to watch commercials? oh yeah.
When I read stories like this one, and the one about theater wanting to move to digital projection, I just can't help of thinking of someone rearranging deck chairs on some large cruise ship that was built a while ago. I'm pretty sure it met a rather depressing fate..
/theater is dead
//it's not dead because of the lack of "technology"
--- witty signature
I can watch live, 3D sports right now, without any special glasses. I just go to the local football stadium.
Not by 2007, anyway. I build mobile production trucks for a leading vendor to the networks. 99% of our business is sports broadcasting. I can tell you without any hesitation that 3D is not even on our radar. Its not on our vendors radar. Given the economics of the business, if we arent planning for it, it isnt going to happen. We're only just now getting HD done correctly. If 3D happens, its a LONG way off.
JT
In order to provide realistic, immersive, full 3D imaging, they first direct you to an imaging building specially equipped for the projection of realistic 3D images. In the building, you are assigned a seat. The seats are placed around the projection area in a rough oval, with seats closer to the projection being more expensive.
Prior to the show, the projection area is filled in with green, looking somewhat similar to a green screen.
Special projectors on the sides of the screen project the players entering the field, one by one, and finally the game commences.
During the game, the new "physical/virtual object interface" is turned on. This allows audience members to throw things like cups and popcorn into the projection screen, where they actually appear in the game! Likewise, occasionally the audience is thrilled when a virtual object such as a baseball is thrown out of the projection screen and into the audience. The lucky audience member catching the ball can either keep it, or throw it back, where it re-appears seamlessly in the game.
Due to the expense of these imaging buildings, there will generally be only a few built per major city, and it is expected that traffic during showings will increase in the general area.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
People at home-guys, guys with families and owned houses who have extensive home theater-do NOT want to go out to bars or cinemas because of DUI laws and the dangers associated with drinking to watch a game on the weekend. And watching your favorite team for most people is enjoyable with drinking, and past one drink you are at risk. Guys want to sit around on their couch and run out to the backyard and flip steaks on the grill and etc.
I am generally speaking, I am sure there are anecdotal exceptions to the rule so that isn't needed to be commented on, I'll concede that.
They'll get customers for 3-d sports, but they will be more younger single guys living in apartments who need to go to bars or these cinemas to "socialize". And if they don't offer booze at the 3-d games, I doubt they'll get a lot of business. This tech is in competition with sports bars, not home theater systems and family guys.
In my experience, the limiting factor to how loud and obnoxious the audience gets is not the audience but the management. I once went to a showing of Rocky Horror that got shut down in the middle because the operators were worried about damage to the upholstery or something. Shutting off the film was, perhaps, the single worst thing they could do to protect the seats, though, since the crowd did get rather annoyed at being told to stay put until the police showed up. (I guess they figured the cops would have nothing better to do than grill a bunch of Rocky Horror fans to root out the one who set off the shaving cream bomb.) Fortunately, the multiple fire exits made that demand impractical.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Won't work. Geometric distortion is the fatal flaw in all screen-and-glasses systems. The geometry of the image only looks natural from a very small number of seats, and only if the camera is photographing with a "normal" focal-length lens. Under all other conditions, the 3D image has distorted geometry. Actually this is true even with flat images, but it is much more acceptable in those situations.
3D movies work for "fantasy" movies, where Cabinet-of-Dr-Caligari-like distortions don't affect (or even enhance) the viewing experience. They work for short novelty films and roller-coaster-like "This-Is-Cinerama"-type spectacles. But when you want a sustained, realistic impression of physical presence, the distortions much more serious.
Think of it this way. Can you enjoy sports in black-and-white? Yes. Can you enjoy sports in reasonably faithful color? Yes. Could you enjoy sports in psychedelic, distorted color? I doubt it, although such distortions might not matter in a comedy or a cartoon.
Why is this distortion inevitable? It's because in a live theatre every single eyeball gets a different view of the stage, one for every eyeball in the audience. Someone sitting front left sees a stereo pair, someone sitting rear right sees a stereo pair, but they are different stereo pairs. In a 3D movie, everyone sees the same pair of images. Put a 3D camera in a live theatre, then screen the results: the only person with an undistorted view is the person sitting in the same seat the camera was in when it shot the scene.
Another way to think of it. Suppose that in a 3D movie Ann Miller is twenty feet from the camera, and suppose she pitches a handkerchief directly toward the camera and it lands ten feet away. When the results are screened, whereever you are sitting you are going to see that handkerchief come straight toward you and land halfway between you and the screen. If you're sitting ten feet from the screen at the right, that handkerchief will come toward the right and land five feet away--and all the depth in the scene will be half as deep as it should be, and every cube in the scene will be a parallelopiped skrooged toward the right.
If you're sitting forty feet from the screen at the left, that handkerchief will come toward the left and land twenty feet away. And all the depth in the scene will be exaggerated, twice as deep as it should be. And everything that's square will turn into a rhombus, skrooged toward the left.
And it gets even worse if you add wide-angle and telephoto shots. Telephoto shots flatten depth; in a baseball game, the batter seems to be standing only ten feet from the pitcher. But it's not that obvious in a 2D image. In a 3D image, you will get the same effect and you won't be able to ignore it.
Do you think this sort of thing is likely to affect your enjoyment of a sports event, which consists (in part) of appreciating the precise geometry of the playing field and the skill of the players in judging distances? I do.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I don't know if your statement about not being marketable was just a quip or not, but it's completely wrong. 3D was a huge sensation in the 1950s, so it certainly can be marketable.
The problem nowadays is that 3D production suffers from several things:
Right now, 3D is relegated to crap movies or movies to kids. Look at the titles that have been produced in 3D in the past 20 years:
Friday the 13th, part 3 - Oh, yeah. Great family film.
Jaws 3 - A 3D turd.
Spy Kids - Cheesy kid flick
and a few others, primarily for kids.
I am not including 3D IMAX movies because those are not in the same realm as traditional theatrical movies, and IMAX movies are not available in every city or town like general cinemas are.
The second problem is that the 3D method that is most often used is red/blue anaglyph, which is known to cause headaches in many people and is not a very effective means on producing 3D, although the technology for red/blue has actually improved over the past 10 years.
The most effective methods are the original IMAX alternating LED glasses, but that technology is very expensive, or polarization where the glasses look like regular, clear glasses. Polarization is by far the most effective method and VERY cheap comparatively speaking. All that the theatres need is a special dual-lens adapter for the projector to project a regular frame and a polarized frame onto the same screen. (At least that's what the theatre that I once worked for used.)
What has been slowing 3D down is that it is not cheap to produce; however, with the advent of digital technology I find that this reason is growing to be more and more specious. When 3D was done on film, yes, you would need twice as much film, twice as much editing, and so forth. With digital technology, you need twice as many hard drive storage (if recorded that way) with a dual-lens camera. There are plenty of softare products out there to do red/blue, 3D conversion based on two separate images. Just apply that same technology to the frames of synchronized movie files instead of an individual picture to create a red/blue frame or to create a split frame to be used with polarizing projector lenses.
Going back to previously-made, 2D movies and converting them could probably be done with some inventive technologies, but still requires a great deal of manual work. A human will have to sit down, set the depth of field, isolate the various depths for each element in the scene, and so forth. It can be done, it's just immensely time consuming. I don't doubt that software can be written to do it, though, if it doesn't already exist. If Photoshop can isolate an section of a frame based on specified critera, like color, I'm sure that an algorithm could be written for the same thing in movies. If the isolated section gets bigger, bring the object closer, and so forth.
With today's technology, 3D movies would be *very* easy to do - much easier to do than ever before. Unfortunately, 3D has been unfairly relegated to cheesy kid flicks, pathetic "horror" flicks, or limited-interest movies for IMAX. But 3D could make a huge return if the movie makers really wanted it to.
That being said, I think that 3D sports is an excellent idea. The only drawbacks are that it's not in your own home and the extra costs. Otherwise, you've got a REALLY big screen, surround sound in most theatres, if the 3D is done properly you could have a better view of the game than the people in the stadium, you don't have to fight with stadium traffic, and you don't have to walk 1/2 mile to go to the bathroom.
The janitorial staff will deserve a huge raise, however.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
As long as it doesn't interrupt the regular movie schedule, whatever.
And as long as they soundproof the theatre so there's no bleedover into the next one.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
Hmm. Makes sense. Thanks for your insight and knowledge. Not exactly a 'spear through the screen' experience I guess.
Heard any good sigs lately?
Theaters should deal with the real problem. Which is that the film distributors, and film is what the theaters do, demand 90% of their box office receipts for the first two-three weeks of any new movie that shows in the theater. With this type of arrangement, there is no way in hell that any theater can make any money from showing films. Which, as mentioned eariler, is what they do. So there is all this desperate nonsense, er... explorations into alternative revenue sources like 3D sports and digital film image projection.
Problem is, these other things aren't revenue generators. Au Contraire, they are revenue burners because the theaters have to absorb the costs of this new presentation technology without any assurances that the public will be willing to pay more for film and video services that they already get from their 'home theaters'. In fact it is unlikely that the people who put up many thousands of dollars for 'home theaters' (which are just big screen televisions and loud stereos) can be brought back into the theaters by anything that the theaters offer because the people who bought the 'home theaters' don't have any money left.
So that just leaves the people who used to go to movies but don't anymore. And usually why they don't is because the films are either too expensive or too stupid. And the reason that the films are too expensive is because Hollywood has lost the ability to make high-quality reasonably priced entertainment products.
We are at the end of Hollywood cycle now; this one has been the 'BlockBuster' era that started in 1977 with the original Star Wars movie. So there is going to be a period of contraction in the industry and the same time that there will be bursts of huge amounts of money thrown at projects of truly dubious artistic and commercial merit. Huge projects with no realistic expectation generating any real profit [stuff like Peter Jackson's King Kong, Disney's Treasure Planet, and Oliver Stone's Alexander] will continue to pop out of Hollywood as the industry goes into its final crash-and-burn cycle.
This has all happened before. The most recent Hollywood down cycle started in the mid-1950s and lasted until the mid 1970s. The defining bomb movie of that era was Cleopatra(1964) staring Elizabeth Taylor, who was the Lindsay Lohan of the 1950's. Cleopatra cost about $500-$600 million in today's equivalent dollars and brought in about 1/10th of its cost in box office. Check it out on DVD or VHS if you want to get an idea of what kind of projects are being currently planned in Hollywood for the 2007-2009 season.
Anyway, the theaters are the only people who can stop the Hollywood descent in madness by demanding a much better return schedule on box office receipts and forcing Hollywood into developing higher quality, less-expensive product.
But the theaters are unlikely to take this opportunity because they are run by mediocre, narrow-minded, business and marketing majors who would be challenged should they ever have be called to operate anything as complex as a K-Mart Men's department. You know these guys; they're the ones with the white shirts, bad haircuts, and vaguely worried looks on their faces that you see when you stop at McDonald's for a MuffinBurger before going to work in the morning. These guys are not going to be generating solutions to Hollywood's basic problems.
I think you have a rather misguided concept of how big an adult is supposed to be. I'm 6'2", and I fit in the seats comfortably.
Maybe it's a regional thing? Perhaps the seats where you live are tiny?
I just took a look around now. Has anyone tried any of the $1000 glasses like http://www.3dforgames.com/english/product_video3d_ pro.htm?
I might be able to convince myself to get one of those if they actually work with FPSs. Ideally I would use a cordless controller and then stand up and turn my whole body as I moved around.
Cow Cube
The problem with movie theaters is that they support a small crowd. It's a little bigger than a group of friends, and smaller than a modest arena. So there's bound to be tension, factions, etc.
Sporting events are supposed to be a little roudy, whether you're watching them in someone's living room or live on a playing field. Politeness, which is required in small public settings like theaters, comes directly in conflict with the atmosphere most people want to watch sports in. I don't see it happening.
The idea is that a pair of cameras, with a shared focus distance, at an angle that replicates the angle of the eyes would be all you need. simply project the video to the corresponding eye, and your eye will be tricked to replicate the same focal distance.. adding instant depth perception to the movie. The only problem to this is your eyes would be forced into a focal distance as determined by the camera, and trying to shift focus onto background images or whatnot could be pretty disorienting, or it could even work.. i'm not sure, I would have to test it out. Maybe I have something to play with once I get back from Iraq.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin