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Hot Or Not — 3D TV
Several sources have written to tell us that in terms of hype at this year's CES show, there is none bigger than that surrounding 3D TV. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, and Toshiba all have their own flavors of hardware and ESPN announced a 3D sports channel, but Microsoft seems to be bucking the trend with their apparent lack of 3D interest surrounding the Xbox product. "We're yet to see any major brand at CES pushing a 3D TV that doesn't require them. In most cases these aren't the basic Ray Ban style you might have worn to watch Avatar. In many cases they'll actually require power. For example, Sony's 3D TVs use a 'frame sequential' display method, which involves active-shutter glasses that turn on and off in sync with the images. Some TVs come with the glasses and have the transmitter built in, but again, in some cases you'll need to buy the transmitter and glasses separately."
Just doesn't work... It's headache inducing and problematic with multiple viewers and viewing angles.
Don't expect it anytime soon in a practical and usable form.
3D circularly polarized projectors are probably the best usable tech as the glasses are cheap. However high refresh rate LCDs with active shutter glasses are probably the best tech for PCs.
What do active glasses give you that polarity glasses wouldn't? Why go that road except to eek out a bit more cash from the consumer?
-SaNo
On the PC, all I need is the Nvidia glasses and a display that can do 120 Hz. I heard that with TVs, you can do the same thing. So, do we just need a TV that does 120 Hz, and let the receiver do the rest, or do we need a special TV?
DirecTV hasn't said what their 3D receiver will be yet.
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When watching 3D movies, I tend to go cross-eyed and get a headache very quickly. I think it's because everything I'm seeing is on the same focal plane, but my eyes attempt to adjust for parallax based on different apparent distances of objects. I had to walk out of Avatar 3D after about 10 minutes, I just could not watch it like that. Does anyone else experience this?
We just got two 3D monitors from Hyundai, one smaller one that goes in the production area, and a huge one to show to clients. The networks, especially the ones that generate a lot of their own content, are scrambling for 3D content... not necessarily because they want to push it, but because everyone is scared to be left behind.
The Hyundai monitors use passive glasses, and the image is quite good. I can see 3D, especially with passive glasses (where you can buy replacements or extras for reasonable prices), really taking off.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
Who wants to wear an extra pair of glasses just to watch TV?
This whole 3D video thing smacks of a industry money grab disguised as a fad...
Exec: "Well everyone and their gramma has a 'flatscreen' jumbotron at home, what do we do now?"
R&D: "Gentlemen, we've reached the limits of this plane of entertainment, we must go to the next dimension"
*dramatic music*
crazy dynamite monkey
I just don't see the benefit in 3D TV. I know the technology is getting better, but the 3D in Avatar was just good enough to not be a distraction from the movie- it certainly didn't add anything to it, besides $5 for the ticket. The point is that for most of the movie, I did not perceive anything different than a normal movie, and those moments when I did were distracting and jarring. I have seen a couple imax movies in 3D and I think I tend to mentally flatten the images- except for the parts where the snake jumps out at you, which is just distracting and cheesy.
So, if I'm going to be mentally flattening the images anyway, why bother?
My experience is that if you continue to watch past those 10 min, you get used to it.
This will remain a high-end niche product like Laserdisc. 3D simply won't become mainstream until they can pull it off without glasses. The only question, is that even possible?
DVD offered such a significant advance over VHS adopting it was a no-brainer. Same goes for HDTV over standard def. But 3D TV might also resemble BlueRay where there's just not enough market penetration. People aren't seeing a compelling argument for abandoning regular DVD's. BueRay still sells but is not market-dominant and I don't think will ever be.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
We finally get a display technology with zero flicker, the LCD, and the 3D crowd has to put it back. Yuck.
It's like those 38-DDDs are right in your face!
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Ill wait for a real 3d holographic TV. As often as I cant find my remote I would never be able to find my 3d glasses.
Then what happens when we are having a party and have like 15 people over, take a look and pass them along ?
because Microsoft is busy making 3D people, aka Natal.
I've used 3D shutter glasses for my PC that work with nVidia drivers/cards for well over a decade. Any 3D game can render this way... the tech works okay, but nowhere near as lovely or convenient as the Captain EO / Avatar method which uses polarized projection and unpowered polarized glasses... and 3D eyeglass-free monitors that use parallax have existed for about a decade as well now... None of the new TVs do this? You can add field-sequential, shutter-frame tech to your PC and a good CRT for under $50... for the last decade. Fun for immersion... a bit of an impediment for high accuracy things like sniping in a FPS though.
Mostly it is due to the glasses and the effect the glasses have on the wearer.
Having recently seen my first 3D movie at a theater last night, I can say that yes it does look incredible, but I have significant eye strain, that is still bothering me the next day.
Others I have talked to said they get headaches from the 3D glasses, others just hate having to wear them due to comfort, interfering with their normal glasses or not used to wearing glasses..
Sorry, no one I have talked to is willing to veg out for an hour or 2 in the evenings with 3D glasses on.
I am really not willing to do it for games either. I'd rather have a few hours gaming in 2D, than a short duration with headaches in 3D.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
Give me ONE example where MS has ever been on the ball. They are always late to every party.
And it has served them well. I don't think they do it on person, just that MS is very susceptible to the "not invented here" syndrome. If MS cannot control it from the start, it doesn't want it. And then it comes in late, announces that it will soon have something superior out and hope that buys it enough time to get its second version out, because the first sucks donkey balls as MS fails to have learned any lessons from watching everyone else.
But since MS is doing fine in a bad economy while its competitors are either dead, dying or to small. Sony is making record losses, Nintendo survived this round but each round is a huge risk for them. The other unixes are gone, Apple is doing fine but its catch-up is to slow and OSX is getting older everyday.
Basically, never bother watching MS for the next trend.Rather watch them to see what trends have turned into every day reality.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I thought Avatar looked great. I thought the use of 3D really enhanced the experience. I wouldn't want to have to put on stupid glasses every time i want to watch something though.
Glasses are something you can lose, or break, or not have enough of for everyone in the room. Meh. It sounds like too much work. I just want to plunk down in front of the boob tube and veg out.
It happens to me too and it doesn't go away after 10 minutes as other commenter posted. I watched Avatar 2D and headache-free.
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
It will not be viable until we get 3D porn. Then I'm in :)
Really, if your 3D TV requires powered glasses in order to experience 3D viewing, why not just get rid of the TV altogether and simply display slightly offset images on each lens of a pair of glasses? I doubt that cost would be an issue seeing as how video glasses seem to be available for under $200 (it would take a lot of people viewing to overcome the cost of the 3D TV + TV glasses). It obviously can't be related to a communal viewing experience as everyone viewing the 3D TV will need glasses anyway.
At least with polarized glasses the power requirement is gone but still, since some form of eyewear is required anyway, why not just get rid of the TV altogether? Is it just because you'll still be able to watch 2D without the glasses?
Don't get me wrong, the prospects look interesting, but it just seems like holding onto the TV for no other purpose than being able to manufacture large and expensive displays.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
We left Avatar after 45 minutes. I wear glasses, so the extra glasses sat too far away from my eyes making focusing on the film quite hard. Wearing two pairs of glasses isn't exactly comfortable either. The reason we left though, was because my girlfriend (who wears glasses as well) got nauseous and had to throw up.
I won't be seeing films in this pseudo-3D in the cinemas any more any time soon.
An article on Sony and "betting it all" on 3D TVs was published in the Wall Street Journal, yesterday. A pretty detailed article, imo.
Basically, that article pointed out the fatal flaw:
The challenge for Sony and the other electronics makers: persuading people to adopt 3-D so quickly after hundreds of millions of households just made the transition to high-definition video. Consumers will have to buy brand new televisions, which, according to some estimates, could cost between 10% and 20% more than the high-definition TVs currently on the market.
Not going to happen. People are going to resist this like mad. "New TV? I just bought a new HDTV, and now you want me to go buy a new one so soon which is more expensive? Yeah, go fuck yourselves."
Inflammatory rhetoric aside, what I found most interesting, though, is that CEO Stringer appears to be his push (at least in this arena) against the "Not invented here" bias that is apparently so prevalent at Sony. Most slashdotters will agree--we don't need more proprietary, incompatible Sony formats. Hopefully this attitude is promoted outside the 3D TV realm.
I don't know how they think they can ever sell these things as long as they require glasses. They're uncomfortable, especially if you already wear glasses. If you're wearing the glasses, trying to do something else at the same time you're watching TV will be difficult. Everybody watching needs their own glasses. Having to take off and put on the glasses all the time will be a pain. Glasses are the reason 3D has never been done in the home before, even though it could be. Glasses have always been the failing point of 3D, and always will be.
In response to concerns that there's very little consumer need/demand for 3D TV, many proponents try to draw parallels to HDTV's slow adoption: that we just need to shove it out into the marketplace in order to attract enough early content and viewers to create the critical mass necessary for widespread acceptance. But I think that's an unfair comparison. HDTV was an "easy sell" to consumers: big screens + sharp picture. The slow adaption was mostly due to provider, network, and regulatory BS. 3D TV probably won't be hindered (much) in those areas. It'll be convincing people that they want it.
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This technology will find it very difficult to move ahead because for the most part it actually distracts from the story. It may succeed for a few 'visual effects' driven, plotless movies (Star Trek anyone?) but on a recurring basis, it won't add value to a weekly series. OTOH, if the porn industry embraces it (porn is, after all, visual and plotless by definition) and perfects it to the point that the viewer doesn't think about it /at all/, then it may be able to become mainstream. The impediment to this is the location of the bright shiny new 3D TV. Many folks who will watch porn by themselves on their PC will find it inconvenient to watch in the family room with the spouse and kids.
it certainly didn't add anything to it, besides $5 for the ticket.
don't you know why this is done? TV manufacturers are running out of ways for being able to insulate the price barrier.
I don't buy that. All it takes is one hungry smaller company that decides it doesn't need to try to milk consumers with gradual feature creep to produce a product that costs the same but has more features. Implementing 3d on tvs should be no more complex that cranking the refresh rate up, and selling overpriced polarized glasses.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
A> They come up with working holodecks.
B> Working hologram displays like that chess board in Star Wars or Lea sending a message to Obi-wan through R2D2.
I'll pass on systems where I have to wear hooky glasses with a 2D surface. I want to use my unaided eyes for this only and bonus points if you can make it so I can feel what is being projected within limits. (IE. No real lava or balls of plasma for Discovery Channel shows.)
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I found, when watching Avatar, that it was important to look where the director wants you to look. Real cameras have real focal distances, so you can't look wherever you want and expect to be able to get everything in focus. Up was an easier viewing experience, but with a less extreme 3D effect.
Insert self-referential sig here.
The problem is the Camera systems being used work similar to the eye, they have to focus on a specific part of the image. When you try to look at an area that is out of focus, your eyes make a futile attempt to focus the image which ends in a headache and nausea.
Basically, focus on the part of the image that's in focus.
At least credit xkcd when you rip-off its comments: http://xkcd.com/684/
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Microsoft is the company telling you why the latest and greatest thing isn't so great? Weird. You'd think they'd be hyping 3D display support in Windows 8.
Suppose your goal is to display 1920x1080x120Hz in 3D.
There actually exist 3D LCD displays that use passive (polarized glasses) hardware, but they also appear to use software to do row/column-sequential content, that is, to change the polarization of each row (or column) of pixels as it's displayed.
It's hard/impossible to make an LCD panel switch the polarity of every line simultaneously. The backlight isn't polarized, only the little pixels in front of the backlight are polarized. So line-sequential polarization (on an LCD display, each row is rendered simultaneously, unlike CRTs with a scanning beam) enables you to use passive glasses, but effectively cuts the vertical resolution of the panel in half.
The easier alternative to line-sequential polarization is field-sequential polarization, in which you cut the refresh rate of the panel in half. Compared to building a panel that can do 1920x2160p at 120Hz (and line-sequential polarization and cheap passive glasses), it's far cheaper to produce a 1920x1080p panel (which have been in production for some time now) and drive it at 240Hz (which is new). If the a 1920x1080x240Hz panel is more than $100 cheaper than a 1920x2160x120Hz one, you still come out ahead even if the LCD-shutter glasses cost $100.
That's my hunch.
It's also probably easier for cross-compatibility to have 3D content in field sequential format, too. Displaying a 3D Blu-Ray on a non-3D set? Very easy to have the player discard alternating fields and send only one eye's view at 120Hz. Probably not so easy (given the nature of video compression) to discard alternating lines of content on a 1080p screen. Going the other way works too -- no mucking about with line doublers when displaying 2D content at 1920x1080 on our imaginary 1920x2160p alternating-line-polarizing screen.
Finally, retrofitting. An external transmitter that plugged into the video cable / video card would be pretty easy to build for $5-10 in additional parts, and if it lets me use my 1920x1080x120Hz set to play games in 3D at 1920x1080x60Hz, that might be worth $120 for glasses and an external IR transmitter to control them.
The short answer is "because we can".
and the short reply to that is no, we cant properly yet. 3dtv is not 'there' yet
Every technology I've seen so far for 3D television/movie presentation has been teh suck. Why? Because I have one eye. Alas, I am not disabled enough to leverage the ADA, but I'm not the litigious sort anyway. But every technique so far devised to have each eye see something different when looking at one screen has screwed up the case where only one view gets used. I either see both views simultaneously, which is like double vision for "close" objects, or I see things the wrong color (for the old red/green style), or the image flickers badly. My wife wants to see Avatar in 3D. I'll take her, because I love her and want her to be happy, but I'm not looking forward to it.
I thought those powered blinky glasses were the ones that gave everyone headaches...
This is my sig.
The switch from black and white TV was an easy sell: color looks better.
The switch (in progress...) from SD to HD is an easy sell: bigger/sharper looks better.
But I have a hard time believing that everything could/should be in 3d. Action movies? Sure. Sports? Sure. But drama? Sitcoms? News?
What I notice 3d mostly being used for is "gimmick shots" in movies where some object deliberately leaps out at you. I've never seen a movie where 3d offered some consistent, ever-present visual benefit.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Sega had those things for the Master System in 87 or 88. By that I mean you could buy them in the store. (I had a pair when I was a kid. They worked ok but seriously the SMS was no 3D system. It might have been better if it came out on the Saturn or DC.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
http://www.3dmovielist.com/3dhdtvs.html
My brain IS medically incapable of 3D. I suffer from a condition called amblyopia and therefore can rarely percieve any 3D effect no matter the technology; to be honnest I probably don't see the real world in 3D either. However, for some reason, I have rather good depth perception, probably adapted over the years since I suffer from amblyopia since I was born. So I'm also part of the group that is totally indifferent to all this 3D hype beside the fact that I fear overall image quality might go down because people will put effort in the 3D.
The content of the programmes is what people watch - not the fuzziness of the picture, or the brilliance of the colours, nor whether the characters "leap out" of the screen (though how this would work on games shows and reality programmes I do not know). TV nowadays is constrained by budgets and timescales - there's a limited amount of advertising money available to turn into programming and a limited amount of time to spend making each show. These are what limits the quality of programmes - whcih is the only thing that would increase the amount of TV that people as a whole would watch.
We already know that audiences are willing to put up with very low quality pictures - video recorders proved this and pretty much defined the minimum acceptable quality. No one has ever said to me "I would have watched <whatever> on TV, but the technical quality of the broadcast was too low". However everyone I know (including myself) frequently won't watch programmes if the acting / story / premise / genre / script is poor.
I would guess that since TV companies aren't able or willing to improve the programme content, that doesn't leave much of a differentiator, so gilding the lily (or polishing the turd) is the only way they can try to shift viewers from one low quality show to another. The only people who stand to make out of this new fad are the hardware manufacturers.
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In my screening of IMAX Avatar 3D nobody in the vicinity of about 20 people walked out. None of my friends who watched it walked out as well.
My sampling is biased though. Many of my friends are structural biologists like myself who used to watch stereoscopic pictures of protein structures and though stereoscopic is very different method, it still trains your eyes out of usual correlation between focus and eyes' angle.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Nay I say. I just don't need 3d, it's that simple. I don't really want to wear glasses other than vision glasses, as I would find them distracting. I don't want to upgrade technology, I don't really find the content that much better...if anything as others have pointed out I find it distracting and cheesy. Whaqt is the upside? I can't believe that execs are making such a huge mistake. They are confusing one-off "wow" appeal for long term preferences. Note to execs: That's a problem with focus groups. Next time try a focus group for 3 years and then ask what they think. Stupid execs. Stupid.
I was confused by that segue too. If anything the game controller that would best fit 3D would be the WIImote on the WII. A clever 3D implementation might even be able to extend the look of the wiimote to show the player where his or her lightsaber would be and you could almost have an immersive experience, coordinated motion and display. Of course, since Nintendo seldom pushes hardware performance, who knows if the box itself is fast enough to do all the calculations required. Still it would be cool to see stuff through my 3D-specs shooting out of my Wiimote and videogame bad guys.
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I saw Avitar a couple of weeks ago in 3D and it looked great. I specifically arrived at the theater to catch that showing. If I were to see it again, I'd probably try to catch it in 3d again if it was convent. I didn't mind paying the extra few buck and wearing the stoopid glasses.
Then about a week later, I went and saw Up in the Air. It was a great movie too. However, if it had optionally been offered in 3d, theres no way in the world I would have made a special trip or paid a penny more to see it in 3d.
Probably for 95% of what I watch on tv, 3d is of no interest to me. Even if Avitar where to come out in 3d at home. I am not sure the 3d would really be the same on a home screen. Even a 50 or 60 inch screen. And certainly not something under 40 inches.
I can see a lot of push back from consumers on this.
Word game?
To be fair, this is the director's fault too -- the movie should not have your attention being drawn away from the focal point of the shot.
Bad focus pulls in cheap movies and TV shows cause me headaches too, because the wrong face is in focus during dialog, etc.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I'm in the same boat; 3D gives me splitting headaches almost instantly. It's bad to the point where I simply will not go to see a 3D movie, period. Have fun guys, tell me how it is when you get back.
I've been reading/hearing about all this interest in 3D everywhere and I realize that I'm just not going to go along with this particular tech. Apart from my issues with 3D, where did all this 3D-love come from all of a sudden? It seems this particular tech was relegated to IMAX nature movies at the local science museum, and then all of a sudden Avatar is big news and then every company is talking about 3D TVs, 3D channels...this seems like too well-organized to be just a fad, but, sheesh, I hope it is.
Give credit where credit is due: http://www.xkcd.com/684/
Glasses of any type are a deal-breaker.
Please come back when you've got fully morphable real-time 60hz+ 3d tabletop displays...
Hell I'll even take a fancy version of 'technology' like the holographic battle-chess game in Star Wars without the flicker issue.
I can wait. 1080p 2d is pretty damn good in the meantime.
The only time we are going to get 3d television is once 3d holographic projectors are an established technology. This is not because of any technological limitation with 3d glasses. But simply because 3d glasses look stupid and no one will want to wear them. Plus people have a hard enough time losing their remote. Plus you wont be able to just invite X friends over to watch some TV you will have to have a set of glasses for each person. Any tech which requires 3d glasses is doomed to failure from the get go.
But with that setup (since GGP didn't seem to be bragging about having a girlfriend, or at least wouldn't from that post anywhere other than /.) it loses the joke. So if it was a "rip-off", GP clearly doesn't understand humor, but thinks copy-pasta punchlines might be it. Or if it was a reference, it was effective, so GP did understand humor. Idealist/cuddlefish that I am, I'll go with the latter.
If you have to wear powered glasses anyway, then what's the point of a big screen instead of a HUD display?
If you’re trying to say it was funnier exactly the way it was, then I think I agree with you.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Have you tried getting lightly drunk? Of stoned? You know, that relaxed state where your eyes sometimes simply stay at the same focus even when you look at something else.
It’s strange. I did not even remotely have any problems. (We had polarized glasses.) It was a bit unsharp and sharp at the same time. But all in all I got used to it, and then it was really cool.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Yup. Avatar was actually one of the best 3D movies in this regard.
However, there were a lot of scenes with stuff like boxes sticking out into the foreground. Their contrast in distance alone made them stand out, and as an added bonus they had out-of-focus writing on them.
If I stared at the center of the screen and the main subjects, it tended to be fine.
I almost wonder if a pinhole camera perspective wouldn't help with this. I find it ironic that just about the time that 3D video games are finally getting away from pinhole cameras that movies might have a little more need for them. The only problem there is that now you want to look at everything and it will probably look a bit strange.
What we need is an actual 3D image dataset (ie the projector actually has a cube of x,y,z,r,g,b values) and glasses that track eye movement and instantly update projections accordingly. Either that or some way of actually projecting in 3D. Granted, right now I'm not sure that even serious hardware could render two 2D perspectives with fast update times in line with eye movements of a big 3D scene.
My experience was that the first 10 minutes made my eyes water than the rest of the movie was fine. When I got out of the theater it took 30 seconds for my brain to implode in a crushing migraine that left me disabled for 3 hours.
I saw reviews for these guys' products 5 to 10 years ago that do NOT require glasses: http://www.dti3d.com/
The reviewers were very impressed at how realistic it looked at the time. If this has been around for years, why are all these major players wasting time with glasses? (cuz I know I won't buy anything 3d where I have to wear glasses)
Which doesn't make sense for a movie which is, from what I've heard, mostly CGI. They choose to have this problem of real cameras.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Actually, some of the 3D technologies coming out are very similar to what you likely use for 3D rendering of proteins/etc. The typical technology there is to have LCDs that alternate opaque/clear in sync with the monitor refresh so that each eye gets a separate image.
The 3D used in most movie projectors essentially does the same thing. You have two circularly-polarized lenses in opposite directions on your glasses, and a fancy filter on the projector lens that can alternate its polarization at a high frequency. So they're just using polarization instead of liquid crystals to separate the images. The LCDs are probably a bit cleaner as the screen will not preserve the polarization perfectly (and the filters aren't perfect either), but the LCDs probably go completely opaque.
Judging by how schister cable companies are already with HDTV bit rates, I'm guessing the 3D stream won't get 2x the bits.
The only thing worse than low bit rate artifacts, is ones are Left/Right eye unique. I can't wait to see a class action lawsuit after Comcast causes a nation wide vomitorium by cutting back the 3D bit rate during the superbowl...
A fairly simple 3D idea, at least when compared to powered shuttered glasses.
No but my ex-wife has strabismus. Anyone with that condition, or without a boatload of money, won't get any benefit from this.
I've had a 3-D TV for literally years. The only 3-D movies I have are on VHS - John Wayne Hondo and the Rolling Stones Steel Wheel Concert.
It's the old red-green technology that was in theaters at least as early as the 1950s. There was polaroid tech at Epcot in the early eighties; impressive, good color and good illusion of depth, but seems a novelty only and not worth extra expense. I mean, say you have $3k for a new TV (which I don't). Would you buy a 35 inch 3D TV or a 52 inch 2D TV? If I were shopping for a new TV I'd opt for a bigger 2D screen than a smaller 3D screen. I'd buy the biggest screen with the highest resolution I could afford, not a gimick that would add nothing to my existing movie collection and would make new movies I buy cost more.
Which is the crux of the matter -- most people don't have money to burn, especially in this economy. The people making this stuff don't seem to understand that. I want the most bang for the buck, and to me 3D isn't much bang, but a bigger, sharper picture is.
And one more thing -- have they standardized formats? If not, you're gambling if you buy one of these. Actually you may be gambling anyway, since there's a good chance 3D will be a collossal flop. 3D has been around for decades, but you don't see much of it in the theaters.
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Something would be popping out in the foreground and I would want to see what it was but it would be blurry and I couldn't focus because it wasn't actually a real object.
I think they should be careful about using the 3d effect on shots with narrow depth of field...especially if they are blurring stuff in the foreground.
Bottles.
3D photography is almost as old as "normal" one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy
And it's largely irrelevant.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Except movies no longer have endings, they have sequels.
Real cameras have real focal distances
Yes, but virtual cameras don't, and even real cameras have a fair bit of control over depth of field. In my opinion 3D movies should be rendered with as large a depth of field as possible, because the viewer's eyes narrow it automatically. Tight compositions are enough to remove distractions. Even though I know about the trick of looking where the camera is focused, and am therefore able to watch pain free, it breaks the fourth wall for me every time I have to do it.
This space intentionally left blank.
Really, not. Absolutely no interest. Content delivery is where the real interest lies, not yet another painfully expensive change in presentation.
What use 3D when all we have to look at is the same old crapola? Will your viewing experience really be that much elevated watching Lifestyles of Clueless Trust Account Celebutantes in 3D?
Manufacturers need to catch a clue from huge traffic in torrents -- the hot market is in content delivery. Don't talk to me about new methods of presentation until internet jacks on TVs are common and well integrated with reasonably priced services.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
OOC, have you tried having your good eye patched? Recent studies have shown that, presuming the eye in question functions properly, then patching can reverse the condition even in adults (this is something I plan to look in to: I have refractive amblyopia, so a contact lens for the eye, plus patching, might very well resolve the condition).
As an aside, I also have very good depth perception (I used to be a fairly capable basketball player, and have juggled for over ten years), which just goes to show that basic stereoscopy is but a fraction of the process used to judge depth in the human mind.
Cant wait....
Which doesn't make sense for a movie which is, from what I've heard, mostly CGI. They choose to have this problem of real cameras.
No, they don't - they're forced to have this problem because if they didn't mimic the way real cameras work, it would break suspension of disbelief.
I may be one of the few here not to have gone out to see that movie with the blue people yet, so I don't have actual experience, but how well do the various 3D glasses work for us myopics who need prescription lenses to see the screen as something other than a blurry blob? Can they be worn without being completely uncomfortable?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
What's with the negativity? We love new technology, plus you get to wear glasses! Cool!
Every time. I had to watch Coraline with the glasses off and periodically put them on to see what I was missing in certain scenes.
I'm not bothering with Avatar, without the 3D, it'll just be another movie with animated effects and bad acting.
Aside from a few gimmicky effects - tire boinging right at the camera and the like - the entire rest of the movie was completely not in-your-face 3D and I thought it was rather well done; for most of the movie, the fact that it was '3D' was just not obvious.
Compare this to Beowulf 3D. Ouch, man. Ouch. 2D version much preferred.
The folks that work for the Mouse have been using some type of polarized lens sun glasses, well, 10 years ago they did. Why can't Sony, et.al. do the same?
I remember the patches when I was young, I could probably give it another try, but my lazy eye is so lazy I couldn't read or drive with it alone. As a motivation, I also read about therapy using 3D glasses (real ones, active shutters or polarized, I don't know and it might not make a difference). I would be curious to try that as the therapy might require to play games :P. Maybe I could get my insurance company to pay for the Nvidia 3D glasses thing!
Often when I'm at home, I watch TV while laying on the couch, so my eyes aren't exactly vertical. While watching Avatar I tried rotating my head a bit and the picture became much worse. I can't imagine what this would have been like if I was lying on a couch watching. I'd probably need to keep a bucket nearby...
You need a blue box that is bigger on the inside and an attractive traveling companion for that....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Uhm.. no. Just no.
For shutter technology - if your television set can refresh itself cleanly in at least 48Hz* - congratulations, you've got all that you realistically need to get a 3D set going on for film content (24fps). You'll need an emitter and the glasses to sync with, and you'll still need a player to output the alternating left/right streams to your television in sync with the emitter (or make the emitter sync with whatever the output is), but that's not a whole new TV set.
( * You'll want more to make it not be quite so flickery, of course - but a 96Hz set will do just fine.. 240Hz is just that more relaxed. )
For polarized technology - expect aftermarket polarization screens.. from cheap linear polarizations in horizontal/vertical, to CW/CCW polarization. Fitting them onto your existing set will be annoying as all hell (like trying to laminate something by hand without getting bubbles trapped), but paying some dude $50 to do it for you is still cheaper than a whole new set.
For red/green - all you need is a feed-through device that takes the signal and makes it red/green. Or red/blue. Or chromadepth - whatever is your fancy, although chromadepth takes additional processing and you lose parallax.. but that's neither here nor now.
For side-by-side (be that cross-eyed or 'stare into the distance and try to defy your own eye muscles - lol') - again, feed-through device will do.. bit of a waste of your screen's real estate, though.
There's no *absolute need* to get a new television set - aftermarket options are there for the taking by anybody willing to jump into that market.
Heck, the only real obstacle I'm seeing is with those technologies where you'd need to use a feed-through device.. whether those would be allowed (i.e. they'd probably have to output encrypted data again after decrypting the original stream to be in compliance with HDCP blabla) is something worth pondering.
Push comes to shove? Ditch the television set, grab a pair of VR goggles like NVidia's, and watch it straight on those. Still cheaper than a new television and as an added perk it'll work pretty much automatically with most PC 3D games (specific 3D-considerations aside).
I'm not sure STEREO sound is worth it and now you want me to go all gaga over 3D TV? My head is going to explode. No wait, those are the lithium batteries in the 3D glasses that are on fire...
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I love slashdot but jeez, I wish there was more constructive discussion. Mostly when I peruse a topic 90% of the comments are folks trying to be funny and snarky very little useful discussion. Flame away.
... the need for special glasses is dropped. 3D movies have been around for decades, yet the need for special glasses has limited the 3D movies as a niche market (at best).
Announcing the intent to distribute a new technology, TV or otherwise, is just fine and dandy. However, until I start seeing 3D TV's on my local craigslist listings, I can safely assume that the price is still a bit high and the quality is still in the, 'brand new but buggy' range. =)
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Way back in 1987 at 'Telecom 87' (or maybe 86) in Geneva SONY were demoing HD-TV they were already talking about 3D TV and how it was not that difficult to do once you had HD sorted out.
Back then, their HD demo was impressive.
They had a camera trained on a japanese doll wearing a kimono. This was shown on a large CRT placed next to the Doll. There was a conventional Camera/display of the same scene close by so that you could see the difference. The Doll rotated so that you could see the movement. I was very impressed.
This was the same show where IBM introduced the 9370!
I am surprised to read the Slashdot community is not praising the advanced 3D technology used in Avatar. This was the first 3D film I saw without the old stupid cardboard framed glasses, and I must say, the experience was great.
The 3D perfectly augmented an already great movie. It was like watching a play (you know, which has depth perception) but doing things impossible in a play, like being on an alien world. There weren't any gimmicky shots where things jumped out at you. This wasn't Michael Jackson's Thriller in 3D at Epcot Center. Rather, the 3D let you see depth to an already greatly composed movie, both graphically and with great camera work -- not to mention the the story which was pretty good. Overall, It wasn't the best movie, maybe not even a great movie, but it was a damned good movie, and the 3D technology has really matured.
I would definitely use/purchase such technology to play video games.
The first barrier, of course, is a consistant standard or interoperable group of standards.
I suspect that, given the limitations of the technology, 3D TVs, will need to be easily put in "2D only" mode, and 3D media and broadcasts as well.
I'll buck the trend. I'm excited for 3D. Fujitsu showed a 3D camera and, if the price is right I'll get it.
But there are trade-offs on TV. If the standards look there, I'll get one of the "no glasses" 3D computer monitors when I can afford it. I think it would be terriffic for games and the disadvantage of that tech (that you have to keep your head right in front of it) is not much of an issue for a monitor.
But it's not a good technology for most of my TVs (nor possible for my projection system) as they are often viewed at odd angles.
I would be OK with unpowered glasses (again, need an easy way to switch to 2D), but I think that a thethered system, or a system with expensive / heavy / propritary active glasses is something I'm not likely to buy at all.
Make it cheap (not much more than non 3D), and balance conviencience and ease of "switching to 2D" and I'm interested.
(and 3D movies are 4D... it's just that the 4D is bigger than your field of vision and the rate of viewing it is controlled to 1 second per second).
I have in the past, but did not with Avatar. It seems that the quality of the projection and glasses have a major effect on how much of an issue this is. I suspect (like motion-induced motion-sickness), proximity to the screen is also an issue.
Are you implying in your example that they didn't improve the antenna? {...} You know what's happened with electronics over the past 20 years? They've improved tremendously.
I think the parent is trying to say, that although constant "improvement" are happening, none of these was called for in the first place.
The new antenna is better that the older, but older one already did pretty well the job.
Lots of these improvement are only solutions trying to find a non-existing problem to fix. They are used by the marketing department, so they have something to present as "new" on their product line and sell at an increased price. Otherwise we would all still use the same technology from 5 years ago - it was already good enough back then and 5 years later the prices would have dropped dramatically. There's a conflict of interests between consumers who look for something "good enough" and constructors which are looking for pretext to continue selling their equipment at the same price (...but this one has the "brand new" XyZ gizmo !)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Inability for viewers to focus their eyes freely also breaks suspension of disbelief.
It seems it breaks it much more than "everything in focus" - 3D games are like that for a long time, without major complaints.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I was having difficulty for the first 10 minutes as well. But either my eyes got used to it or it may have been because I started analyzing the 3d itself. Trying to figure out how the 3d worked, what my eyes were seeing so I wasnt looking at the focal point anymore, but being forced to look at a given focal point was distracting throughout the movie. I think it may be because with ADD my eyes are constantly scanning the whole of the screen so until my caffinated drink sank in I was weirded out by the movie. I ended up enjoying it though once I settled in.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
You are talking about autoscopic images.
That was one of the techonologies that we used in the past, for example Biosym's InsightII supported glasses for a long time.
However, most people I know used plain vanilla side by side stereoscopic images. Scientific papers did not have other options. One of the first journals who started to use LRL (3 images instead of 2) was Protein Engineering. That was classy solution to the ongoing fight between parallel-eyes and cross-eye stereo fans.
I was in the second camp and I still do not understand how people can look at parallel-eye's stereos when the distance between corresponding points of the images is larger than the distance between the eyes (conference room screens, for example).
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I think we can now compile the statistics of all the money lost to world economy over repeated attempts to market technology no one wants.
Flying Cars
Video Phones (yes, there's ANOTHER one of those out now)
Self-heating food
Video Glasses
3D movies/TV
All of these things have died and come back at least three times. The cost must run into the hundreds of millions by now.
Screw the TV, lets go Denno Coil style!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Coil
Have you been living under a rock? the price of TV's are falling faster then a lead balloon..amusing the lead balloon wasn't made by mythbusters~
I have a Samsung Series 5 1080p, 40". I paid 599 for it. Granted it was on sale.
I've watched the LED drop over 1000 dollars in less then 6 months.
I have news for you, many, if not all, LCDs that do 120Hz or greater can do 3d, right now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
3d is just not acceptable to those of us that have vision in only one eye. everything looks fuzzing out of focus. So I will stick with my reg LCD TV. Saves me money. BTW Those of us that have vision in one eye only have perfect depth perception and see in 3 d it is not binocular but like a SLR camera
my girlfriend (who wears glasses as well) got nauseous and had to throw up.
I won't be seeing films in this pseudo-3D in the cinemas any more any time soon.
I don't think it's the "pseudo-3D". Has she taken a pregnancy test recently?
Geez, what a bunch of complainers. Technology marches on, and here's one tech I'm looking forward to.
If you think 3D is lame and just a fad, I invite you to poke one of your eyes out since it obviously has no benefit. Pick either one you want.
Most new games are starting to include Depth of field features, last ones I've played being CoD:MW2 and PES 2010
Avatar is not "just another movie"
LG has just about master a 2d TV:
http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1262093577
2.5 mm.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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Unfortunately for me, I've had an incurable lazy eye since birth, ergo no depth perception. I think it's to blame for me being a (proud) geek as although I was athletic I had no depth perception. Man, could I run though. Anyhoo, I love the idea of 3d movies, but I am concerned that people like me will get more and more excluded ad 3d becomes de-facto. Please please include 2d versions as much as possible, even if only on the DVD/blu-ray. I'm sure I'm not in that much of a minority?
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As someone who usually browses /. and seldom posts, I felt I needed to comment on the (what I perceive to be) strange phenomenon that is a tech focused community that seems to hate new tech.
Its starting to feel like the prominent opinions on this are shifting toward "New tech is pointless since old tech works fine for me" and away from "Lets imagine/design/build it because its neat and might have potential!"
It's becoming tiresome for me to read about some new tech that looks like it might be cool, only to have 80% of the comments by what I thought were tech enthusiasts calling it pointless or lame, instead of suggesting what great things it might lead to, or even just some optimism that it might just be cool.
Just my two cents.
Frankly, I don't think 3D TV will catch on until we get decent systems that work without glasses. Until then, I anticipate that it'll be more of a novelty for enthusiasts.
No, I will not work for your startup
They had active glasses for my Sega Master System for 3D gaming back in the mid 80s. It wasn't very expensive either. I forget the name of the game the used them, but it was some space game and you couldn't play it without the glasses on and plugged in.
For shutter technology - if your television set can refresh itself cleanly in at least 48Hz* - congratulations, you've got all that you realistically need to get a 3D set going on for film content (24fps). You'll need an emitter and the glasses to sync with, and you'll still need a player to output the alternating left/right streams to your television in sync with the emitter (or make the emitter sync with whatever the output is), but that's not a whole new TV set. ( * You'll want more to make it not be quite so flickery, of course - but a 96Hz set will do just fine.. 240Hz is just that more relaxed. )
Doesn't work that way. Even NVidia's solution has pretty strict limitations on what you can use, has to be a 120Hz LCD or a supported DLP. The problem is trying to synchronize the glasses based on an unknown lag between when you send the signal and the TV actually puts it up on the screen. If NVidia couldn't get it to work on Run of the Mill 60Hz LCD's, you're not going to see it working for far more complex arbitrary TV's.
Furthermore, there's no incentive. The market makes more money by forcing you to buy a new TV.
No, this is a type of problem that simply cannot be avoided with stereoscopic displays.
Here's an example. If you're reading this on a monitor, then hold up a finger a few inches in front of it.
If you focus on the monitor, then you see two fingers. If you focus on the finger, stuff on the monitor gets doubled up.
Mind you, both things can be "in focus" in the optical sense. It's just the nature of human stereo vision that only the object your eyes are converging on looks "right", and other things don't (unless the stereo disparity is low).
When the director creates a stereoscopic 3D movie, he has to decide for you what is the object being converged upon. Stereo cameras, whether real or virtual, have a convergence depth control. This adjusts which objects appear at the same distance as the movie screen, which appear behind, and which appear in front.
When you watch the movie, if you happen to look at the object being converged upon, it will look okay, and if you try to look at something else, it will take some effort (assuming it's even possible) because your eyes are trying to converge two images that are not meant to be converged. It's kind of like trying to look at those random dot stereograms that require you to look at them with your eyes straight ahead.
So if the director wants you to look at the computer monitor in the movie, objects in front of it will be doubled up (because that's how they are supposed to appear, just like your finger did), and if you try to resolve the objects in front, you're giving yourself a hard time.
Of course, there's another issue at play, and that is that your eyes will be converged and focused at the distance of the actual screen you're viewing. When you try to converge your eyes to a different distance, your eyes normally want to change the focus as well. But to keep the screen in focus, they have to remain focused at the same distance. This difference (vs. how viewing normal 3D objects works) is another source of strain. Your brain gets used to it after a while, and then, once you come out of the theater, your brain has to readjust back to reality again, which again causes some strain.
3D televisions are the greatest thing I never wanted, ever. Mark my words that this will be the biggest technology flop of the decade. I know we're only 8 days into said decade, but 3D is just too expensive, has too many barriers, and the content just isn't that cool.
Nobody is going to buy a 3D TV, a bunch of expensive glasses, and whatever else they will need and then invite all their buddies over to watch a football game (well, someone might, but not very many people). You'll see these TVs pushed strong this year and maybe next year after that. If they survive at all they will become a selling point along with all the other logos down at the bottom and people will say "oh that's nice" and never buy the equipment or content necessary. They will only survive if they are not significantly more expensive than the TV you were going to buy anyway.
The Discovery/IMAX 24.7 3D content network is kinda cool, but won't be enough to get people to pay extra to buy these TVs. And of course, it almost goes without saying, nobody is going to want to wear the big stupid glasses or buy them in the first place (because they'll be damn expensive). You can't lay down and watch a movie, your viewing angle sucks, and all this pain and extra cost for 3D that isn't even that 3D.
Call me when we have hologram projectors and we'll talk.
True, I forgot about "doubling" of objects when there's not only a background, also some near ones. Though it might be not so bad - after all, we are very good at ignoring "doubled" images of objects far from out focus plane (I even forgot about it!). Yes, I'm suggesting using somewhat artificial image without "doubled" objects, everything in focus - it's certainly possible with CGI. Heck, even with photography - I played many years ago with portable stereoscope (the kind with pairs of pictures on a circle), and it seems most problems avoided by careful selection of lenses, "background-only" type of scene and enormously big depth of field.
We are definitely not used to "I'm trying to look at it, and it remains blurry". We even actively combat this with prosthetics for many centuries...
Overall, those complications convince me even more that stereoscopy, moving or not, is just a gimmick. Since middle of XIX century, actually.
One that hath name thou can not otter
It took a while, but eventually I was able to relax my eyes and stop trying to change my focal length. Although it was a bit weird at first, seeing something in the background of the scene, far away, and trying to focus on it does not bring it into focus but in fact makes the whole image blurry.
I don't know if I'm better than most at consciously changing my eye's focal length, but everyone is capable of it to some extent. In fact, I deliberately practice (one eye at a time, the other eye covered) because it seems to help ease eye fatigue at work. In my experience, it's very difficult to achieve near-infinite focal length without actually having something extremely far away to refer to. Short focal length is easy.
Nope, but my problem is that my eyes can't see 3D. :( The only time that worked was at Disneyland's Captain EO back in the 80s. Ever since then, nothing worked like Chuck: Third Dimension episode, SuperBowl TV ads., Rose Bowl parade over a decade ago or so, CA Adventure's Muppets Show, etc. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
LCD monitors are already polarized. All it takes is a company to have them output circular polarization, which would be easy even for a tiny company to figure out.
Wait...it's already been done
http://www.berezin.com/3D/3ddisplay.htm
Mass produce that tech and it will be very affordable using passive glasses, just like the theaters.
Remember Quad sound in the late 70's ?
It's only a fraction of the process for people who don't use it. (and as such have learned to compensate without it) For people like me it's absolutely essential. If I close an eye, walk around, stop in front of something, close the other eye (both eyes closed) and reach out to touch that item, I miss. If I do the same thing with both opens open, then close both, I can touch it reliably.
Sure it is. It was pretty good, but it's just a movie.
I had the same problem. However, I found it not too hard to teach myself to focus your sight where the director wants you to focus (i.e. on the sharpest objects). I felt a bit like a trained monkey doing this, but it quickly became automatic.
I think it's an interesting dilemma for the director. It is possible to make everything sharp (by making the aperture small, and the focal depth huge. Since most of the movie is computer-generated anyway, it'd be even easier). However, this will not look realistic in dimly-lit rooms, as there your eyes cannot naturally see everything sharply. Also, the 2D version of the movie will then look terrible, as in 2D the lack of sharpness is the main tool they can use to indicate distance to object.
Still, I'd be interested in seeing what a perfectly sharp 3D movie would look like. After all, with CG, they can make two versions: sharp 3D and normal 2D.
nVidia does not offer it for 60hz LCDs because it would cause a constant 30hz flicker, which is enough to give most people serious headaches.
Frankly, it was funnier without the credit. A hyperlink doesn't enhance a punchline.
Just planned obsolescence. Next they will come out with 4D TV allowing me to go back in time so that my Giants would win Super Bowl in 2010
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Take a look at 3D Icon (www.3dicon.net) to see the future of 3D...
I can certainly understand the constraint in print. However, I couldn't imagine having to stare at a computer monitor for hours tracing electron density or whatever with either parallel or cross-eyed vision!
for this to hit the living room en mass. I've been wondering why they weren't releasing movies in 3D on DVD & BR for a while. It wasn't until all the hoopla with Avatar and the CES news on teh HD3DTV that I discovered why. I'm one of those people that will be using the technology. And don't forget, this just going to be a value added feature you can opt-in for when buying your new TV. I don't think anyone is expecting everyone to run out and get a new Plasma, LCD, or LED TV like they did a few years ago with the threat of the pending changeover to digital from analogue signals. That had the added push of "well, I need to upgrade anyway, why not get a nice new flat screen?"
This time around the bulk of 3D adoption will be when those first and second gen plasmas and LCDs to tits up.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
I've seen a 3D TV in the flesh, which works without glasses of any kind. The 3D is very impressive, and images really do seem to float in the air in front of the screen. You have to be standing in the right places to get the 3D effect (this isn't as restrictive as it sounds, there are many places you can be standing, and they each allow enough flexibility that moving your head won't stop the effect working). The TV wasn't for sale, just a demo of things to come, but was on show in Harrods electrical department about 5 months ago. It may well still be on display - I haven't been in there since.
With stereoscopic images you do not have to apply constant effort to keep it. It's snapping in and snapping out. Once you are in a stereoscopic vision there is very little effort required to be in that way.
Electron density is easier to concentrate than stick models (personal experience).
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Once an xkcd strip is published, it and its alt text become "common knowledge" to the geek public. It should not be necessary to cite something that everyone knows about. (The number of mod points and replies to my post make it extraordinarily clear that the strip's alt text was common knowledge.)
The original post was about Avatar, and the xkcd post was barely a day old. Putting a link at the end of my post would have destroyed the comedic timing.
For completeness' sake, though: CITATION FOR THOSE OUT OF THE LOOP
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Thank you. Having to explain your joke, or at least making your joke look like it needs explaining, is quite the opposite of enhancing a punch line.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
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