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Do You Have a Secret Immunity To 3D Movies?
An anonymous reader writes "Not everyone who fails to be wowed by the latest Hollywood wave of 3D movies is necessarily criticizing the movie or the 'gimmick.' The author states: 'At least 12% of people have some type of problem with their binocular vision but less than five percent have severe visual disabilities, making appreciation of 3D tricky or impossible... For the 12%, two-eyed vision can be improved with supervised vision therapy. If anyone else out there, like I did, suspects 3D is a giant con, then perhaps a trip to the optometrist is due.'"
I'm one of those people with difficulties with binocular vision. I normal vision is entirely 2D...no depth perception at all. Apparently I"ve never had it, and until I watched a 3D movie (at the age of 39) I never knew I was missing anything. Needless to say when I first experienced depth perception I just about fell out of my chair. While I haven't investigated trying to correct the vision problem, I certainly am a huge fan of 3D movies. On the plus side, from my perspective normal movies are just as good as real life.
Same here. Slight astigmatism, and I find myself focusing far too hard in the movie theater. I paid attention last time to my eye strain while watching a 3-D movie, and it felt identical to when I'm studying a small coin or stamp intently. So, now I have a good excuse to stay home and organize my pennies instead of wallowing through the latest 3-D tripe with family...
So, yeah. Astigmatic, and under a full moon I turn into a fat balding guy who collects coins and stamps. Wanna make something of it?
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
I'm short sighted, and have a dominant left eye on account of it being substantially less short sighted than the right. Red/green 3d glasses work fine for me (afaik), but magic eye is a complete failure.
Watching Avatar was an interesting experience. When substantial 3d depth into the screen was used (such as the scene on the spaceship at the start with them all coming out of the stasis pods or whatever), the effect was very impressive.
Out-of-the-screen effects, however required headache-inducing concentration to see any depth at all, and even then they largely looked quite poor. When everyone else was busy ducking out of the way, I was wondering why things were only projecting ever-so-slightly from the screen.
Overall, I was disappointed at how infrequently the into-screen effects were used compared to out-of-screen ones (or maybe I was only able to see the depth when it was at its most extreme).
Ocular upgrade, plz!
I agree. It's a stupid marketing trick. I especially thought this once I saw that Sony was thinking of coming out with all this 3D home theatre equipment. Stupid. Reminds me of the rash of 'clear' products in the early 90s.
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You don't need special glasses to see a 3d-movie in 2d. The 3d glasses work fine. They did for me anyway.
I've got various eye-problems related to a severe infection I had as an infant. I've had surgery twice to try and correct my lazy-eye. And I'm totally immune to all kinds of 3d (3d movies, magic eye, etc.). Last time I went to the optometrist she explained that during the years where my eyes were crossed I developed a pyschological "blind spot". Since the eyes weren't pointing the same direction, I could either see double or just shut off the signal from one eye at a time. My brain opted for the latter.
Since my eyes are straight now the problem is theoretically something I could train my brain to stop doing, but I've never had any luck with the eye-exercises they gave me.
I went to see Avatar in 2d. Then I went to see it in 3d. The only difference at all for me was that in the 3d version if I took off the 3d glasses the whole screen looked fuzzy. If I kept them on nothing was in 3d, but the polarization meant that at least I could see the 2d images clearly.
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Avatar in 3D was much better for me than 2D.
I think the reason was they artificially made parts of many scenes in Avatar 2D (and 3D) out of focus. Even some mostly static scenes.
It's not pleasant trying to focus on something that just stays out of focus - ever tried reading those "out-of-focus" texts? That's how Avatar 2D felt like in some scenes. I kept getting the "can't focus properly" feeling in my eyes.
At least with Avatar 3D, I had better idea of what areas in the scene the director wanted me to focus on.
Didn't help for the motion blurred scenes though. I don't like motion blurring. It sucks. In real life if I'm looking at a moving object, it's sharp, the rest of the scenery might go blurry, but it doesn't matter - I'm looking at the moving object. Then if I look at the rest of the scenery it's sharp, the moving objects go blurry.
Make the moving objects blurry, and they'll remain blurry when I try to track them and so I get that "can't focus" feeling which I dislike. Yes I know movies are 24fps. No I don't care that real world recordings of moving objects in 24 fps get "naturally blurred".
Fact is 24 fps sucks. It's way too low a frame rate. Back in the old days 24fps was excusable (it was a technological feat even - keep the film moving so it doesn't burn up, and have each frame pause momentarily before the next frame is moved in, etc).
Nowadays 24 fps is disappointing.
You have to pay more because everyone else around you are afraid to ask the same questions and don't walk away when exposed to price gouging.
Honestly, most Americans are really spineless now. and it started 2 decades ago. I still get looks of astonishment from people when I haggle price. I refuse to buy a car or any big ticket item at the posted price. Most people think that you either get arrested for doing it, or they are afraid to.
Heck I haggle on small ticket items. When I buy wine, if I find a good one I'll ask for a discount if I buy 3 or more bottles.
I refused to see avatar until it was almost at the end of it's run. I got a better experience as I watched it in a mostly empty theater on a $8.00 a ticket matinee.. I though it was neat, but not impressed enough to go and see another one or pay more than regular price.
But then I'm evil... I smuggle in a $1.25 candybar in my pocket instead of buying the $30.00 1 pound chocobar.. at the concession stand.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Come on, people, double or quadruple the frame rate.
There's a small problem with that. While yes, you could (and I think they should) use a technique like frame doubling (via an X:X pulldown, for example) to increase the actual frame rate output by a projector, when the actual content is being displayed at a frame rate of 24, 30, 60, etc., fps, your eyes can tell the difference.
If a movie were to be filmed and then subsequently projected at 30 or 60 fps, for example, when you watched it, you'd come back with the feeling that it's "fake" or "poorly done." This isn't actually because that's the case, but rather because, as you've become accustomed to watching certain things at 24 fps such as movies and TV shows, and other things at 30 fps such as sports or the news, your brain makes the association that 24 fps content is "film" and 30 fps content is "live." The mystique behind film itself as an art relies on combining so many different factors together to create what you eventually see at the theater or on your home television, and even something as subtle as raising the frame rate by 25% can literally be enough to ruin your ability to enjoy a film.
I wish I had a comparison video to show you, but I've never seen one and am too lazy to look one up for the purpose of this post, but the effect that frame rate has on perception of content really is amazing and definitely not worth dismissing.
The best example I can think of might be the first Spidey/Goblin fight scene from Spider Man 3. While the movie was horrible, that fight and its camera movement were so fast that the frame rate of the recording couldn't keep a fluid image on the screen when I saw it. To increase the frame rate of the entire movie would have ruined it almost as much as Raimi's writing, and doing so for one scene simply isn't feasible.
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