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3D Displays May Be Hazardous To Young Children
SchlimpyChicken writes "Turns out 3D television can be inherently dangerous to developing children, and perhaps to adults as well. There's a malaise in children that can prevent full stereopsis (depth perception) from developing, called strabismus or lazy-eye. It is an abnormal alignment of the eyes in which the eyes do not focus on the same object — kind of like when you watch a 3D movie. As a result, depth perception is compromised. Acting on a hunch, the guys over at Audioholics contacted Mark Pesce, who worked with Sega on its VR Headset over 15 years ago — you know, the headset that never made it to market. As it turns out, back then Sega uncovered serious health risks involved with children consuming 3D and quickly buried the reports, and the project. Unfortunately, the same dangers exist in today's 3D, and the electronics, movie, and gaming industries seem to be ignoring the issue. If fully realized, 3D just might affect the vision of millions of children and, according to the latest research, many adults, across the country." The Audioholics article is a good candidate for perusing with Readability — the pseudo-link popups are blinding.
Of course they buried the reports. Sega didn't want the PR of "We make headsets that screw up kids' eyes lol"
What they DID do right, is never release the product. That was the first right thing to do. It would've been nice if some non-Sega-related entity were to release the reports, but that's secondary. It's by FAR a safe bet that no company today would ever do the same. The reports would still get buried, and non-disclosure agreements would be plastered on every researcher, but the product would be on every freakin' shelf from Wal-Mart to Best Buy.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Wikipedia link about SegaScope 3-D Glasses. And for the nostalgia of it, the commercial for the glasses.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
In this interview the president of Nintendo discusses the fact that the 3D affect can be dangerous to developing children. Considering the fact that Nintendo began placing health and safety warnings at the beginning of all of their games in 2004 and has included such a message on the startup screens of both the DS and Wii, we can assume that they will make an effort to warn parents and children of the dangers any time the product is turned on.
I went to a talk last week given by BBC R&D with the Institute of Engineering and Technology and the Royal Television Society. The problem with children was raised, however research that is currently being conducted and is finding that children adapt better than adults. We will have to wait until they are finished and peer reviewed however.
What is more worrying is driving a car after watching 3D TV. You eyes focus on a 40 inch screen 3-4m away, however you brain thinks you are looking in the distance because the image is converging at a different point (not 3m away). This isn't really a problem in the cinema as the distance to the screen is far greater, as at 50 feet your eyes are focused at almost infinity. Stepping out of the living room and in to a car can easily have an effect on judgement of distance, and give you headaches.
Headaches, incidentally, is a problem with all consumer home 3D TVs. They will give the vast majority of people a headache after 10 minutes. That's a fact!
You seem predisposed to accept claims against 3d with little substantiation, which is just as bad.
The VR headset that study was about functions with a completely different mechanism than most modern 3d systems. In 3d movies, or on the Nintendo 3ds, you are NOT focusing on two different objects. It's no different than looking at a mirror, as another poster pointed out. The study involved a headset with two screens, one for each eye.
You'll probably claim I'm a shill, rather than admit this study is irrelevant.
Good thing this guy remembered!
"This guy" is Mark Pesce, was the co-creator of VRML, and has developed and taught courses in 3D development at the university level for most of a couple of decades now.
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