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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.
WTF is wrong with them!? Why did they bury the findings!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Ten years prior to that, Sega actually did release a 3D headset for the Master System.
"Daddy, it's my turn! Let me play my 3DS!"
"Son, for the hundredth time, it will be your turn once your stereopsis is fully developed!"
"Mommmmmy!"
Better known as 318230.
Auto-stereoscopic displays don't require glasses and wouldn't cause this sort of issue if I'm understanding the vision problems correctly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy
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!
I used to have fairly poor vision, but equally in both eyes (-4.25 in both). As I've gotten older, my vision has improved, but more in the right eye than the left (-2.25 left, -0.50 right). I often read at night and never use my glasses. With my vision being somewhat different between the eyes I started getting lazy and only reading with my right eye. Eventually I stopped using binocular vision at all.
Then a few months ago I started to get interesting in stereoscopic photography using the "crossed eyes" method. After about a week of looking at pictures like this, suddenly I was using my binocular vision while reading again. And overall my depth perception improved. I suspect it has something to do with having better focus control of my eyes. So I'm not sure that I buy this "3D is bad for your vision" thing. Actual studies showing the effects would be interesting, but this seems to be just speculation.
But will it keep them off my lawn . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So Nintendo rolls out the best thing in handheld games since the first Gameboy, and suddenly 3D is bad for children. What a coincidence. I suspect that this is just an underhanded PR attack against Nintendo by one of its rivals.
Now when I watch 3D porn I really will go blind
The ayes react to the proximity of an object in two ways
The first in convergence : both eyes make a slight angle in theay a telemeter would do. this is bound to the distance or at least the PERCEIVED distance when each eye has a different image.
The second is focus : if the object is 50cm away, the focus of each eye is set to 50cm.
In normal vision, these two actions are synchronzed, and many years of living with it has helped us to do so.
Unfortunately, in 3D vision, convergence asks something while focus asks for something else (you see the object at 50cm, but each eye should focus on the screen nevertheless), which is the reason why this false 3D is far from perfect and can be just as painful as eye convergence reeducation. In fact, it is ye convergence DISeducation.
I believe most 3D will "make your eyes hurt" for extended use until they solve vergence and accomodation issues. While there is some work (e.g., accommodation display at Fraunhofer and some work at HITlab) to resolve these, I'm afraid we might not see the results of these at Best Buy anytime soon.
Having demonstrated 3D technology to hundreds of adults and kids, my experience has been that kids below 12 _generally_ don't seem to "get" 3D. Perhaps it's their visual system, or perhaps it's because the inter-pupillary-distance (IPD) is wrong on most systems for how far apart their eyes are. I don't this they'll be missing out on too much if they skip out on the 3D games until their visual systems catch up with the tech.
All this aside, I'm personally thrilled that all this 3D technology is becoming mainstream, but I wouldn't (and wouldn't recommend for anyone to) use the 3D technology for more than a couple of hours a day at most. Still, the fear-mongering articles and the 3-D bashing that accompanies them (probably by people who can't see the 3D effect) kind of ticks me off..
Before we post we just need to figure out what eye to look at.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I'm interested in strabismus because my father and my sister had it. I've been tested for it myself by optometrists with fancy equipment that required me to orient my eyes in different directions, sort of what TFA describes.
I read that whole article and the links and I couldn't find a single thing to support their claim that 3D video causes strabismus.
It looks like the whole article is based on Mark Pesce telling Wayde Robson that he doesn't have time to be interviewed for 2 weeks.
The journalism that Robson practices is a bit too familiar and colloquial for my tastes. It's one thing to read an article that sounds like a guy giving you the straight dope after a few drinks in a bar. It's another thing to read an article that sounds like a "journalist" who doesn't know what "fact checking" means.
He quotes SRI as saying, “You Cannot Give This To Kids!” but that's fiction. SRI would never use words like that in a scientific report. I don't suppose it occurred to Robson to call SRI and find out if they actually did a report like that. Or to call an optometrist or ophthalmologist.
"Children under seven are at risk of strabismus – period." Another fiction.
Let's go back to basic scientific method. If you actually found children under seven who didn't have strabismus, then used 3D video, and developed strabismus, you could raise the reasonable hypothesis that 3D video caused strabismus. I've never heard of strabismus being acquired like that, but I'm open to new evidence.
Nothing in TFA indicates that anybody found a single child under seven who had strabismus from 3D video. So there's no justification for making that statement. It's all speculation.
I'm very surprised to see this article on the front page of slashdot. About 7-8 months ago, I was in the market for a new television: a panasonic plasma. Since I knew they were coming out with new 3d tv's, I decided to do some research on them. Suddenly, I started to think about all the times when I had gone to the movies and watched them on 3d, only to come out disappointed because of the headache I had acquired. I poured through hours worth of webpages and learned how we are able to see the 3d effects created in the theaters. Its kind of ridiculous to think that I have not seen any widespread front page news coverage on how your eyes are forced to move unnaturally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binocular_dysphoria It has to do with how our eyes see things. 3d makes our eyes do unnatural things. I think its safe to say that children's bodies are constantly developing, and they are more susceptible to damage than adults are. If you really want to read about how these things work, I found a great link. http://www.journalofvision.org/content/8/3/33.full I like my children, so personally I'd rather be safe than sorry.