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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?
Because they probably already had a few prototypes out and had a few people using them. Now, if a study comes along that tells that there is a serious health risk associated, the study gets buried. Why? Because it's one thing to not know something is dangerous that you subject people to, but it's a completely different matter if you actually know. Worse, the people you subjected to the experience will know, and they will contact a lawyer to see if they can squeeze some money out of you somehow.
Instead of chewing Sega out, we should praise them. In this day and age, and if it had been a certain other 4 Letter company, I am not so sure if such a report would have resulted in sinking a probably incredibly expensive project. Instead, I would expect them to bury the report AND release the item. Only to later "discover" that there might be some hazards attached (read: as soon as someone couldn't handle his conscience anymore and blabbed) and "immediately" cease production. By then the product will have recovered its development cost, so at least no loss incurs.
Yes, that's what I'm fully expecting from a company this day.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ten years prior to that, Sega actually did release a 3D headset for the Master System.
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.
When I research something for my company, and find it has adverse effects, I bury the reports. More specifically, I throw my findings into the project documentation folder, and move on to something else that will work without the problems. Hopefully, nobody will need to look at those reports again. Granted, I'm evaluating software packages, not consumer products, but I'm assuming the concept's the same.
Why waste time and money making a formal report, announcing it to the world, and generally just scaring people when 99% of the time the problems are eventually solved, anyway?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Now when I watch 3D porn I really will go blind
That was just an artifact of cracking the DRM. If you remember the movie, it's a miracle the princess got that movie past the MPAA troopers in the first place.
Practically the entire consumer electronics industry is counting on 3D to give them a fat, juicy pile of Christmas profits with ongoing dividends into the coming decade. Sony, Toshiba, even Microsoft, Best Buy, Nintendo, every manufacturer of flat screen TVs, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Pixar and every movie studio that's readying 3D releases of their old movies, game developers and on and on have been planning for more than a year for all of us to upgrade our old TVs, displays, DVD players and game systems to the "new 3D". Of course they're going to bury the findings, and if you're any other company, you're already working on counter-studies that are going to show how totally safe 3D actually is for kids.
Start the countdown: we're going to be hearing in the coming days about how this is all so much worrying over nothing, how in fact 3D is good for children, makes them smarter or something.
There's no way this entire segment of the market is going to lay down on this one. We're going to hear how this is "junk science" and how it's "controversial" and we'll hear from a steady stream of industry-funded experts telling us that 3D is perfectly safe for kids. How the "nanny state" is going to try to take away your god-given right to 3D and it's all liberal propaganda from people who want to turn back technology. My guess is that some of the same "grass-roots" groups (aka public relations firms and lobbyists) that were so helpful in pointing out how climate change and evolution are junk science will lend a hand on this issue.
Just watch, you're going to get your 3D one way or the other.
And by the way, am I the only one who finds this latest incarnation of 3D, even when done well (e.g. "Avatar") is garish and sort of unpleasant, like "low-fat" chocolate mousse made with Simplesse? It might taste good for a second, but after a few minutes you're in for a stomach ache (I mean this aesthetically, of course).
You are welcome on my lawn.
After that last post I did RTFA, and I still feel the same.
The headset is on the kid's head, preventing them from possibly looking away. The technology used isn't mentioned, but it is implied that the visual quality isn't great. There's also lots of little variables like exposure time, audio cues, and visual refresh rate.
What you should get from this buried report is that that specific implementation of that specific technology had the potential for causing harm. It should imply nothing about 3D technology in general, just like my report that package A is slower than Z should not imply that all computers are slow.
Go stand in front of a mirror for a while, and marvel at the 3D imagery from a 2D surface. The mirror can be considered to be emitting photons at carefully-specified frequencies, positions, and directions, just like an ideal 3D television would do. Our inferior pixel technology just can't aim photons well enough yet, so we use a variety of tricks to accomplish the desired effect of getting different images to each eye. One certain trick might have adverse health effects, but changing the parameters slightly changes the effects.
For example, the Sega headset used dual LCD screens. Todays 3D televisions generally use a single screen, usually with glasses to isolate the eyes. That's a major difference, and probably enough to invalidate the previous research for any use other than fear mongering.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.