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The Joke Known As 3D TV
harrymcc writes "I'm at IFA in Berlin — Europe's equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show — and the massive halls are dominated by 3D TVs made by everyone from Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic to companies you've never heard of. The manufacturers seem pretty excited, but 3D has so many downsides — most of all the lousy image quality and unimpressive dimensionality effect — that I can't imagine consumers are going to go for this. 'As a medium, 3D remains remarkably self-trivializing. Virtually nobody who works with it can resist thrusting stuff at the camera, just to make clear to viewers that they’re experiencing the miracle of the third dimension. When Lang Lang banged away at his piano during Sony’s event, a cameraman zoomed in and out on the musical instrument for no apparent reason, and one of the company’s representatives kept robotically shoving his hands forward. Hey, it’s 3D — watch this!'"
One of the fundamental problems with 3D movies and TV is this: Close-to-the-viewer images that appear far to one side of the screen. The problem? You go blind in one eye. To create the appropriate binocular disparity, the "other" image would need to appear in a direction for which there is no screen, thus, no image is presented to one eye. The result is jarring and upsetting.
James Cameron seems to have figured this out in Avatar and avoided doing it for the most part.
How else to avoid the problem? Use a really big screen (in terms of angle subtended at the viewer's position) such as Imax. What does this portend for 3D TV? Nothing good, since TVs almost universally, even with "large" screens, do not subtend an adequate angle.
Just like how Silver slippers became Ruby Slippers and a Horse of a Different Color was added to highlight Technocolor in Wizard of Oz.
The thing I remember most from seeing Avatar in IMAX 3D was actually the trailer for Hubble 3D. I finally saw it today and I was not disappointed. Seeing 3D documentary footage of the shuttle crew prepping for a flight, seeing not one but two shuttle launches in 3D, and seeing numerous spacewalks in 3D was awe inspiring. I find a lot of 3D feature length films to be a little fatiguing, but I think the less gimmicky (although still undeniably gimmicky to a point) IMAX 3D documentaries show the potential for using 3D in a tasteful artistic manner.
With a real 3D display, there are so many things you could do... with stereo, you get exactly what you've been getting all along, that is, the single viewpoint they think you should have, and that's it. Yeah, you'll think you're perceiving depth, but that goes away the moment you move your head and the image doesn't change the way it should.
Because actual 3D isn't just about providing two different images (which is what stereovision does.) It's about providing the two images that match the viewing angle your position and head angle set up relative to the material being viewed.
Me, I'm good with 2D until 3D actually arrives. Stereovision... no thanks.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you give the brain realistic input that could actually happen, people would be more comfortable with it and it would be more likely to sell.
This is why 3D gaming makes much more sense than 3D movies.
A lot of film techniques rely on changing between multiple cameras, and that dramatic, angled close-up that is so effective in 2D results in a depth-of-field change that's going to fatigue people in 3D. Many games, especially racing, FPS, and platformers, rarely do that sort of thing. 3D would add lots of immersion with fewer drawbacks. There's always room for abuse, but it doesn't seem as inherent to the medium as in film.
I think this could become more evident pretty quickly with the launch of Nintendo's 3DS, depending on how many developers they get on board.
Your brain is not a computer.