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Does 3D Make Your Head Happy Or Ache?
MojoKid writes "Nintendo has quasi-acknowledged that its 3DS can cause headaches and should not be used by children under 7. The glasses-free 3D handheld gaming device launched this week. Meanwhile, new research commissioned by the Blu-ray Disc Association is trying to improve the health image of 3D. Its research shows that the brain is more attentive when watching a 3D movie than when watching HD or SDTV, making the movie a more pleasurable experience. The issue, doctors say, is that 3D works by tricking the brain into making you think you are physically moving in relation to your surroundings. But you aren't. So your inner ear is not experiencing the movement that corresponds to what the eyes are seeing. This doesn't normally happen in real life. No one would deny that 3D is more immersive; that's why people like it, particularly for gaming. But the question is ... does the brain love 3D or not? Answer: not really."
This 3D world makes me sick! 3D trees, 3D people, 3D buildings...
That's why I just prefer to spend my whole time staring at my 2D computer screen in my parents basement.
@neonux
3D movies and such have been around for a very long time. It was a marketing gimmick then and it still is. There is little additional value to the entertainment experience and in general, we are willing to sacrifice quality for volume. MP3, JPG, and cellphone audio quality are perfect examples of consumer willingness for lower quality but higher convenience. 3D adds a lot of cost and complexity, but little additional benefit. And mostly, I am not going to buy my teenagers $120 glasses just so they can watch more TV.
The more you scare people.....the more they will pay.
If 3D were perfect, then I think no one would deny that 3D had >= the immersiveness of traditional 2D.
As it is, I certainly think it's less immersive to me in every incarnation I've encountered. It's kind of cool -- but that's not the same thing. The technical limitations and the sheer sense of "unreality" constantly remind me that this is a game, in a way looking at a 2D surface does not. Maybe it's because I've looked at 2D surfaces for many years? Or maybe it's simply because when I close one eye I see 2D everywhere in real life. Or the "sweet spot" issue.
That said, all of this motion sickness fluff sounds exactly like things people say about truly 2D media. Is 3D just moreso, or is there actually a qualitative difference in the inner-ear confusion between 2D and 3D?
Even if you watch a movie without 3D, you are "tricking the brain into making you think you are physically moving in relation to your surroundings." There is a large overlap in the neural circuitry that processes motion parallax (the 3D effect that you get when you have a moving camera) and stereopsis (the 3D effect that you get when you have two different images projected onto your two retinas). This is the mechanism behind 3D animated GIFs, and one of the major depth cues in a 2D movie. Motion parallax is even more intricately linked to the vestibular system, since you need to know whether the image on your retina is changing because your head is moving or because the object you are looking at is in motion. (This is probably part of the reason that an ordinary movie is not an immersive 3D experience.) In contrast, stereopsis does not require motion to work as a depth cue, although all of these depth cues are ultimately integrated.
The potential for motion parallax without vestibular signals to alter the development of visual areas dedicated to depth perception seems at least as great as the potential for moving stereoscopic images without vestibular signals to alter the development of these areas. No one knew about this when the motion picture was invented, and kids who grew up with a TV are still perfectly capable of making use of vestibular signals.
Overall, that 3D is somehow "bad for the brain" is highly speculative. You don't get a headache or nausea when viewing 3D movies from very close up because you are damaging your brain. The malaise doesn't even necessarily have to do with the lack of a vestibular signal, and quite possibly doesn't, since you don't get nausea from simulated camera movement without associated head movement even though you have conflicting cues there as well. It can come from the visual system alone. If you are close enough to the screen, you are viewing 3D images with such high disparity that you can't fuse them. The brain interprets this as a sign that there is a problem with your visual system. You might even feel sick to your stomach, since in the environment in which we evolved, this kind of problem with your visual system would most likely have been caused by ingesting some kind of harmful psychotropic substance. There is absolutely no evidence that there is any permanent damage to or alteration of the brain itself.
If someone can show that there is any change in cortical thickness in the visual areas of children exposed to 3D movies from a very young age, or that these children exhibit significantly different performance in some set of psychophysical paradigms, I might reconsider, but the "evidence" presented in this article is complete bullshit.