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3D Hurts Your Eyes
sajjadG writes "After experimenting on 24 adults, a research team at the University of California, Berkeley has determined that viewing content on a stereo 3D display
hurts your eyes and your brain. This can supposedly cause visual discomfort, fatigue, and headaches According to the article, 3D content viewed over a short distance (like with desktops and smartphones) is more visually uncomfortable when the stereo content is placed in front of the screen. In a movie theater, it's the opposite: Stereo content that is placed behind the screen causes more discomfort than scenes that jump out at you. With the explosion of 3D-capable gadgetry such as televisions and mobile phones, understanding just what this kind of technology is doing to our bodies may help us better use it in the future. The only problem is that technology tends to far outpace research, and until we get a better handle on its effects, we're more or less walking blindly into a 3D world."
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How does this hurt the brain? Isn't it just the eyestrain that gives the headache? I thought the brain itself had no pain receptors.
They needed to do an experiment to figure this out? The millions of people that say it constantly wasn't proof enough?
The millions of people were just holding their glasses wrong. Or bringing their car floor-mats to the cinema. Or something else, like intentionally exploding their laptop batteries.
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First of all, there's no way to know if two things are separated by a volume of space unless you have a headache. That's how evolution works: the cerebral nerves were caused to evolve specifically by Darwin in order to function as a kind of animal cruelty version of Pavlov's dog in which mapping three-dimensional space actuates the occipital squinting reflex, causing us to narrow our eyes meaningfully at expansive vistas while also wishing for acetylsalicylic acid and a glass of water.
Scientists consider this sort of thing basically self-evident, like the existence of atoms or Jenny McCarthy.
Furthermore, the so-called Disney Cortex is capable of parsing dimensionality exclusively through parallax; in effect, the neck pain caused by this subtle lateral shifting of the head is conveyed via the uvula directly into the cranial brain-case, tapping into the same area of sensitivity exploited by the spatial depth pain discussed above.
Elementary biochemisphology tells us that the only way stereoscopy can function effectively in the real world of fake entertainment is by pulling out all the stop and going holographic, so that the images can be processed and hurt us in as natural a way as possible. This is God's way of telling us that the Holodeck was cool.
Fad researchers have understood this for centuries, since the time the Illuminati first started actively repressing news of the stereoscopic newspaper in 1743.
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That's because it's not 3D; at best, it's 2½D. The back side of the objects are not projected. There are true 3D projectors that create objects that are viewable from all sides (without special glasses). I call them 3D-in-a-box. You can stand in front of it and see things in 3D while somebody else can stand on the other side of the projector and see the other side of the objects (in 3D). I wished they stop lying by calling it as 3D but that's not likely to happen. :(
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No kidding ... I have seen two movies in 3D, and will never see another. I had eye strain and a headache for several hours after.
I am not paying more to see the movie if it hurts, but, given that everybody else seems to like it, I question how long before I have no option but 3D.
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Those are particularly harmful to the brain.
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What's worse: The article says less than the obvious can go. It doesn't say anything about the effect of jumps between scenes of different depth, about stereo strobbing effects that appear when using a small frame rate, the straining effects of overly dark 3D displays in some cinemas, etc.
And with so little people you can't correlate personal characteristics of the viewers with the strain and headaches - I'm a sensitive person, and I get headaches from watching a normal cinema from too close or from an unusual angle, from watching a LCD monitor when the other lights are out, from using a closeup display (e.g. cellphone) in a moving vehicle, and I don't have any issue with 3D unless some exacerbating effects are present as well, which in my case would be dark picture or the screen being too close.
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Yes, the sample size is "statistically valid." You can show a statistically significant result using any sample size; using a smaller sample simply means you need stronger evidence to show the same significance. There are some specious statistics in the paper, but this criticism is plainly false.
TechCrunch (Along with Ars Techinca and others) got it completely wrong.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/22/samsung-studies-3d-viewing-discomfort-finds-out-bloggers-dont/
If you read the study, and not the abstract, you'd know they didn't actually watch any 3D. They tested different situations of focusing on various objects to find out WHY some 3D hurts peoples eyes. They did not "find that 3D hurts your eyes" becuase that's not what they were looknig for.
In fact, they discovered the comfortable range for 3D viewing is wider than previously thought.
But you have to actually read the study to know that. - link to the study: http://www.journalofvision.org/content/11/8/11.full
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I am yet to see a 3D movie. I tend to be a bit susceptible to motion sickness, and I can pick up on and be annoyed by a 60-70Hz refresh rate on a CRT that doesn't bother anyone else. And even if none of that is a problem, i'm just as likely to fall prey to the negative placebo effect, going into a movie just knowing it's going to make me feel sick :) I kind of suspect that this is the reason a lot of people have a problem with 3D.
in ui design I learned that people are sufficiently similar that you can test on 7 randomly chosen subject and if your ui work on all of them it will be good for 95% of the population, those 5% be damned. People are not that different inside so unless you are looking for a 1/100000 effect you don't need a big sample, around 30 will be sufficient in most of the case, I don't remember the mathematical proof but it exist.
However if your are doing a research on something with a great variance like food preferences you will need a bigger sample. You can read more about the optimal sample size in those paper : http://www.ime.usp.br/~abe/ICOTS7/Proceedings/PDFs/InvitedPapers/3J3_ALIA.pdf and http://nordbotten.com/articles/OptSampleSize.pdf
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Why do research like this on just 24 people?
Because you have to start somewhere. If all human studies used hundreds or thousands of people you'd have not even 1/100th as much research done. We don't have an infinite amount of cash or of decent scientists.
That is NOT a statistically valid sample size.
I somehow think the good people of UC-Berkeley realize that 24 people is a small sample. Studies of this size are usually done to suggest and design further studies, or because the premise is interesting but that particular team doesn't have the resources for a larger study; everyone who matters understands that these small trials rarely prove anything at all. It's just arrogant and ignorant to trot out sample size arguments in response to every single damn study with less than 1,000 people as if it proves you're smarter than every scientist and grant reviewer involved.
Furthermore, sample size isn't everything. If I pulled 24 frogs all with 13 legs a piece from a lake that I knew to contain 150,000 frogs I would not think "that is NOT a statistically valid sample size", I would think "Jesus Sideways-Hopping Christ, somethings wrong with this lake!". It's quite possible to get data from a small sample that is quite clear and quite certain. Many amazing discoveries in physiology have been made with sample sizes in the single digits. They had to be reproduced with hundreds of other samples by dozens of other people to check method and provide absolute certainty, but they were effectively undeniable as originally published.
The annoying thing is people dumb enough to read a study done on 24 people with any ambiguity at all in the results and go on reporting that it's a new discovery. Well, that and insouciant bastards like you who get off on thinking they're smarter than entire research departments.
Since the last few 3D movies have done over half their sales in 2D, I wouldn't be too worried. There's a pretty good 3D backlash building up. If they really start only showing some things in 3D, don't see them at all. Money talks.
Nintendo's learning that with the surprising weakness of the 3DS.
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http://slashdot.org/submission/1454046/3D-Cinema-Doesnt-Work-And-Never-Will
the source of the discomfort is that millions of years of simian and primate eye evolution has created an eye that focuses and converges in parallel
look at a mountain, and your eyes are pointed nearly straight out, and are focused wide
look at a book, and your eyes are slightly cross-eyed, and are focused close in
but, for million of years, this focus and this convergence has always been in parallel. millions of years of our ancestors have never had the need for eyes that, for example, cross in, but focus wide, or point straight, but focus close in. 3D expects our eyes, to, for the first time ever, or, since tens of millions of years ago, take your pick, to work in this unnatural way, unnatural for primates
much like blind cave fish or flightless birds: if the function is not needed, the ability atrophies. of course, BEFORE binocular vision, animals with eyes on either side of their head, for example herbivores and ungulates and certain primitive carnivores, can certainly focus, converge, and even point in independent ways. look at a chameleon: its eyes are pretty much independent entities neurologically and physiologically
but this has not been the case, since before even our distant lemur-like ancestors really started working binocular vision, for our bloodline to have eyes that focus and converge on different tracks. we simply can't do it any more without stress and pain. so this is the source of the discomfort with 3D technology, physically and mentally
there is also some concern that very young eyes, that are still developing, can actually be permanently harmed by 3D
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If you clicked through TFA and read the actual abstract, you'd find that they found that stuff behind the screen with the screen at distance was more likely to cause discomfort, and stuff coming out of the screen with the screen at a short distance also more likely.
It also went on to discover that the necessity for refractive correction in a person's eye's was a good predictor of whether someone feels discomfort.
So if you're getting a headache, your eyes are probably a lot less than perfect already.
Yes they needed experiments to figure this out because 100 slashdotters whining about "3d SUCKS!" isn't actually useful or informative. Finding the reasons and mechanisms that some people get this effect is actually useful.
I have seen two movies in 3D, and will never see another. I had eye strain and a headache for several hours after
I've seen a few of them myself, because for some reason I kept going back thinking that I might like it on a better movie... or something like that. After seeing Avatar, I won't go back to another 3D showing but not because it gives me a headache or makes me uncomfortable (though it does, to an extent), but because the false focusing and perspective cause me to miss things.
It's one thing to watch a film: you stare at the screen for two or three hours straight, letting your eyes and ears get lost in the sights and sounds while your brain works on understanding the characters and the story. With 3D, I inadvertently spend so much time thinking about what I'm supposed to be looking at that I miss visual or plot elements.
Just my two cents, of course.
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I haven't read TFA yet, but the headaches are easily explained. Stereoscopy isn't the only thing that makes 3D. Besides stereoscopy and various forms of perspective, the eye's focusing distance tells the brain how far away something is as well. So you have your eyes' focus telling your brain an object is six feet away (the distance to your TV set) while the stereoscopy tells your brain it's two or fifteen feet away. That causes the focusing muscles to fight the eye positioning muscles.
You won't have that problem when you hit 40 and your eyes' lenses get too hard to focus (the reason geezers need reading glasses). I'll have to RTFA to see about the "brain damage" part, but it might explain the occasional painless optical migraines I get since I had the implant in my left eye.
I was going to link wikipedia, which used to have a very good article on optical migraines, but it's gone, and a search by someone who suffered one might freak out even more than he will when he gets one It differs from a retinal migraines in that it's in both eyes, and is entirely in the brain and has nothing to do with the eyes at all. this article is full of errors; the article that has obviously been pulled (or google is acting up again) but it's close. There were illustrations in the one that was pulled that were exactly like what happens when you have one. When it's happened to me, it was never followed by a headache.
I hightailed it to my eye doctor the first time I had one, and was told it's nothing to worry about and had it explained to me. It was after that I looked it up ion wikipedia and found the article that isn't there any more (two or three years ago).
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