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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."

11 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Get 2D Glasses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/miscellaneous/e9b4/

  2. Re:Hurts the brain? by AngryDeuce · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's the emotional hurt that kicks in when you realize that odds are high that the movie you're seeing in 3D wasn't actually filmed in 3D and instead was faked so they can rip you off for an extra 5 bucks on your movie ticket.

    I think.

  3. Handicapping, Ridiculous, Anti-Progress by CheeseburgerBrown · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    Your friend in science,
    Cheeseburger Brown

  4. Not 3D by shawnhcorey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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. :(

    --
    Don't stop where the ink does.
    1. Re:Not 3D by jamesh · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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. :(

      Worse than that, the 'movement' you see on the big screen is just an illusion achieved by displaying still pictures fast enough that the brain is fooled into thinking it is seeing real movement.

      And even worse still, I watched a '2D' movie the other day and one object actually moved behind another. That's not 2D. That's not even close.

      Sarcasm aside :) I wonder if the 2D stuff we've been watching for the last 100 years or so has any negative effect on the eyes or the brain? Rapidly showing still pictures and showing an image that the brain thinks ought to be 3D but is flat....

  5. Re:Really? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  6. Especially if it's a Michael Bay movie by pedantic+bore · · Score: 5, Funny

    Those are particularly harmful to the brain.

    --
    Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
  7. The study actually doesn't say that, read it. by Rjcc · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    If you hate 3D, hate 3D, but actually read the article before throwing your two cents in.

    --Richard Lawler, Engadget

    --
    "I'll be your huckleberry" - Doc Holliday - Tombstone
  8. Re:24 people? by RobinEggs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. i posted a story about this a few months ago by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  10. Re:Hurts the brain? by Rob+the+Bold · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    Your overly literal reading of the summary hurts my wiener.

    --
    I am not a crackpot.