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Has the 3-D Hype Bubble Finally Popped?
An anonymous reader writes "An article at Time speculates that the recent hype surrounding 3-D display technology has finally peaked and begun to subside. As evidence, they point to comments from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who does not seem particularly enthusiastic about it, and concedes it won't be a major selling point if the company continues to have 3-D enabled products in the future. He said, 'So, now we've created the 3DS and 3DS XL and also have some games out there that are really using that 3D effect that we can see, from my point of view, that it's an important element. But as human beings are this kind of surprise effect wears off quickly, and just [having] this 3D stereoscopic effect isn't going to keep people excited.' Revenue from 3-D films is also dropping, and while 3-D television sales are rising, only 14 percent of potential buyers think 3-D is a 'must have' feature."
'Potential' buyers, unlike actual ones have no idea what they are talking about.
Now that we've had it for this generation (i.e. 2010) thankfully we won't have to worry about it until 2030 or so.
Or until we have REAL 3D breakthrough where your can walk around a solid appearing image to see it from different perspectives, without glasses.
Personally, I'm sick and tired of small theaters only offering you the 3D version of a given movie. I rather see it in normal 2D, without having to put up with dirty and inconvenient passive glasses, and dizziness in scenes with fast motion ...
At home, for gaming, with a good TV and glasses things might be different, but I'm not much of a gamer myself to justify the extra expense.
"OH! THAT SHRAPNEL FLEW RIGHT TOWARD YOU! WOW!" seems to be the main use of 3D these days so it's nothing but a gimmick. A gimmick that needs to go away. Higher resolution displays are beautiful and future-proof. I wish the industry would adopt 4K instead. *sigh*
and while 3-D television sales are rising
Of course their sales are on the rise when there aren't many alternatives if you want a decent new TV. That's like saying TVs with digital tuners are on the rise, duh! 3D has some uses, but it's mostly another ploy by the manufacturers to keep their price points up by making it seem they are adding value to the device. Also, why they still put tuners in monitors (let's face it TVs are just big LCD monitors) by default these days is a little silly if you ask me.
3D has never, ever, improved a movie's story or characters, and never will.
"To me 3D should be about making it feel like you are IN the movie, not that the movie is coming OUT at you."
Pirates of the Caribbean 4. No, I didn't like the movie.
However, the only thing that made me glad I spent money seeing it in 3D was I think was the "first" time I actually saw GOOD 3D cinematography. A few scenes at least. One of the scenes was when they were in the hull of the ship plotting a mutiny. The scene looked like all lit in with natural candle light. In the scene there was round table with just 1 candle in the middle.
And in the scene there was nothing flying out of the screen! No explosions with shrapnel shooting at you in 3D. It was just a beautiful scene. It was filmed in a small space with beautiful lighting, but in 3D you FELT like you were there. Something that watching it in 2D doesn't give you.
There were other things in that movie as well like in the light house, where again it wasn't 3D SHOOTING out crap at you, but you could see all the beauty of the gears and working of the insides of the lighthouse and you just get immersed. Which was nice since the story sucked.
What I would love to see if a beautifully filmed "3D Black and White" movie, something Schindler's List-esque in it's cinematography. To me 3D should be about making it feel like you are IN the movie, not that the movie is coming OUT at you. Unfortunately, movie makers seem to only use to make it look like Spider-Man is shooting is Spider Wad at you or something lame and gimmicky like that.
gotta keep up with the gimmicks. what do you want them to do, make better movies?
Surely, you jest, sir. Most surely.
Better movies! Where I find movies worth watching nowadays is on TMC. The movies made in the 30's, 40's and 50's. They may be old, but they're new to me. They have great involved plotlines, top-notch acting and directing, and some innovative (for the time in which they were made) camera direction. I can watch those old films all the way through, while most recent movies on dvd's I borrow from my library get ejected before they're halfway watched. Whiz-bang 3d/cgi means nothing after you've seen it a few times. Give me a good story that's believeably acted, and then I might actually pay theater prices to see it.
Actually, No, the main use of 3D nowadays is to produce content that uses depth. With the exception of kids movies and horror flicks, hardly any of the new 3D movies has any of those atrocious 'coming out of the screen at you' gimmickry. Personally, I like seeing the depth in a film, Glad I was an early adopter.
I think I'll wait to see what kind of sales are driven by the release of Titanic, the Pixar back catalog and a non exclusive release of avatar before I'd start going on about the death of 3D.
So basically we have a groupthink "3D is uncool because I'm too cool to like it!" here.
In reality, 3D movies are getting better and better. Some of the effects are much more pronounced in 3D and directors are starting to use them correctly. And in fact most people actually prefer 3D over 2D movies.
This is very true. 3D is a tool that has been abused initially (the "shrapnel flying towards you" another poster referred to). But 3D is also the normal way for us to see the world, so when done right, it enhances the suspension of disbelief. However, it matters that you do it right. Just like color could be distracting when you had over saturated hues or bizarre skin tones, 3D can break the immersion spell if not done right. On the other hand, if you do it right, it is transparent on the conscious level but ads realism and makes the story more believable.
It's not just for movies either. At Taodyne, we brought 3D to interactive presentations. We have a kind of 3D interactive multimedia LaTeX called Tao Presentations. In our experience, 3D presentations are something that people still remember one year after having seen them. Most people don't necessarily remember movies better when they are in 3D, but ask any kid in France about the 3D Haribo ad, and chances are they remember it. The same is true for presentations. Showing models or charts in 3D gives them more impact.
Another interesting effect of 3D for storytelling is that you can put more data on a screen without causing confusion. You can put things in front to draw attention, or in the background for things that are less important. You can create true 3D charts, where the depth ads another useful axis. And the Star Wars effect in real 3D is an interesting way to show data (it's a built-in demo of Tao Presentations).
In short, 3D can be a gimmick. Or it can be used well and make a difference. It's all a matter of how you use it.
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
The other method that will work with any hardware is cross eyed or wall eyed stereo. It gives you much better depth perception and is much better if you are trying to dock/move molecules around each other onscreen. Unfortunately lots of people can't do one or the other (I find wall eyed difficult), or they get headaches. If you're viewing from off-center the problems get worse. Again, most protein visualisation software has the option.
I used those active shutter goggles sometimes back in the '90s while modeling proteins on Silicon Graphics workstations. The whole process was so cumbersome that I just switched over to cross eyed stereo instead.
You know why I'm not excited? Because the "3d steroscopic effect" is not... 3d.
It's one POV, the very same one I had in the first place.
A 3D display would allow me to get up, which would change my POV. It would allow me to walk behind the display, and look at the BACK of the actors. I could look down at the scene, or up at it; I could sit in my chair and rotate the scene with my remote.
Stereoscopic display tech is no more than 1930's postcard (later ViewMaster) tech. Added to which, it seems that a great deal of the use of it is in displaying distortion -- things TOO close or TOO far, like an addled child with a new toy, the filmmakers just can't seem to get the idea that verisimilitude is of greatest interest, even though everything else about imagery that is popular with consumers is telling them that: resolution, color fidelity, the rejection of NTSC (never twice the same color, lol) for digital, high-resolution detail on reds and blues and colors with those components, instead of the blurry sludge NTSC gave us.
So to stereovision, good bye, don't let the door hit you in the front porch on the way out. Call me when we're going to have real 3D. That's worthy of my wallet. And the good news is, there are already systems out there. Some people, at least, know which way to go.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.