

Keep doing that and you'll go blind - chmike
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2813511.htm

======
gjm11
This seems like sheer alarmism.

Made-up pseudomedical terminology? Check.

Won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-children plea? Check.

Confident claims of what's likely to happen, right alongside complaints that
no one has done any research? Check.

(I originally had a paragraph here about how he links to the Wikipedia article
on depth perception and says: here are all the distance cues your brain uses;
3-d movies only provide one of them; oh noes, your brain will get all confused
-- whereas in fact almost all the distance cues listed there are available in
3-d movies, and indeed almost all of them are available in plain ol' 2-d
movies. But someone else already did that in more detail, so I shan't bother.)

Incidentally, I see that Mark Pesce's own Wikipedia page describes him inter
alia as a "hack and shameless self-promoter". I'm about to delete that since
it's obviously unencyclopedic and non-NPOV, but this article sure makes it
look like it might be true.

~~~
ableal
If you read the comments, quite a bit further down, a colleague (Rowley) pipes
up with this:

 _The data that put a bullet into Segas plans came from a study they
commissioned to be done by SRI. Very few ever got to see those results since I
don't believe Sega ever released them. But some of us got to be privy to the
findings.

In brief there was a small percentage of folks who retained depth perception
issues for periods of time ranging from 15 minutes to a couple of hours. SRI
determined that a small percentage of that group could suffer permanent loss
of depth percentage. The potential liability issues were staggering and the
plan to put headmounts on the worlds game playing kids was killed - kaput!._

This seems believable, and SRI is a reputable company.

~~~
ableal
Afterthought (telegraphic): Avatar 3D -> car accidents -> lawyers -> millions
-> kibosh

------
JeffJenkins
I have Amblyopia -- an eye condition where the image from one eye is partially
suppressed by the brain. I'd been wondering what a 3D movie would do to me for
a while since parallax doesn't work when you brain is processing the images
from each eye as separate. It turns out that the answer is not much of
anything, but I still have to wear the glasses to filter out the second image.

Although I'm sure it will be nice for some people, I'm personally hoping that
this doesn't catch on. It's pretty annoying to pay extra and have to wear
special glasses (on top of my real glasses) when I'm physically incapable of
benefiting from them.

~~~
aarongough
Similar situation here. I was born with one eye only having about 10% of the
nerves that it was supposed to, and the ones I have are only connected to the
peripheral areas of the retina.

I've never been excited about 3D movies or games because they simply do not
work for me, which was always a source of disappointment when I was a kid.

Personally I really can't see it catching on... Who wants to have to wear
special glasses while sitting in their house watching TV?

------
sdfx
From the article:

 _The Wikipedia entry on depth perception (an excellent read) lists ten
different cues that your brain uses to figure out exactly how far away
something is. Parallax is just one of them. Since the various movie and
television display technologies only offer parallax-based depth cues, your
brain basically has to ignore several other cues while you're immersed in the
world of Avatar. This is why the 3D of films doesn't feel quite right._

I agree that 3D films often feel a bit weird, but I'm not 100% sold on his
idea of why this should be. The Wikipedia article names many visual cues that
are present in 3D movies as well (e.g. relative size, perspective, texture &
lighting etc.). It seems conceivable that your brain is "tricked" and has to
adapt to the new situation, I just don't know if his reasoning is valid.

~~~
barrkel
From the Wikipedia article, of the 13 depth cues, only 2 aren't properly
present in 3D films - accommodation (having to focus the eyes) and peripheral
vision - and the peripheral vision cue is also missing from regular cinema, TV
etc.

So are there more things going on here? It seems unlikely to me that the focus
of the eye lens is having a big impact.

~~~
sdfx
I don't know about the accommodation, but isn't the loss of peripheral vision
like looking out of a window? Think of the movie screen as a big window into
the world.

Not on the list (I think) but what about head movement of the viewer? If I
move my head slightly to one side the picture stays the same while I expect to
look behind an object.

------
alextgordon
The article mentions _binocular dysphoria_ quite a bit. The wikipedia article
is amusing:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Binocular_Dysphori...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Binocular_Dysphoria&oldid=343315081)
. It appears the term was made up.

------
JunkDNA
I really wish there was a way to do 3D that allowed your eyes and brain to
naturally do what they do in the real world, though perhaps we're a long way
from that? Anyone familiar with or doing any research on better mechanisms for
3D?

I have yet to experience any sort of 3D entertainment that isn't (at least
initially) disorienting. The need to wear glasses constantly ruins the
experience. But even beyond that, the unnatural way the camera "forces" you to
focus on things in the foreground also feels wrong to me and breaks the
illusion. If the main character is front and center, but I want to stare at
the wall right behind him, it shouldn't be blurry. But it often is blurry
because of the camera's depth of field. You sort of feel like an unseen hand
is forcing you to look at certain things and not others.

~~~
rationalbeaver
To your point about camera focus: I believe that this was addressed in Avatar
by rendering the whole scene in focus (which makes it look cartoony if you
aren't viewing in 3D).

To your main point: The 3D still didn't feel completely natural. I did not
feel like the camera was forcing me to focus on anything in particular, but I
did feel like the whole thing was slightly blurry. Maybe it was my position in
the theater (off to the right side of a huge Imax screen, rather than dead
center), but it detracted from the experience because I wanted to appreciate
the details and they were often fuzzy due to imperfect alignment of the
images.

~~~
tocomment
No, Avatar did seem to focus only on one thing at a time to me. I noticed it
distinctly. I was in a non-imax though.

~~~
winthrowe
Having been able to see it both formats, I found that I was able to shift my
gaze and focus on something in the foreground or background in a well
positioned imax seat. The other 3d format (RealD?) was far more locked to a
chosen foreground object it seemed to me. YMMV

~~~
rationalbeaver
I felt the same way in the Imax. And to provide some context to my downvoting
detractor, here's what I was using as the basis for my speculation:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=995096>

It's a huge comment, so here's the relevant bit:

"What Cameron has been doing with Avatar is to shoot in deep focus (no using
the aperture and focus controls to blur out the background, a favorite
technique for isolating the subject from the environment) but instead create
depth by altering the angle between the two lenses dynamically, creating the
illusion of a large space in which attention to depth is focused
stereoscopically. Until now most 3d projects have kept the stereoscopic
distance fixed, which yields the feeling of watching the story take place on a
stage in front of one and occasionally having one of the props or actors
protrude outwards toward the audience. By varying the angle between the lenses
in the same fashion as our eyes, Cameron presents a far more immersive way of
experiencing the third dimension."

~~~
JunkDNA
Thanks for digging that up! If I understand this, it's not just that there is
simple depth of field in the 2D/photography sense where the background of a
primary subject is blurry. They are literally forcing your eyes to look at the
primary subject using 3D tricks as well. This certainly would explain why I
had such a strong sensation that I was being forced to focus on specific
things... because I literally _was_ being forced to.

------
tocomment
Doesn't normal 2D TV also force you to ignore even more depth perception cues?
We still have relative size, parralax, etc telling us that the things on the
screen are at different depths.

~~~
daveungerer
Did we read the same article? 2D TV doesn't trick the brain into thinking it's
3D. Your brain can clearly see it's 2D. When you view fake 3D, the brain
thinks it's 3D. But now that your brain is in 3D mode, it has to turn off
processing for a lot of cues it would normally take into account, due to the
fake 3D not being a complete simulation of reality.

~~~
tocomment
The article says there are 10 depth perception cues. ONE of them is showing
different images to each eye. 2D images do have some of the 10 cues. What is
special about this ONE cue and not the ones that a 2D image has?

I.e., why does your brain turn off processing for the differing images to each
eye cue but not for the parralax cue, etc?

~~~
daveungerer
What's special about this ONE cue? Ummm... how about the fact that it can
trick your brain into believing it's viewing 3D without including most of the
others? I mean... you just said a 2D image doesn't have this one cue, but has
the others. That, _by definition_ , makes it special.

But your second paragraph show's me this is all based on confusion. The
parallax cue and processing different images for each eye are the same thing,
not 2 different things as you're implying. And that's the one of the cues
that's NOT turned off.

I'm not defending what the author is saying. I just feel you should read the
article again, because your statements don't seem to address anything said in
the article.

------
xenonite
moving your head doesn't change the picture.

another limitation: the surrounding light of your living room doesn't
influence the screen.

This would be the only current limitations, right?

Those devices could change that: "Towards Passive 6D Reflectance Field
Displays" <http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/resources/prfdisplays/>

~~~
epochwolf
There is an additional limitation I noticed with 3D movies. You are stuck with
the focus of the camera used, you can't bring distant objects into focus
because they are out of focus on the film.

~~~
nitrogen
That is something that directors will have to learn to work with when filming
3D. It's especially when video games use focal blur and motion blur. Trying to
focus on a distant (or really close) object causes a headache because it never
comes into focus, and the interactive nature of games increases the
expectation that I should be able to look where I want to look, unlike movies.

------
tocomment
I wish we could just move to holograms. What's holding us back exactly? I
could never find a straight answer.

~~~
gjm11
Updating them in real time is difficult. You need a feature size comparable to
the wavelength of the light being used, which would mean somewhat less than
1um. The smallest pixel sizes in LCDs these days are on the order of 5um
across or so. Other kinds of imagers (DLP, for instance) are comparable or
worse.

~~~
tocomment
I don't understand. Can't we just have holograms with lower resolution?

~~~
eru
Holograms don't work that way. It's a bit like a fourier-transform: One pixel
on your holographic display does not correspond to one tiny feature in your
image.

(Perhaps you can find more answers in
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Generated_Holography> and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography> for the basics.)

------
pso
The Wikipedia article refers to 13 cues total. Only 2 of which are under our
physical control - convergence (our eyes crossing to focus) and accomodation
(changing the lens shape). Providing separate images to each eye, triggers the
3d processing mechanism in a way that TV doesnt. For lifetimes, we expect if
objects approach or recede, we adjust our focus, ie converge and accomodate
(there's obviously a very high evolutionary advantage to getting the distances
right). From what some describe, we keep attempting to focus when watching 3D
and failing. Also, they're both feedback loops, there's some convergence/lens
bending, the image gets a bit clearer, we keep going in the same direction,
I'd guess that the brain keeps trying, fails and then reverts to focus on the
2d planes presented, 1000s of times throughout the movie, this is what causes
the brain and eyeache. Possibly we can adapt, and naturally switch in and out
of movie mode without discomfort, but we'd need to have movies worth seeing.

------
kostko
I will tell you about my experience some time after watching a 3d film which I
won't mention... It started with normal films on my lcd. I could see the
difference, as if I could somehow sense the depth of 2d movie in a way I
couldn't before. This happened also with one 2d drawn betting chip with some
shading that I was cropping at work. One more item that gave the same feeling
was the hologram sticker on a nokia battery, I could never tell what was the
big fuss about hologram stickers, as I could never see the hologram in 3d
before, it was always just a smudge. These symptoms have ceased after some
time, but I can still see the hologram in '3d', the way I couldn't before.
It's nice to read that these symptoms can exist, now I know it wasn't all just
in my mind...

------
noonespecial
If the brain is malleable to change itself to a depth perception compromised
state due to exposure, isn't it malleable to change itself back when the
exposure is removed?

Or it might just be malleable to figure the whole thing out after a little
while and make it a non-issue.

As for me, I have very poor depth perception anyway thanks to having lousy
vision in one eye, but the effect in the movies works quite well for me.
Perhaps (diabolical laugh) the score will finally be evened up!

------
blue1
Mark Pesce, technopagan and inventor of VRML. Interesting guy.

