Is 3D Here to Stay?

After seeing several 3D movies in theaters and with the 120Hz monitors coming to fruition everywhere, are we to assume 3D is here to stay? I personally think it's another fad unless they can get it work without glasses. We've had movies and TV for so long requiring an accessory to watch it seems almost ridiculous.

Of the 3D movies I've seen only Avatar really warranted it, maybe Tron. The others it was more of a gimmick IMHO.

 

I think it is dumb and gimmicky. I haven't seen any 3D movies in the theater, but I've looked over several different setups in stores and I just don't like it. Unless we have true natural stereoscopic viewing, and not some overly done cheeseball 3D images popping out of the screen that don't even look quite right, I'm not buying into it.

 

Here to stay? Yes. Economically viable for companies to invest a ton of money into? Debatable.

 

To me its a joke until it's more of immersion and less of a giant T-Rex jumping out of the screen 'at you'.

 

Not much will visually benefit from it. Eventually it will be included everywhere because it's pretty easy to implement once you have 120hz and higher screen technology, but the content will eventually dry up as the cost to produce it will exceed it's benefit to the end audiences (games, movies, sports, etc).

Various forms of 3D tech have arisen and died off. Every time one was on the rise people talked like it would be everywhere in short order because it was so impressive. In the end they have all died and this will too. I'd prefer that every movie was done in Imax rather than 3D if I had to choose where to spend $.

But in the end it will dry up and die off, even without the glasses. Bigger and more pixels/inch will be better places to invest R&D.

 

Yeah it will 99% sure stay, but always barely so.

 

Its been here for so long already, I think 3D Idea got reinforced by current technologies. but the principle hasn't changed at all.

Who doesn't remember those blue-red paper glasses??

I don't think that it will remain as an Boom it is, although it certainly will stay present. One of the main reasons it can not stay It's unconfortable as it is, some people I know have issues with the glasses and end up having headaches with them, thats a killer there. My girlfriend being one, I can't go to the movies and watch a 3D flick with her, that don't work. I'll stick with 2D.



Now if they ever develop holographic displays... then...

 

i think its here to stay but i refuse to buy it. 3D makes me sick and i don't find it very good. I also think it ruins the quality of the image

 

Well the soon to be out Nintendo DS 3D may keep the trend moving that way. To be 3D without the glasses. I have such poor coordination between my eyes, one very dominate eye, that 3D has been more an agravation than a pleasure. I wear glasses so what do I do with the 3D glasses? I don't game but my grandchildren do so I will be looking at the DS when it is out.

 

I've always viewed using a two dimensional screen to produce something three dimensional as critically flawed.

It'll probably stick around.

 

Actual 3 d will require filming with two cameras.

 

before I would consider a 3d display, it would have to provide the same resolution as my 2D media .. that's 1080p right now. It would also have to work without glasses, alcohol, or other parlor tricks. And it would have to provide the same color as OLED and same viewing angle as LCD.

that's some steep specs so not sure if its here to stay or not.

 

That's the exact reason it failed to catch on back in the 50's when it was first introduced. That, and the fact that the 3D movies were terrible.

Still, I think there is an excellent potential for 3-D in limited applications and/or for specific purposes. This is something I intend to explore more as a personal project. In the mean time, I think the first and best application is in gaming.

Once the production/distribution/display limitations are overcome, 3-D has a virtual unlimited potential. Still, before 3-D can gain mass appeal, and coming from someone who wears prescription glasses, the "headache" issue must first be addressed and overcome.

 

I think it's a joke as well. but unfortunately it's likely here to stay. anyone ever looked a 3D TV with out hte glasses? it looks fuzzy and horrible.

 

I would have liked to see "It will come and go again and again" as an option. I, too, remember several waves of 3D movies using various technology. I can't say I have ever seen truly great 3D cinematography, but that will come if it catches on longer this time. Some people like my wife can't see 3D that relies on binocular vision due to various eye conditions, and for them it is an annoyance. For me, I can take it or leave it.

 

That's because there aren't any. And investors are unlikely to put money into a project that is unlikely to give them a return on their investment. Nevertheless, one "good" presentation can spur the next. And nowadays, it can be done for a fraction of what it cost them the last time this technology was attempted.

3D is a process that is at it's best when it employees a dynamic presentation, otherwise, there's not much point to it.

 

It's an absurd gimmick IMO.. I really hope it dies. Its ok for movies but at home? Hmm.. Don't see it lasting too long unless the prices go down exponentially.

Panther214

 

It's here to stay for sure, but whether it's any good or not is another thing altogether. As far as I see it, the therm "HD" has got old now so they simply invented a more awesome superduper look-at-this-product-it-must-be-good-since-it-say-3d-on-it term.

Frankly, the idea of 3d is all very well for films with a big screen (as in cinema size, this is taking into account viewing distance of course), it mildly increases viewing pleasure. However for gaming it's a different thing, the idea of playing a game because it's "realistic" is rather sad imo. If you want to do something "realistic" then just go outside and have ultimate realism where the colours pop out at you exactly like real life. You should by games because they're fun, not because they're realistic. Take TF2 for example, one of the most unrealistic games on the market yet it's one of the best games I've ever played and never gets old.

Tbh, if I saw a game box with "OMG-LOOK-AT-THIS-I-SUPPORT-3D!" on it then I'd be a bit skeptical about buying it. If the only thing they can really say for it is that it supports 3d then it doesn't really say much about the game as a whole, if a game were any good then they wouldn't need to advertise the fact that it supports 3d.

 

3D was here 15 years ago too .. today is here too ...
So I would say it's here to stay .. but today ppl actually can affords it

 

It's gimmicky...

The problem with 3D is that polarized lenses don't work with everyone.

For example, I only get depth perception from the "3D", but all foreplan "popping out of the screen" doesn't work on my eyes.

The same thing happens for lots of people, especially those with eye defects such as myopia or hypertrophy.

Therefore you have an idea that doesn't even work for everyone, let alone whether it adds anything.

 

I think we want both. After all, Pac man was fun.

Yes, that is something I think we all agree on. You have to have perfect vision to enjoy it. But I think this is something that can be overcome if we stick to it. It's just a matter of getting the glasses right. It might even require a prescription for those that really want/need it.

And yes, I know that could be wishful thinking, but people have spend a lot more, for lesser things.

 

Not exactly true. My wife has had surgery to correct a problem with her eye muscles as an infant. As a result, her eyes do not work together. For driving and other tasks, she has learned to compensate and gauge distance. But binocular 3D will never work for her.

 

In a word, 3D BLOWS. Will never see a 3D movie or buy a 3D TV. I am 59 so that is not so far fetched.

 

They will do that (saw some guy say that it would be easy to do this to notebooks since you have only one person looking at the screen).

 

Check out some of the future 3D tech here

Autostereoscopic -- Engadget

 

That's pseudo 3D (actually stereoscopic viewing which has been around for a hundred years, just with a fancy new label) just what we have today. For actual 3D viewing you need a spatial scanner like it's used by surveyors for indoor models. But this technique is not ready to match end users expectations of nice colorful films.

I agree. It's widely used in photogrametric applications for decades and I guess it'll be common in CAM soon. But I see no potential for the casual private user.

Current 3D techniques (i.e. stereoscopics) can't overcome the limitations. They are inherent to the way the pictures are taken and presented.

This is one of these inherent problems. In stereoscopic images you have only one layer which is perfectly sharp, all the others are blurry and will always stay blurry because of the focal settings during the capture process. In a film it will usually be the director who defines the sharp layer. This will be the one where the action takes place. If you want to focus something different (e.g. because you discover your favourite car in the background) your eyes will try to fix it. I real nature this would make the car sharp and the things in front of it blurry. But because there is only one sharp layer in the film, the car will never be sharp which your eyes can't understand and try to fix again and again. This unsuccessful fixing is what causes the headaches.

There are other techniques, like anaglyph or shutter lenses. But that doesn't matter. None of them works for all. In addition every technique has it's very special advantages and disadvantages which make it useless for watching TV. So in the end you're right.

No you don't. Up to a certain degree of defect it still works. I'm pretty much on the border of that. My eyes are imbalanced. I need to concentrate to see 3D, but not so much that I can't keep it up for some hours.

Frankly, I don't think this will work. For stereoscopic viewing you need to do one of two things:
1. If you want one person to watch 3D you can just track his eyes and present different images for every eye. You don't need any glasses for that.
2. If you want to address more persons you have to send a mixed image to all of them which is then split directly in front of the eyes of every viewer. This is what all the different techniques do that involve glasses.
What I read in your link looks like approach 1. This won't work for multiple persons. Of course you could set up a system that tracks the eyes of every person in the room and creates all the images for them, but that would require each of them to have a separate screen unless they all sit in a very narrow angle.

 

If you look at the first article in that link, apple has been granted a patent that allows multiple people to watch the same screen with no glasses, no eye tracking cameras and at any viewing angle

 

Hasn't 3d been around for awhile? I don't think it was very popular but I played Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. in 3d at a LAN in 2007. Quake was cool in 3d but after a while my eyes hurt so bad. If they can do it without glasses it might be popular but its really just a gimmick in my opinion.

 

Same here. Once it can meet the above it will be here to stay.

 

3D blows. Blows hard. And blows some more. It always has and always will. Like an out of focus snapshot, it will always be out of focus. You can huff and puff and blow on it, but it will still be out of focus. HD rocks. 3D, yep, you guessed it, blows.

 

I had a look at it, but the technical description is pretty poor. I don't see how that should be accomplished without eye tracking.
I'm not a photogrammeter, but I had some training in that field. The basic idea is always the same and can't be changed: present a different image to every eye. That's exactly what I can't tell from the patent description without eye tracking.

 

I think the effect they were going for is more akin to a hologram; it's essentially constantly projecting multiple images off the screen at different angles, so as you move in relation to the screen, you get a different picture. This would require some really difficult work at the screen reflection level in terms of getting the appropriate multiple images to reflect. This way, they don't need eye tracking because they're effectively always transmitting a different image to everyplace an eye could be, which is a really brute-force approach, but does essentially mimic real life (where light scattered off objects is always anywhere a detector could be, whether or not there's one there or not).

 

Now that you mention it, it looks indeed like a holographic projection setup. But the input data is still stereoscopic.
This should work, but it will lead to some strange effects when viewed by multiple persons. For example if you display a dice and you have two people looking at it with an angle of 90° between them, in real life or with a true hologram both of them will see a 3D dice, but due to the angle a different number. With this technique they'll still see a 3D dice, but both will see the same number.

 

Actually, looking back at the actual link, they don't specifically track eye position, but they do track user's positions, so I'm at least half wrong. Admittedly, as you say, the source will also have a great deal to do with things, but since the image they have there has a listed 3-D/Stereoscopic rendering engine, this may not be for static/movie images, but rendered images a-la gaming models, where they can "adjust" for differing viewpoints. This may mean that they're not, in fact, using stereoscopic input. I agree that the article is too low on hard data to tell, though.

 

I hate 3D personally. Makes little to no sense. I want to sit my lazy butt on the couch and not require an accessory just to watch the football game or the latest movie.

In practice, it doesn't seem to do much either. Feels gimmicky indeed. Doesn't make a movie any more pleasurable for me -- it even makes it less pleasurable sometimes.

Stereoscopic 3D has a chance though -- it does not require glasses. The Nintendo 3DS is going to use this technology, so I guess I'll reserve my opinions until I see it in action.

IMHO, Blu-ray was a much bigger and more useful innovation. I can't wait to see Star Wars in Full HD.

 

You're mixing things up. Stereoscopic says nothing about glasses. it simply says that you have two defined images (this is where the "stereo" comes from) of an object which are prepared in advance for your eyes, while true 3D (i.e. holography) has not only two images of an object but a complete 3D model which is the basis for two images that are computed in real time depending of your relative position to the object.

 

Well, I am going to get a 3DS regardless, so I guess I'll just wait and see if it's a marked improvement at all. Nintendo has confirmed (and marketed) the 3DS as not requiring glasses. Thanks for the information though -- I see where the difference is now.

And in that case, I definitely prefer stereoscopic 3D -- it's that holographic effect I don't like too much.

 

This is pretty how much how I feel about 3D...

 

3D in consumer electronics is a joke in its current implementation. Having to wear glasses is simply ridiculous . . . are we back in the 1970s? I have recorded and archived every commercial I've seen advertising 3D TVs showing people wearing glasses so I can laugh at them in 10 years.

Additionally, 3D is only useful for entertainment at this time -- there is no productivity application that benefits. And quite frankly I am not sure how many could. Office apps in meaningful "3D"? Hmm, we are not quite there yet (and, I surmise, won't be for some time).

Now I do see movies in theaters in 3D if it doesn't cost much more, though 3D doesn't make a movie better in my experience. The last 3D movie I saw was Toy Story 3; after the first 10 minutes my brain forgot I was watching in 3D. Same goes for HD; picture quality only matters to a point if the movie itself is good. For example, I watched The Dark Knight in standard DVD res then watched the Blu-ray version . . . it didn't make me enjoy the movie more (save for those beginning 10 minutes, then I got absorbed in the movie and could have cared less).
If you're analyzing picture quality while watching a movie, you should probably find a better movie to watch because it can't be that interesting.

 

Although I first saw this a few years ago (15?) 3D can be used in a productivity setting.

Think Oil & Gas drilling exploration with the ability to rotate/turn the drilling location on screen to see/predict where the best place to drill is in the future.

A cool $10M+ system back then - but the 30 or so geological engineers were probably getting paid more than 10 times that (easily) so productivity was enhanced with this 3D implementation.

The 'video card' on this system was worth $1M at the time - for a whopping 1GB of VRAM.