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Comment by gjm11 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

It reads very similar to how people objected to "fast travel" in the past (ie speeds at which we call "slow" in a car or train now) - people honestly thought they would go insane for reasons like sensory overload.

It happens to anything new going mainstream really: predictions of doom.

The article doesn't talk at all about evidence of this - the closest it gets is to the lack of evidence that it is "safe".

Gosh - I can imagine this guy at the invention of the printing press: "people who read these words, and imagine fantasical worlds in their mind, will not be able to get up and walk as their mind adapts to the lack of physical stimulus while reading and imagining)."

> It happens to anything new going mainstream really: predictions of doom.

So obviously, caution should be thrown to the wind because anyone that speaks negatively of something that is 'going mainstream' doesn't know what they are talking about! If something is 'going mainstream' by virtue of the fact that it is 'going mainstream' it will always and in every case be perfectly safe!

I mean space travel is 'going mainstream' (at least 'space tourism' among the ridiculously rich), so there are no issues whatsoever with it. It is 100% safe, right?

Toyota brake systems are 'mainstream'... oh, nevermind.

Please don't use 'mainstream' as some sort of proof that something is safe or that a critic is wrong by virtue of the fact that the technology is 'mainstream' (or soon to be).

> The article doesn't talk at all about evidence of this - the closest it gets is to the lack of evidence that it is "safe".

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118849

I just think it would be a very odd world if there were articles written in that style, by science writers who appeal to the mainstream non-scientific audiences, about every novel technology (eg "iPad to make you stupid !!"). And I don't think that link is really enough evidence - perhaps if the data was public it could be?

In any case, the real issue with 3d for me is the eye strain - won't that be more of a hazard then temporary depth perception? (I have no evidence, just a headache).

>So obviously, caution should be thrown to the wind because ..

Obviously? how did I imply that? My point was that it would be nice to have more solid evidence in articles to avoid people turning into quivering messes at the potential danger of every technology. Or course we should have caution.

I am a bit sensitive about this general issue (nothing to do with 3d) as there have been quite a few deaths in my area in the last year due to people's fears of radiation from mobile phone towers (which are in fact no where near their house, but that is another issue).

interestingly, the Amish attitude to technology is to initially reject until they see that is both safe (physically) and enhances their values (pretty much the opposite to everyone else). I find that interesting, but I can't find the link to the article that talked about that.

I guess the main point is whether or not all of these broadcasters and/or tv manufacturers have done safety studies of the effects of 3D 'all the time' in our lives verses just during a 2-3 hour movie every once in a while. I could definitely see people (in these companies) dismissing there being a problem just because "people go to 3D movies all the time" even though the 'amount of exposure' is orders of magnitude different.

> I am a bit sensitive about this general issue (nothing to do with 3d) as there have been quite a few deaths in my area in the last year due to people's fears of radiation from mobile phone towers (which are in fact no where near their house, but that is another issue).

I'm not advocating that kind of crazy. I'm just saying that it would be entirely irresponsible for companies to push this technology without any sort of testing. In general, I would be mostly concerned with children. I don't want to bring out the 'think of the children' argument here, but children have developing brains, and if this could adversely affect their brain development there should be a bold warning label at the very least. (Or such broadcasts should just be 'few and far between' -- i.e. only some 3D movies on TV or a 3D channel or ability to switch between 3D version and 2D version -- so as not to force children/parents into the 'consume potentially harmful content or consume no content at all' decision)

On the flip-side of your argument, I think that entirely too many companies rush products to market before bothering to ponder any sort of implications (though this is mostly just a problem with food/medical products, but things like infant-/baby-oriented products have this issue too).

I think 3d full time would be terrible !

I don't want my TV 3d ! At most, maybe some movies, some games, and maybe sport (if I watched it). Certainly not for kids - kids have no need for that.

Surely it won't be 3d all the time though? And I still would like to see a quality study on the effect of 3d on depth perception - my intuition is that it is probably identical with a normal (long) movie going experience (we all feel a bit disoriented after being immersed in "another world" for a while).

Certainly on the food/medical side - that is where the issue lies mostly, and I think that is where the energy should be better spent.

On the other hand: we've had 3D in various forms, on and off, for over 50 years. It's always been interesting; it's never persisted as the main way of viewing.

Perhaps this is the reason why.

Pesce is not making things up; he's got real experience with a real system that didn't come to market, and the same effects have been covered in other news outlets:

"The Problem With 3-D: It hurts your eyes. Always has, always will."

http://www.slate.com/id/2215265/pagenum/all/

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