Why 3D Doesn't Work and Never Will (2011)

Actually, the convergence problem is theoretically solvable with a light-field projection system. That is, instead of having 2 images that are simply "fed" into each eye but projected onto a flat screen that is not converged with the 3d disparity "information" contained in the images, you have a system where the screen emits a light field that your eyes can focus on at any depth. We already have consumer level light field cameras and attachments. the displays are tricker, but possible, traditionally through the use of hexagonal lenticular lenslets carefully registered onto a 2d "flattened" projection of the light field capture. This is the "True hologram" dream mentioned. The primary limitations being the level of precision and resolution with which you can register the lenslets with an image.

that's fine for a display but is obviously impractical for a large scale theater projection system. Just an arbitrary possibility I thought of just now: suppose the projection screen had a retroreflective surface- That is, light projected at the screen gets returned at exactly the angle it arrived at. Combine this with a domed mirror and a backwards pointing projector or set of projectors, with all the requisite optics math and geometry work, it may just be possible to project a lightfield at a screen that bounces back at the audience and appears as a tangible hologram to them.

The real problem with 3D is much like the problem with hearing 'whispers' behind you with surround sound... I go from being immersed in the movie to being rudely reminded that I am in a cinema watching a movie. Until the experience is something that doesn't announce the technology it's only ever going to be a gimmick and, in terms of my connection to the story/character/situation, I'd much rather lesser quality simulation with greater emotional connection and persistent immersion than something 'technically' better.

3D strikes me as superfluous. Our brains already look at the images projected onto a 2-dimensional plane and infer the third dimension. It's absolutely a gimmick, and don't get me wrong, it can be fun, but it doesn't contribute anything meaningful to the viewing experience.

Call me when the brain interface is ready and we can actually travel around in the space, because that's another story.

I'm always skeptical of claims that "X will never work" that are not backed by solid research or a mathematical proof.

The current 3D may be nauseating to a number of people, but I do note that travelling by car is nauseating to some too, and I've seen older people get similar effects when reading a computer screen that is scrolling too fast.

"They are doing something that 600 million years of evolution never prepared them for. This is a deep problem, which no amount of technical tweaking can fix. Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images."

I've no knowledge of the field, but I am reminded of Clarke's first law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Is it totally off-base here?

Oh look, Roger Ebert. The ultimate hipster.

The same man who says games will never count as art. He's just scared the entertainment industry is changing.

I've watched literally dozens of 3D movies and have never once had any kind of side effect. I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy for most people - they expect to feel something, so they do.

The brightness issue is exactly why 3D screens have higher powered projectors and more reflective screens. I saw a 3D film in the 1990s and that was dark; modern ones are not.

Strobing is a side effect of crappy framerates (24fps should not be acceptable for anything, ever), not 3D.

I'm not even going to bother with the focus 'issue' as so many people, me included, don't even experience it, but yes, it is resolvable.

As for immersion, meh, he can speak for himself, the most immersive experiences I've had were 3D, and the main immersion-breaker is other people moving around, making noises, eating, etc. What annoys me the most is badly done 3D movies though, as they look bad and ruin the overall perception. A movie made in native 3D will always look better than a postproduction kludge like Clash Of The Titans or most things Disney did. I also hate it when 3D is used an excuse for cheap effects like having things fly directly at the viewer or hover in front of them, as that ruins both the credibility of the quality of the effect and the seriousness of how it can be used.

When audio was added to movies, people said it ruined them; then colour; 3D is just the next step of that iteration.

3D movie projection is exciting because it may allow film, as an art form, to be more like video games.

Those who say video games are an art form tend to offer two explanations: 1) they can convey thought-provoking stories, much like traditional movies; 2) they're spatial competitions, similar to the way there's an art in learning how to maneuver around a tennis court.

When 3D projection is incorporated into some movies (note: some), it can bring out this spatial element in interesting ways. A great example of this Gravity (2013), with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiTiKOy59o4

The main character in that movie was essentially space. Although there wasn't much dialogue or traditional character development, it managed to engage audiences and critics until the last minute. The appeal of movies like Gravity is somewhat new to the film industry; it's similar to the appeal of watching a tense sports match or navigating your way through a puzzle game like Portal.

I think that eventually movies/games will be like experiencing something as real as a dream, ie on the track that the Oculus Rift is going.

The 3D we have now is just okay I guess, but most of the time I choose to see 2D versions. At the end of the day, I just want to enjoy a good story... and on film preferably, as digital still looks too TV-ish for me.

Those interested in a positive take on 3-D might be interested in reading Thomas Elsaesser's paper, "The “Return” of 3-D: On Some of the Logics and Genealogies of the Image in the Twenty-First Century"[1]. One of his examples is the movie Coraline which uses 3-D "not in order to emphasis depth, but to construct spaces that do not follow the rules of perspective and introduce slight anomalies into it." I haven't seen the movie myself, and my only experience with modern 3-D movies is going cross-eyed watching YouTube trailers, but dismissing 3-D outright seems premature to me.

[1] http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/uploads/pdf/Elsaesser.pd...

I actually like 3D (usually). It may be a gimmick, but it's one I actually like.

The funny thing about this round of 3D is that it isn't a bold new venture for cinemas. It's a sign of stress. Cinema ticket sales have been in decline for over a decade now [1]. Just as TV stole away the everyday crowds from golden-age cinemas', ever-improving home theater quality and video gaming are steadily chipping away at what remains.

When TV started stealing business from cinema's, Hollywood's response was to use new technologies to give cinema patrons something TV's of the time couldn't. Hence, widescreen aspect ratios became widely adopted and, later on, the first wave of 3D, stereo, surround sound, etc.. TV technology stagnated and an equilibrium was formed that stood until home video came along and started disrupting things.

Today, the second wave of 3D is an attempt to tear people away from their hi-definition, audiophile-grade, surround-sound home-theaters and drag them back into cinemas (at double the normal ticket price). It will work, for at least a little while, until 3D becomes ubiquitous even amongst relatively cheap home video displays. At that point, 3D may very well die another death because Hollywood might not be willing to tolerate higher production costs (and limitations of the technology) for a gimmick that doesn't bring in enough extra cash. What will likely determine the longevity of 3D is if those costs will come down faster or slower than the sales-boost tapers off!

The next obvious step for viewer immersion is virtual reality. If VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift or what Valve has been secretly working on take off in the next few years and develop a large enough user-base, there's a remote chance that we might see some movies developed for them. Cinema's might also introduce VR rooms, making Hollywood investment in VR films more likely. These might be entirely on-the-fly rendered machinema that allow users to walk around freely inside the film, or pre-rendered films that place the viewer on a rail with only the ability to move their head to look around. Gimicky, yes. Highly unlikely to replace traditional film, yes. It could happen though, as one more way to boost sales.

[1]http://www.the-numbers.com/market/

There’s a particular conundrum that makes 3D difficult, and that’s the frame rate. Broadcast TV (which we perceive as smooth and life-like) is 60 half-resolution frames per second—standard film is 24fps, 2.5 times less temporal information. Walter Murch makes a pretty strong case in his book In the Blink of an Eye that your brain actively works to fill in the difference, effectively imagining the rest in the same way it does while listening to a storyteller. This is what makes 24fps such a compelling frame rate for fiction, and why 60fps feels “too real,” — at higher rates of motion there’s no longer a need for imagination, and the “man behind the curtain” is revealed.

Unfortunately, in 3D, the temporal limitations of 24fps become apparent, perhaps again because the visuals start to become real enough that your brain no longer works as hard to synthesize reality. But now if you increase the frame rate, you end up with the first problem again, and maybe even worse—when watching The Hobbit in 48fps 3D, I was painfully aware of every camera movement, no longer feeling like a passive observer hovering in the air. It’s clear that if 3D really is the way things are from here on, many new techniques are needed, from the styles of acting and lighting designs to the way the camera moves and scenes are edited.

I’d guess one compromise would be splitting the difference, 3D projected at 36fps—something tells me that won’t come to pass though, and so maybe indeed 3D never will work…

3D is fine, it just needs a few things:

1) High frame rate - really, enough of this "24fps looks better" nonsense. We can make adaptive frame rates if need be. This kills the nasty tearing you get when cameras pan, particularly noticeable over fancy landscape scenes.

2) Brighter projectors - don't know why this isn't the case already.

3) Actually shot in stereo. There's a very good chance that the last 3D movie you saw was depth-ified in post process. Shooting in 3D is expensive and requires more editing, calibration etc, so people don't like doing it.

Another Ebert declaration ('Case Closed.') where he betrays an incomplete understanding of the topic at hand. I personally liked 'As a editor, he must be intimately expert with how an image interacts with the audience's eyes.' contrasted against this part of guy's letter: 'Somehow the glasses "gather in" the image'.

Not to mention, of course, that there is always scope for better tech to come along. Sensationalism, thy name is Ebert.

I've mainly 3 problems with 3D-movies

1) For some reason, when I watch one, the first 20 minutes or so my left eye feels "numb". Hard to describe, just unpleasant.

2) I wear glasses, and I can't wear contacts. Clunky 3D glasses don't work for me, and some theaters don't use polarizing filters so there's no clip-ons

3) This seems to be related a lot to how a film is edited, but there's an effect that makes everything on screen look like miniatures (as in tilt/shift photography) to me. It's not the same in every movie. Avatar = good, Hobit = soso, John Carter = very very bad.

Sidenotes, yeah, the picture is darker. And somehow the movie does indeed feel "smaller", those effects don't bother me much, but they don't help.

Consequence: I don't buy a 3D-TV, I don't buy a 3D-Beamer, and if I can avoid it I don't go watch a 3D-Movie. Unfortunately, I like going to cinema, and sometimes cinemas only have 3D screenings, which is annoying because then it's a choice between not seeing the movie in a cinema or 3D (both bad options).

3D needs to die http://theoatmeal.com/blog/3d_movies

If the goal of displays is to reproduce the real world (which may or may not be true, but I'd argue is true for some class of displays) then I would argue that 3D will eventually become standard, simply because the world is 3D. However I think the biggest current barrier for accurate representation of the world is contrast ratio, which we are orders of magnitude off of.

I propose a sort of turning test for displays where the goal is to have a display that is indistinguishable from a window into the real world. Let me know when that happens and I will be the first to buy one.

The accommodation/vergence problem is well known but primarily a big deal for VR headsets like the Rift, not for cinema screens. The a/v disparity is the inverse tan of distance so it quickly fades into irrelevance at the 10ft range.

And such disparities can be solved via Virtual Retinal Displays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_retinal_display) which shine laser light directly onto your retina and can simulate any level of depth and focus accurately.

Honestly, any article that says something like "it never will" is setting itself up for failure. Writing a commentary on current technologies is fine, but implying some knowledge of the future and what is possible is just ignorant and obviously motivated by feelings outside of presenting a true and unbiased article.

The technology isn't perfect, but to say that it will never "work" is just ludicrous.

Another factor is simulator sickness. Even if you could get the perfect 3D environment going (say via the Oculus Rift), your inner ear will start to complain that what it is seeing is not matching what it's feeling and your stomach will thinks its been poisoned and induce vomiting.

The only way '3D' will ever work is if the movie is jacked straight into your brain, ala 'Strange Days'.

Why Film doesn't work and never will. The notion that we are asked to pay a premium to witness an inferior and inherently brain-confusing image is outrageous. The case is closed.

Isn't it also a trick to make the brain think that it's seeing continuous images instead of discrete single images?

Maybe because movies are more impressionist/symbolic devices rather than simulations. I personally don't care about 4K HD, or 100Hz and 3D. Everytime I read about these, I remember the first minute of Alien. No 3D, no green screen, analog ... yet I feel immersed into a ship.

If you're a fan of Ebert's writing or movie reviews I highly recommend his autobiography "Life Itself". One of the better books I've read in the last few years.

I think it is useful to compare with how stereophony works, and it might indicate that 3D is indeed a dead-end, a superfluous gimmick (as noted in other comments).

The simple --too simple-- view is that screens have to reproduce reality, that the world is 3D and thus that 3D will eventually win. But this has been proven false, at least for audio (which I know better).

Some people think they hear left or right by doing some triangulation between the two ears. Nothing more wrong: with only two ear we would not perceive height, and people deaf of one ear certainly do not "hear in 1D".

In fact we localise sound because of

- The shape of our ears. (See how complex are the ears of some animals)

- Tiny movements of the head.

- Past experience (learning) of the shape of reverberation and reflections in common rooms.

A full "real" simulation of sound localisation, which has been experimented and works, requires:

- Sounds recorded in an anechoic chamber (these are very small and expensive, you won't get a philharmonic in it, and playing music in this echo-less room is extremely painful).

- Microphone must be perfect, a thing that do not exist.

- Synthetic room reflections computed on the fly according to where the listener sits when listening (shape and texture of the room and where are the two ears in the room)

- A polar reflection model of the ear shapes of the listener.

- An helmet detecting tiny head movements and adjusting all the computation above accordingly.

- Perfect earphones inside the ears of the listener.

So this all works in theory and has been tested experimentally, but it has not crossed anyone's mind that we really need this to enjoy a properly spatialized concerto. We can approximate a soundscape enough with the very crude left-right localization provided by stereophony, and this is quite enough to enjoy good music.

It is certainly different for the visual field, but I would bet it will be ressembling in the big strokes: music, movies, books, painting, all these create illusions, automomous worlds that do not need to match reality perfectly. It needs to be realistic enough and based on accepted conventions: When we see the image of a plane taking off, we accept that our hero is likely inside, and that it is related to the story, e.g. not a random plane talking off as we would see from our window.

But it doesn't need to be "pixel-perfect", as exemplified by the many great black and white movies.

It won't work for a TV, but it should work in VR, even for movies.

3D movies look plain amazing to me. Don't worry though - the rest of my life sucks, so it balances out.