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…