3D Gaming and 3D Vision: Curse or Cure?

I do wear glasses. And to my own surpise, both Samsungs and Panasonics 3D glasses fit very well over my regular glasses, when I tried it in my local Media Markt.

Still, I am more wary of the flickering and the lower luminance than anything else. The Samsungs flickered noticeably when I tried them, the Panas were better, but I still noticed it. I would love to try the Zalman TFTs with polarized glasses, but no one around my location has those to try them.

 

I'll need a lot more convincing than that.

While not a game developer, I have been experimenting with it and with various systems for ~15 years now. My early optimism in the 90's has given way to a rather meh feeling about it overall.

The newest wave of Movies and the latest push in gaming hasn't changed my view on this. I remain whole unconvinced it'll be more than just a passing fancy until glasses and HMDs are not required.

The best I can say is that thankfully, they aren't concentrating on HMD's and total vision immersion anymore. There were some awkward physical issues with prolonged exposure to 3D through an HMD.

Regards,
SB

 

I agree in that respect, sterescopic displays should be better for the eyes with the extraoccular muscles acting naturally to change the focal distance. However, the focussing distance for the lens is static at the distance of your TV, meaning the ciliary muscles that control the lens shape and focussing aren't working naturally. Long term, I'd expect viewers of 3D TVs to have a degredation in ability to focus at distance as the eyes will become accustomed to not changing lens shape.

 

Looking at 2D TVs, our eyes position to view the screen at x distance, and the lens focusses at x distance. With 3D, our eyes position to view an object at a varying y distance, whereas our lenses remain fixed focussing at distance x. Worst case to illustrate the point, let's say on a monitor 50 cm in front of you, you'll have an object in the distance that has your eyes looking straight ahead with no convergence which would want the lens flattened to focus distant objects, while your lenses will actually be focussing at 50cm. With a handheld that could be even more extreme, focussing on pixels all of 20 cm from your eyes while the eyes diverge to infinity.

Brain's always distinguish, but muscular habits are hard to change. Sitting in front of monitors for much of my life, my lens muscles are so used to focussing at no more than 50cm away, they can't be bothered to focus at a distance making me short-sighted. The current 3D TVs would train the eye to not focus at varying distances, and the end result would IMO be a general decrease in focal response with distant objects remaining blurred. It may be no worse than 2D TVs in leading to shortsightedness, and at least the eyes get a work-out. It may also lead to strain as the lens and extraoccular muscles are no longer working in tandem. When a person adjusts to the differing focal requirements, they'll lose that strain but that also means their eyes will not be focussing naturally. Hence becoming acclimatised to 3D could in fact be evidence of a bad thing.

Not with current tech, AFAICS. A display surface requires focussing to its distance. Perhaps a laser based system could adjust laser focus based on reading the user's lens shape, to create the sharpest image when the user is focussing to the right distance. Otherwise it's a matter of recreating a 3D volume with holographic projection. All very sci-fi!

 

*flaunts 20/20 vision*

Oh I'm sure there will be companies that can make it work, but I doubt most of them will be able to. This is something I don't mind being proven wrong. If I'm wrong, more good games for me. But right now, I see the game industry in this sever creative recession and it's hard to be optimistic unless we see some real creativity come forth. Good games are good games, it can't hurt me... well... maybe my 20/20 vision.

 

Can 3D vision be a cure ? I mean regular 2D TVs don't cure anything right ? Other than to provide entertainment value for patients.

 

Holy sh*t, I hope kids don't use it as an excuse to play games and not do work.

 

The flip side of that, of course, is that it can also increase the motion disconnect of watching something in motion. As now you'll be getting even more visual cue's that you're moving, but your body still feels none of the forces your brain expects.

It's sort of the reverse of being at sea and getting seasick. In that case, your body is experiencing motion that your eyes (with your ship as a reference point in relation to your body) say shouldn't be happening.

Regards,
SB

 

The flip side of that, of course, is that it can also increase the motion disconnect of watching something in motion. As now you'll be getting even more visual cue's that you're moving, but your body still feels none of the forces your brain expects.

It's sort of the reverse of being at sea and getting seasick. In that case, your body is experiencing motion that your eyes (with your ship as a reference point in relation to your body) say shouldn't be happening. Although there we get into more complicated assement as then fluids in the ear come into play, etc.

Regards,
SB

 

Too much worry about nothing

We already spend hours watching TV and laptop and other 2D things which is far more unnatural for our view.

Yet we are ok (mostly). 3D is much more natural for our brain to process and actually has much less adaptation requirement than 2D except that video stereoscopy has perfect alignment between lenses and also no "jitter" but each human has unique eye alignment and also we enhance binocular vision with subtle motions to capture more net detail. Maybe for some people this can cause even headaches.

I know when I watch 3D movie, my eyes move much more than 2D watching. 2D movie/TV is really bad for the eyes. Gaming, maybe not so bad because you are moving to see different enemies in different parts of the screen.

 

It's not unnatural in mechanics. We are converging sight and focussing at the distance we are viewing.

 

2D viewing

Always at a fixed distance/convergence, my friend. Many people have serious short and long term mechanical complications for this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_vision_syndrome

 

My first experience with 3D gaming in the home was when I bought the eDimensional E3D active shutter glasses, must have been around 2002, and they worked with most of the games I tried without patches. So the whole nVidia thing was "finally this is making it's way to the mainstream and it's about time" and now Sony is pushing it and Avatar has got it in the minds of the population at large, it just seems like there's a head of steam for it now.

It's about time, too, because even in 2002 with (what I believe was) one of the first active shutter 3D glasses to work with most games, the effect was unbelievable.

 

Yes, but the varying y distance is accounted for by both eyes adjusting their rotation to both point directly at the object in question, either close or far away. Each eye then adjusts its lens automatically to bring that object into focus. So it's two separate functions, one performed by both eyes in concert (your y) and the other performed by each eye independently (your x).

Have you seen those cross-eye 3D images (Google them)? It's relatively hard to get the effect locked in because you have to manually move (i.e. cross) your eyes until a third image appears (your y), but once you get it close your eyes take over and automatically focus in (your x). In this case y is about halfway between your eyes and the screen (as your eyes are crossed), but x is still at the screen level (as that's where the images are). I guess magic eye images are another example where your eyes are independently focusing at a different depth (x) to the depth they are pointing at together (y), but the other way round. 3D on a screen is exactly the same but at a much reduced level because a) the screen is much further away from your face than either of the two above examples, and b) you don't have to cross your eyes to start with, which can be painful for some.

The point is the two focusing systems are not connected, mainly because for things close to our face or obscured from one eye by the nose, or for people who are blind in one eye, it would be very difficult to focus at all if they were interlinked.

 

A dead-easy method is to hold a pencil close to your face and focus on that, at which point the cross-eye image converges and you can lock onto it.

[qutoe]The point is the two focusing systems are not connected, mainly because for things close to our face or obscured from one eye by the nose, or for people who are blind in one eye, it would be very difficult to focus at all if they were interlinked.[/QUOTE]That's a very valid point UI had overlooked, and in my pencil-example above it proves itself. Going crosseyed, the eyes focus on the distance of the screen, and not the distance of convergence. That suggests that 3D is a step-up from 2D in terms of eye health. Lens focussing will still be inhibited by consistent focussing to the same distance, but at least the eyes will move around more.

 

I read an interesting article the other day that went beyond "lazy eye" and was directed at the concern of young children's ability to spatially differentiate depth and that 3D may pose issues with the brain's processing of depth in addition to concerns related to the article.

Doesn't really matter to me... I have disliked the glasses and have instead put my token in the "bring back full HMD!" bucket

 

I think that's the reason the 3DTV vendors have health warning specifically for kids under 6 years old. Consult your doctor.

We led our kid to Disneyland 2 years ago to watch "Honey I Shrunk the Kids 3D" (Didn't see the warning sign). The 3 year old freaked out in the cinema because of the special effects. In general 3D movies are not recommended for young kids.

[size=-2]I had to extract the kid from behind my wife's seat (The poor thing flipped over the seat and hid behind his mom).[/size]