Sony and LG stop making 3D TV sets
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I saw Avatar in 3D and while the effects were fun to watch, I thought that the expressiveness of the depth-of-field shots was actually reduced.
In 2D cinema, the viewer's eyes adapt to the shot that the director intended, which often involves focusing on the foreground or the background... once in a while a shot puts both in focus, but it's rare.
The visual cue of depth of field is why cinematographers continue to use it even though it's been technically feasible for a long time to simply make all objects in the shot appear in focus.
In Avatar, the critters zoomed toward the audience and the effect was immersive, but I thought many of the close-in shots lacked the intimacy that good 2D shots can often attain.
3D vision is a perceptual use of depth of field to heighten the brain's ability to discern objects. There is similarly no reason why the human visual system couldn't have evolved to perceive objects in focus over a wider range of distances.
In fact, the human perception of a constant, detailed visual field is an illusion that the brain stitches together from the data collected by the narrow beam of detailed focus directly in front of our gaze.
So I think doing accurate 3D requires simulating the way in which the brain picks out objects at different depths, but this can't be done simply by offering one depth of field for all viewers, since our eyes can't bounce back and forth alternately focusing a near and far object and creating the increased acuity we get in normal vision.
3D film is unreal in that it requires us to suspend our normal method of discerning space, and watching it is something we must learn to do, just as we must learn to interpret 2D depth of field as both an attentional and spatial cue.
Depth of field isn't the only way for a cinematographer to to lead the viewer's gaze. There's also lighting, movement, scene (art direction)... Tricks that have been used in live theater for centuries. The depth issue really boils down to a lack of cinematic artistry, probably due to the lack of experience that filmmakers and audiences have with 3D.
Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" is probably the most artistic use of 3D I've seen to date.
> Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" is probably the most artistic use of 3D I've seen to date.
I'm going to have to watch it, do you know of a way to see it in 3D using a normal laptop or TV?
Even seeing it in 2d you get a sense of the 3-dimensionality.
When you increase the width of the aperture of a lens (your pupil) you decrease the depth of field in sharp focus. It's a fundamental limit of optics.
On a bright day you have a lot of light and your pupil is narrowest, bringing as much as possible into focus.
> So I think doing accurate 3D requires simulating the way in which the brain picks out objects at different depths, but this can't be done simply by offering one depth of field for all viewers, since our eyes can't bounce back and forth alternately focusing a near and far object and creating the increased acuity we get in normal vision.
I watched the Hobbit in 3d and thought it was awful. You had this tiny sweet spot right where the director intended you to look and everything else was a sea of blur.
I realized that I like looking at sets because I was frustrated every time I tried.
That was my experience as well. I find it head-ache inducing. It really doesn't emulate true 3-D vision very much at all and I would personally not pay any extra money for the experience.
Also, the movie is Star Wars so there's no drama whatsoever. Literally everyone in the film is killed within seconds of their mission being accomplished.
I had a similar experience.
If the cameras are further apart than your eyes, things will look smaller in size and have an exaggerated stereo effect also. If they are closer, the stereo effect is less pronounced and things appear larger in size.
It's actually the sense of scale I like the most in 3D (and VR). I don't care that much about things popping out at me on a 3D TV. I much prefer 3D that treats the screen like a window you look through, where the 3D effect comes mostly from things receding into the background. As an example, I loved the parts in Star Wars: The Force Awakens where you had characters shooting at things in the distance and the camera sat over their shoulder with them in the foreground.
There's also another issue here - you can't just take any game and 'upscale' it into 3D using a driver or such. The game's geometry needs to be properly modelled to scale for it to really work. There are other more egregious issues too - things like lens flares appearing in the wrong plane, because the game happens to be rendering them to a separate 2D plane.
These and other issues like them are the same reasons that you can't turn a non-VR game into a VR game with a driver and have it be as good as a native made-for-VR experience (although many games do come somewhat close, if you don't have a native VR version of them for comparison).
FWIW I think the 'average' IPD is 64mm.
Apparently you've misunderstood either 3D (or more accurately stereoscopic) vision, depth of field, or both. Cue detailed HN-worthy explanation of each... but frankly, you'd be better off perusing the myriad of resources available on these two subjects.
My point is that stereoscopic vision lets our brains ignore more information by identifying the depth of interest and ignoring the rest.
Similarly, trying to identify the direction of a sound using only one ear is very difficult, and there is inferior signal to noise ratio available to our perceptual system. The same applies to stereoscopic vision.
Couldn't agree more.
It's the same mentality that makes people declare that "[arbitrary tv show] should've been cancelled long ago!"; or what a travesty it is that [arbitrary beloved IP] is getting a sequel/remake/reboot.
If the Simpsons runs for fifty seasons, it doesn't undo the first ten.
If they reboot Batman a dozen more times, it doesn't keep you from thinking that Adam West was the best Batman.
And to categorize 3D movies as simply a fad totally disregards works for which 3D was an integral part of the creative vision, e.g. Avatar, Gravity, Love.
There's simply no good reason to discourage anyone from contributing anything creative to the culture, even if you question their motives.
I don't know about that, there are very good reasons not to, in my opinion. It's the same reason we don't build on top of the gaza pyramids, or replace the mona lisa with a more modern version.
We like to preserve the legacy of things, and when you pollute it with things not in the original design it's easy to end up reshaping what it means and diluting its history.
I certainly don't think that the Luxor hotel and casino in Las Vegas diminishes the legacy of the Great Pyramids in any way. In fact, I think it's really interesting that they were able to use an ancient form to achieve something architecturally unique from a modern standpoint. It allowed them to create an uncommonly large open lobby area, which is really cool to see, and wouldn't have happened if someone had said 'no pyramids, pyramids have been done.'
A remake/reboot is certainly nothing like replacing the Mona Lisa. It's more like a Banksy type person painting their own take on the Mona Lisa on a concrete wall or something.
Do you think that no artist after da Vinci should ever reference the Mona Lisa in any way? Because derivative works were being made by prominent artists before da Vinci even considered his finished. In fact, the famous Mona Lisa arguably wasn't even the only version of the Mona Lisa that da Vinci himself contributed to.
'Meaning' is extremely personal and dependent entirely on the context within which a work is received. No work will ever hold the exact same meaning for two individuals. Furthermore, a work's meaning to a particular individual is likely to evolve continuously throughout their life.
To discourage derivative works is like saying that you don't want to have to consider that alternate meanings are even possible.
Making sequels in no way affects the integrity of the original.
They are wholly different circumstances.
Batman needs some comedy, and it needs to be proud of it, and there has been very little of that in the reboots. In fact, with the exception of a few scenes in the Michael Keaton version (which is my favourite in fact), I've only really seen it in Suicide Squad, and it only had about 30 seconds which included Batman.
The Adam West version is a comedy show, and it does a pretty good job at it.
Recently, I've been watching Sherlock. After doing some reading, I learned that Sherlock Holmes is the most portrayed character ever, "with more than 70 actors playing the part in over 200 films" [1]. Talking with a work mate, he said his favorite portrayal was Jeremy Brett. I also learned that the original works are in the public domain, which is probably why it is so often used as source material.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes#Adaptations_in...
Yes it does, absolutely.
That's like saying an awful ending to a movie can't ruin the whole movie, people can still enjoy the beginning.
It's totally possible to ruin people's memories and nostalgia.
Like jackbooted thugs from Fox show up on your doorstep and say "we heard you write comedy; you're coming with us."
There's no shortage of talented creative people, and contracts usually don't last forever.
Nobody's trying to oppress you personally or trying to control your experience out of principle. (I hope.)
3D is typically enhanced price, and serves as a way of extracting more money from the segment of the population willing to pay more to see movies in the theater. Without 3D pulling in that segment, the profit-maximizing 2D ticket price would probably be higher.
I'd pay the 3D fee to get in the most modern 2D theatre experience possible. I also get frustrated that 2D showing times can be quite limited if I want to see it on a system better than what I have at home.
That's a very friendly way to put it :)
I personally think 3D sucks because it is a gimmick that affects the cinematography of a movie. Even if you can see a movie in 2D, you are consuming a product that was creatively compromised by filming it in 3D. I've seen a lot of films in both 2D and 3D, and I do appreciate the gee-whiz factor of 3D for some kinds of movies, but it's really unnecessary for movies where spectacle is not the primary consideration.
Plus, 3D is really immersion breaking. When you are watching a 2D movie directors force you to look at a certain part of a shot by using a shallow depth of field. In a 3D movie, this results in a really disorienting effect where something in the foreground can be out of focus, and despite trying to focus your eyes on it, it will continue to be out of focus, while the part of the image that is further away is still in focus.
Realism isn't the goal of movies, telling a story is, and 3D gets in the way of telling that story.
That's because large numbers of people like to watch 3D versions in preference to 2D, especially for movies like those in the Star Wars series (less so for, say, romcoms, which is why you don't see them in 3D at all.)
Depending on where you live, not really.
What we're really seeing is that people don't like to lose something they had previously, regardless of how small. People who prefer 2D really are having fewer showings available, but the trade-off is choice, and allowing other people to actually experience their preference, which is a good thing.
Very often the only 2D option is the dubbed version—because kids, I guess—if any, because the other rooms are already split between subtitled and dubbed.
My experience was that 3D IMAX is way worse than regular 3D (which I'd also rather not watch).
That said I'd still prefer 2D.
This is not true. Every 3d movie takes up IMAX screens that could be used to show 2dd versions of the movie. The 3d IMAX version has less visual fidelity than the 2d version and actively makes people feel sick.
Because movie theaters believe they can charge more for 3d often 3d movies take up every single IMAX screen and do not allow people to enjoy the best possible experience.
3d is a stupid gimmick and ruins movies.
Some 3D movies are great, like Avatar that actually shot things using 3D cameras. In other movies, like Captain America, they add the 3D in post and it looks like garbage. I appreciate a 3D movie done well, but too many are half-assed.
The real problem for me is if I can't see it in IMAX I'd rather see a film in not-3D but because the theaters have a hefty 3D surcharge, they're not interested in running the 2D version. I'm paying a ridiculous tax for something I don't even want, and I have no options other than going way out of my way to avoid it.
Maybe you like everything in 3D. That's fine. There are a lot of people that don't care for it and yet are forced into paying for it for lack of options.
It'd be great if they had both!
So yeah, go away you stupid gimmick.
[EDIT] Damn those early digital projectors were cool, basically huge light-bulbs wired up to a Centos box with some weirdo DRM shit baked-in. We would receive movies on ordinary hard-drives and plug them in to a central server rack to be ingested and then distributed out to each of the projectors. Pretty often in those days it would simply take too long to ingest and transfer to a screen, so we'd have to cancel early showings of new movies.
Here's a recent example: http://www.cinemablend.com/news/1600740/to-3d-or-not-to-3d-b...
Instead of different polarisation in each lens, like normal 3D glasses, it just uses identical polarisation in both lenses.
Friend: "I can only make the movie after 8"
Me: "The 2D one is at 7:40, but there's a 3D showing at 8:10"
And thus, 8:10 it is. Then I have to stake the glasses off for 30 seconds every 5-10 minutes because the image makes me dizzy as all hell.
As an aside, this reminds of the prime example of "people are so stupid you can't even imagine": I checked some epilepsy forum when Avatar came out because I suspected it's dangerous and yes, people said it is not advisable and some got auras and some even seizures from the movie so I decided 3D movies are not for me. Not everyone though -- there was someone who posted "yeah, I saw the warnings here and went to see Avatar 3D and got a seizure" and I am like "you can't be real".
Edit: to whoever downvotes this, I had seizures when I was 20 years old. Despite numerous examinations including sleep deprived EKG, CT, MRI they never found out what causes them. So if you are downvoting this because I sound like we do not know what causes seizures then you are either ignorant (because we indeed do not know and I am the damned walking example) or have knowledge I really badly need. If the latter then please share links to new neuro research which will help me and my neurologist to decide whether I need to stay on medication or not. I would be glad to stop after two decades.
Each of your eyes gets a half of the light available to them both before and after.
3D is and has always been a gimmic.
It doesn't improve the story telling. It doesn't contribute to the plot in any way.
But then, some movie makers remark, 'story' ? 'plot ? what strange words you use.
I think using 3D effectively is hard, and most films being made don't have a good reason to use it. It also makes my eyes feel a little uncomfortable, so I'm not crazy about it getting widespread use. Most filmmakers don't have the visual sense (and budget/tech crew) of Baz Luhrman or James Cameron.
The Wizard of Oz was a really masterful tech demo for color, because color was a pivotal part of the story. 3D's problem is that it has been totally driven by technologists and financiers rather than storytellers. If the first big 3D film were The Great Gatsby rather than Avatar I think we'd have a very different sense of what 3D is. Although The Wizard of Oz may be unique in the way the tech manages to serve the story just as much as the story serves the tech.
3D as we know it is probably never going to happen. Most movies don't gain much from more immersiveness, and the tech may always be clunky. I've seen some VR movies lately, and I predict they will supercede 3d entirely. Whether they'll end up being the next fad is an open question.
Not an absolute rejection, but a concern that it took focus away from other parts of the story-telling and wasn't necessary.
He supposedly sabotaged attempts to add speech to Gold Rush (1925) after the actors pushed for it.
City Lights (1931) was basically his ode to silent movies, famous for its endless retakes of the initial meeting with the blind flower girl [1], while he tried to figure out how she could mistake the Tramp for a rich man without words. In the end the solution was simple, and both funny and provided motivation for the Tramps desire to help her: The Tramp walks through the car of a rich man to avoid passing a police office, and so when he stands before her she has just heard him slam the car door. He accidentally knocks the flower he's purchased out of her hand and realises she can't see that he has picked it up. As he hands her his money, the owner of the car comes and drives off and the girl thought he had left without his change, and he didn't want to break the illusion and so walks off without money he badly needed for himself.
It's one of my favourite movies because it masterfully made his point that you can tell a complex story without it feeling like you're missing something because you can't hear dialogue.
He added speech in his next movie - Modern Times - but his character still didn't speak dialogue (but did sing).
It was first with The Dictator (1940) that Chaplin himself spoke on screen: Finally he had something where the speech added clear value by conveying more than he knew how to convey with just pictures.
In the same way I think we will see more and more movies eventually come out in 3D as the industry gets enough experience with it to see where it adds clear value and leave it low key other places, rather than add it to make a spectacle of it.
I think one of the first to do it well was Prometheus. A friend saw the 2D version and afterwards told me elated that it felt like it was made as a 2D movie - no weird camera work solely to make 3D effects stand out etc.. Meanwhile I'd seen it in 3D and been blown away at how good it looked in 3D. The effects were clear and beautiful but not in your face. Crucially they didn't alter the visual language noticeably.
[1] http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/378808/City-Lights-Movie-...
No in any large numbers. Besides, 3D cinema has been coming and going as a fad for 6 decades now.
But even if it was true that people said that about color movies, people can say the same thing about different inventions and be wrong in one case and right in another.
>A lot of people really enjoy 3D, trying to logically convince them that they actually shouldn't like it is not going to work.
Well, they are not that many to sustain 3D TVs (as TFA tells us), and they have never been that many to make it not be a fad in the cinema either.
In which case, whether some enjoy it is a moot point.
Then they had indoor shots that used depth of field, while still using some 3D effects and totally ruined it for me.
The whole point of 3D is you can choose what to focus on! The moment you ditch that the effect is ruined.
But there's this thing called cinematography. And when it is done well, it adds another layer of enjoyment to the movie viewing experience. 3D is part of cinematography.
So, yes, plot is important. But if you are watching a movie instead of just reading a book, it is usually because the added elements are worth it.
And I say that as someone who usually reads the books as well.
3D is fun, and films like Avatar and Tron and Pacific Rim are totally worth in 3D.
But Gravity was awesome, animated 3D movies from Disney/Pixar are generally OK, and I really enjoyed the 3D version of Titanic that James Cameron produced in 2012 for the 100th anniversary of the sinking. (It's the same movie that came out in '97 but converted to 3D. Most of the time, you don't even realize that it's 3D. It's quite subtle.)
Life of Pi
Pretty much every Marvel movie
The new Star Trek films
Star Wars: Episode VII
The Martian
The Hobbit films
How to Train Your Dragon and sequel
Finding Dory
The LEGO Movie
Why not just listen to radio plays?
Actually it wont just be diminishing returns, but it will give movies the over-sharpened, soap-opera/sports-coverage style image (and even worse if paired with higher frame rates).
I never watched soap operas and very little sports coverage so I probably don't mentally associate clear images and high frame rates with those types of content.
First is that the technology is just plain uncomfortable. The glasses feel bad, and my eyes hurt after a while.
Second is that filmmakers seem to have no clue how stereoscopic depth perception actually works. Objects only have perceptible parallax out to a couple dozen feet. Beyond that, depth is perceived purely by other means. But 3D movies keep applying parallax to objects much farther away. All this does is make them look closer and therefore smaller. The worst example I saw of this was an IMAX film at the Smithsonian about the development of the Boeing 777. There was a scene of a distant 777 in flight which popped the plane out of the screen. The result was that this 100-ton building-sized machine looked like a child's toy.
If the technology can be improved so it doesn't hurt, and if filmmakers can figure out how to use it without it looking utterly stupid, I'll give it another shot. Until then, I'm sticking with 2D.
When it's badly done it makes my eyes hurt after a while and I find it tends to make everything look blurry
Perhaps a broader reason is that 3d seems to encourage filmmakers to go for visual spectacle over good storytelling.
She loved the experience, so I sat there for three hours watching a blurry movie because the 3D glasses were awful and causing pain.
Never again.
4D==time :).
They're usually released simultaneously for blockbusters, e.g., 1-2 IMAX screens showing 3D and 1-2 screens showing 2D. For others, they might start out only showing 3D on opening weekend and then transition to 2D as the movies age and move to smaller screens, e.g., Rogue One is still playing in my area but only available in 2D now.
In fact, you can test this yourself. Go look up "split-depth GIF", then compare the experience you get from those to a traditional 3D image (either in theaters or from a 3DS or something else that uses parallax to fake 3D). This was the first time in my life I've ever actually experienced the '3D' effect coming from any 2D plane.
Another fun thing to try: go try and hit a baseball, catch a ball, whatever. You may notice you are not very good at this, even with a fair amount of practice. These small objects don't give off depth cues your brain normally uses since it can't rely on stereoscopic vision, the lack of shadows, small change in relative size and a lack of other objects to use for depth positioning can make this a difficult if not almost impossible task for someone with amblyopia.
Want to know how I know all of this? Because I've done all of this, my left eye is horrifically bad and has been since the day I was born (80/20 in the left eye, 40/20 in the right), and even after TWO strabismus surgeries it decided to misalign itself again and I've suffered from occasional double vision ever since.
If you're still relatively young (20's or early 30's) you can check out vision therapy, there's been a lot of great success rates on retraining the brain to properly integrate the information from both eyes that will allow you to see "normally" and likely remove these issues. Personally I've opted not to because at 25 years old I really have no desire to change how I perceive the world (it's not a comforting thought, especially since once you've retrained your brain you can't exactly undo it).
I went to see Rogue One to the only IMAX cinema in my city. First time I went to an IMAX and I didn't like it at all. This surprised me because IMAX is supposed to be such a big deal, but the picture quality was awful: only the center of the screen was in focus, everything else was awfully blurry and dark. It really ruined the movie. Is this supposed to be a premium experience?
I can't wait for the 3D fad to die. It will probably outlast me, however.
It pains me that they aren't just focused on higher and high quality of projection instead of 3d.
3D at home... on a smaller screen... just doesn't work as well as a spectacle.
They had a preview for The Walk and that preview showed the true depth of 3D.
I imagine smaller chains opening new locations may pass on adding 3D capability to their theatres in future, however many may continue showing 3D films on the equipped screens if only to justify the extra $15k/cinema in equipment they were hustled into buying while making their mandatory 3D conversion.
The quality of projections in all the theaters that I visited is year to year worse. Somehow they switch to constantly worse technologies for 3D? I suspect the older ones but only on a few places had higher FPS than these done now? Now is watching the movements annoying, I see the objects move like in the strobolight -- not smooth at all.
It was plain old 2D except for a handful of scenes where they flashed an icon in the corner to tell you to put on your glasses. You put them on for a minute, saw some cool 3D effect in an action scene, and then you took them off before you got a headache and before it affected the rest of the movie.
I have seen a lot of 3D movies on LG OLED sets (Gravity, Mad Max), and it's remarkable. Much better than 4K UHD. With the latest LG OLEDs, you get 1080p per eye, bright smooth motion, and the passive glasses are cheap, lightweight, and you don't have to charge them.
Last year I bought a 55” 1080p LG OLED and on a lark, picked up a 3d blu-ray to see how it looked. Jeez, I was totally blown away! So much better than the movie theatre “Real 3D” while using the same passive glasses. A ridiculously beautiful 3d effect that was easy on the eyes. Just amazing. I started to stockpile whats left of the 3d blu-rays being produced. Thankfully, the 3d blu-ray editions tend to have all of the 2d versions as well, so it’s not the end of the world.
Favorite 3d blu-rays: Avatar (omg, just incredible), Inside Out (hankies required). 3d animated movies are the best.
I will go over and add my name to the petition. Home 3d is great.
The petition page quotes LG as saying "3D is just no longer a big selling point." And somehow, curved TVs are a big selling point? I'm not sure if I'll ever understand that one. Even 4K is a pretty laughable selling point at the sizes/distances experienced by most home viewers.
I also tried to get some 3d games working because I thought it might be better than movies, but it was decidedly worse. Like, really bad. Headache and nausea inducing in mere minutes bad. This is probably the reason that hardly any games support 3d tvs any more.
Likewise, the 3D in the Doctor Who Day of the Doctor special, which I saw in theatres, the 3D was well done because they used it in specific spots and in subtle ways.
3D should be an accent, not a centrepiece. Some movies get this right, lots get it wrong.
If they actually do fully do away with 3D sets, I'll be looking to nab an older model when they drop in price.
Edit: Here's a decent resource. Still doesn't talk about a hardware chip but rather about multiple LCD screens or blacking glasses that are synced with the TV. Both options sound rather expensive.
I assume passive 3D required some hardware to support it too, and both required hardware with firmware that could support the formats and settings required
In theory that could also be added as aftermarket modification.
If the screen is fed with an interlaced 3d stream and the screen firmware/hardware allows 1:1 pixel playback it doesn't need to know if the content is 3d or not.
All 10 of them?
>I have seen a lot of 3D movies on LG OLED sets (Gravity, Mad Max), and it's remarkable. Much better than 4K UHD. With the latest LG OLEDs, you get 1080p per eye, bright smooth motion, and the passive glasses are cheap, lightweight, and you don't have to charge them.
I find that 3D is a gimmick even at the cinema, even more so from a TV.
VR is hard for most directors to handle. Steven Cameron (Avatar, Titanic) likes pans over detailed backgrounds. His 3D is done with a light touch - nothing ever appears in front of the screen plane. That looks good, which is why "Avatar" launched the 3D boom. Cameron wants higher frame rates so those long pans don't have strobing.
Too many other directors use 3D to pretend they're doing a roller coaster simulator. They put stuff in your face to make people feel they go their money's worth viewing the 3D version. That's just painful.
Next to go down: VR headsets. The technology has been working for years now and there's still no killer app beyond 3D shooters.
I disagree. It's niche, but it makes 3d movies feel like a joke. Most technology pieces have been about the sum of their parts anyways, not a single killer app. Certain things stand out like Zelda or Mario for nintendo, but Sony & Microsoft have done well by having a number of good games to buy. While VR is a set of shorter experiences, more and more keep coming up. A number outside of the shooter space.
The first time I saw the Warcraft trailer in front of a 3D movie I got extremely irritated when some stupid Orc stood up in front of the screen and I instinctively tried to lean over to see around him.
It seems like it's a neat effect but, like many things, it should be used only when it adds significant effect or impact (imho never).
VR headsets. The technology has been working for years now
and there's still no killer app beyond 3D shooters.
Edit: There's also little proof that 3D TV failed because wearing the glasses was awkward. I can only compare it to 3D cinema, which is basically worthless. Avatar is still the only movie I've seen where it worked, for every other one it was just money paid for nothing.
They don't have to be similar technologies, just comparable in that they're fads (which lot of us feel, and time will prove -- check back in 5 years).
Which nonetheless have the common side effect of nausea in a non-negligible fraction of the population...
VR was workable 20 years ago; I was working on it at that time. Thing is, it only provides a tangible benefit for certain use cases, and most people don't derive enough value from those use cases to pay extra for it.
Argue all you wish, but both 3D and VR are now on their 3rd or 4th hype cycle, and the evidence from previous cycles is that people just don't value them enough to justify the cost.
Sure VR has fantastic experiential applications, just like going to watch an IMAX 3D movie in the cinema is a great experience. But in the living room? I'm not quick to believe the hype.
Google Glass is another story. It was awkward, because of both the wear and the bystanders. You wore these pseudo-glasses that acted as an assistant. This would be solved with more people seeing them.
The other part is the social stigma. Of course there are slim sunglasses with recording lenses in them. With those, we are blissfully unaware. Glass was unknown. What's that guy doing? Is he taking pictures? Is he recording? There's this whole social space that Glass intrudes upon, and that's in additions to awkwardly speaking to yourself (really the device) for functionality purposes.
Almost everyone in my network is excited about VR. Having the content creators on board is huge.
For regular people, absolutely not, the TV and the couch works so much better as they expect a social experience and a certain level of convenience, but lets not dismiss what's possible here and what the potential market could be. Its also certainly not an either/or proposition here. The same way I have a 55" TV but also have television on tablets, laptops, and phones.
Also, VR doesn't need to be "big" to make it, the same way PC gaming doesn't need to be "big" to make it. My mom and grandma will never buy a higher end gaming PC, yet somehow PC gaming survives.
Remember, we had endless cynicism about music players[1], phones, and tablets as well. I think the cynical approach as the default in tech makes some sense as there's so much marketing led hype, but with phones and tablets the utility was fairly obvious early on. I believe this is true with VR today.
[1] "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
Every senior I have demoed the Rift to ask me "what does it cost? how can I get one?"
The only reason they don't have one is that my answer is "you need a $2000 PC, a $900 headset and $250 controllers".
Lower the price and you will see it take off.
VR, on the other hand, is completely unprecedented. It unlocks a way to interact with virtual environments that simply was not possible before. It has practical uses that we haven't had time to discover yet. Dismissing it as a gimmick and comparing it to 3D movies is shortsighted, in my opinion. One might argue that the technology is not there yet, but that would be comparable to PDAs preceding smartphones.
TV is a shared experience, VR is not.
Also VR is interactive while TV is largely passive.
What can be interesting is the likes of VR chatrooms/lounges.
I'd love to see Passive VR content and active VR content develop side-by-side like Movies and Videogames did.
That's a huge difference. But yeah, the judge is still out.
(I'm big on VR and less so on 3D movies so I've not tried it.)
Nowadays 3D movies are harder to find. Force Awakens came out on 3D six months later and only after a fan revolt. Let me tell you the 3D was better on my TV than in the theater.
The only saving grace at this point: VR. Samsung is making VR cool and hopefully Apple comes out with their own VR set. VR will bridge the gap until they build a no-glasses 3D TV.
I also tried to take the 2D version of some movies originally made in 3D and use the TVs own 2D to 3D conversion feature. While it obviously causes some artifacts and sometimes adds depth where it doesn't make sense (mainly TV screens inside the movie) I found that it worked surprisingly well.
Primarily, though, my wife and I use the 3D for the two player fulllscreen feature when playing games in split screen (Mario Kart 8). This is actually really cool, since it allows both players to only see their own part of the screen and also see their part in fullscreen.
Of course watching a romantic movie next to someone frantically playing a BF1 match probably wouldn't fly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbRG-KfWyVc
And other 3D TVs could replicate the idea:
https://www.tweaking4all.com/video/gaming/split-screen-game-...
Both took advantage of the fact most 3D formats were just two images side by side, so if you took something that could put two separate streams side by side like this:
http://www.kvm-switches-online.com/splitmux-hd-2lc.html
You could do exactly what you described.
One problem I could see would be any cross-talk. Normally cross-talk makes things look blurry, any cross-talk would result in seeing fringes of something completely unrelated to what you're viewing. But with active glasses (or high quality passive displays) I don't think it'd be much of an issue.
That's exactly it! The "no more split screen" use case is also something I thought of but forgot about :-)
Whereas for most games, it didn't add anything and sometimes it was even annoying (for example in AC, the placement of the HUD was way too close), for Uncharted 3 it really added some depths (pun intended).
I've done 3D movie nights at my house with friends. Of course there's that one friend who comes (knowing it's a 3D movie night) and then says they can't watch 3D and insist we not do 3D...
The more I think of it, the more a lot of last gen technologies were stop-gap measures until we had VR. The Kinect, and to a lesser extent the Wii, are also in this category. You lost all the convenience of a controller to kinda, sorta have a virtual experience where you avatar is closely tied to your body but projected onto the screen. Now you're really "in the game" or "on the set" when you consider what's possible with VR and movies/tv/machinima.
I also hope this is the end of 3D in the movie theaters. It not only looks completely wrong via the false exaggerated 3D effects typically in use, but most implementations kill the lighting levels and color fidelity. The cost for me and my wife to see a movie with parking, babysitter, and basic concessions is nearly $100. Selling me a sub-par experience with a grainy and dark screen is not how you beat Netflix, Amazon, and Google.
VR is lonely, you sit with a helmet on and ignore anyone in the room with you.
For the single 20 something male this may be fine, but for friends, couples, families, this is a deal breaker.
I do think people craving big or 3D experiences will migrate to VR. That was the point I was trying to convey, that a lot of the whiz-bang stuff marketers have been trying hard to sell this past generation really are just poor imitations of what VR can do and if you really want that kind of experience, you should consider just buying VR. VR can simulate a theater experience nicely and without the crowds, hassle, etc. I think once the resolution issue is resolved then cinephiles will naturally migrate to it.
I was just looking a the Windows Holographic lineup and thought that this is probably going to break through to the mainstream of mostly non-gamers. The killer app may be movies and TV seen on a huge and bright screen before your eyes. I can certainly see a $299, or less, VR set being big this xmas for this demographic.
1) a very narrow field of vision, about the same my 15.6" laptop screen at the distance I use it. It's very easy to miss virtual objects and having to look for them it's not a great experience compared to the peripheral vision we enjoy in RL.
2) Objects are always transparent so colors are weak. Unfortunately I don't see a way out of this, especially outdoors. There can't be black unless in a dark room.
#1 can be fixed, I don't know about #2.
Sure looks like fun for the whole family...
I just wanna 4k dumb TV.
And that's on a relatively supported device. I can't imagine how bad smart tv's are.
OTOH, the apps built into my TV stream 4k all day every day.
This got me curious and there are a couple of options, most from a brand called Sceptre that I haven't heard of. Here's one with 4k, 65" and no smart features: http://amzn.to/2kpcIqy
I'll show myself out.
[1] http://variety411.com/article/a-night-of-high-spirits-for-ar...
We haven't even scratched the surface of what it's capable of yet. Even if no AAA titles materialize the amount of creativity coming from lone devs and small studios is astonishing.
In terms of "failing" - it might not become a mass market thing yet - but it's got an enthusiast market that's not going anywhere soon. There are a dozen OpenVR headsets coming out in the near future so even if HTC and Oculus disappeared tomorrow it would be sustainable.
Bear in mind 3D is only a tiny part of what VR is about. The failure of 3D TVs doesn't teach us anything about the future of VR.
Unlike 3D TVs, VR might be here to stay for the enthusiast market but I don't see it becoming a mass market must-have gadget for every household.
And because the current generation is so underwhelming and overhyped, there might be a 5-10 year period of relative silence before the next-next generation comes out - hopefully with much improved quality as the technology improves.
But the next year will tell... and it's up to the content side. If there will be a mega hit game, movie,other entertainment experience or even a serious application coming out I might be wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I've tried most of the VR gadgets out there and I kinda enjoyed using them (except the first Oculus devkit which was awful) and so did my friends. But they don't really keep me entertained for more than an hour or so. And I usually like to play with friends (in the same room) and having only one guy wearing the headset isn't really social.
First is that it is interactive.
Second is that it is not shared like a TV in a room is.
Essentially VR and AR are 90% the same technology and design challenges, but with AR you feature in the already existing 3D world around you and VR creates one.
Anyone else surprised they're making this decision partly based on 'anecdotal information'? Or would it be explicitly phrased this way to prevent people from suspecting spyware in their TV sets?
VR will not be a substitute because it is a different medium.
What I missed the most was Minecraft (actually, I found some older mod and it was kinda weird in 3D, so maybe that's for the better) and porn. If this was available, I could still use it, but as it isn't, I gave it to my parents to replace their TV.
If that makes you less interested in getting HDR because you don't always watch TV in a dark room, well... yeah, it's definitely a more niche feature.
However, IMHO the more interesting thing about the HDR standards is the improved color gamut. That is quite noticeable when you get content that uses it properly, but there's precious little of it right now. However, I do occasionally commit videophile sin and turn on my TV's "fake up a guess about how the color gamut might look" mode even though my media isn't technically mastered in that, and there are some things that it does make beautiful, even if it is technically inaccurate. Inside Out in particular is jaw-dropping on my TV in Fake-o-HDR mode. (Which isn't entirely implausible, as I understand it the original movie is in an expanded gamut, but there's no Bluray that has the expanded gamut version AFAIK.)
Color support does seem to matter in a side by side comparison for me. My MacBook pro colors "pop" a whole lot more than my gaming monitor's colors do. When I don't have them right next to each other, however, I hardly notice. It's hard to tell if it's the color (I think it is) or the resolution.
The only annoyance is that there aren't enough 3d films available. So I guess this will just cement that issue.
But all it really does is keep prices high and creates no real value.
No
As an aside, it seems 3D projectors are still around. A friend showed me his setup just the other day.
The only 3d experience I enjoyed - well enough as I wouldn't dissuade someone from viewing the film in 3d, at least - was Gravity, since the small-aperture space cinematography was very suited to a 3d presentation, 3d contributed to the feeling of the film - helping acheive a sense of contrast in scale between the personal experience of the main character and the very large catastrophes around them, and not just a fancy way to produce distractions.