On 01/26/2011 09:28 AM, authfriend wrote: > Bhairitu, Slate.com has a series of columns on 3D by a > guy named Daniel Engber, the most recent of which is a > rebuttal to Ebert, including Ebert's post with the letter > from Murch. > > Among other points, he says the more 3D movies he watches, > the fewer problems he has watching them. He speculates > that his brain is actually adapting to the new type of > visual stimuli and is beginning to process them differently. > > I've never seen a 3D film, but that makes sense to me on > a theoretical basis. The visual system can adapt to all > kinds of weird distortions. (See note below.) > > Engber also points out that this new generation of 3D is > still in its infancy and that there are no uniform > standards or techniques yet. He thinks there's a lot of > room for technological (and artistic) development that > may be able to eliminate or reduce some of the current > problems. > > He seems to be a pretty thoughtful guy. You might enjoy > the columns. This is the latest one; it has lots of > embedded links, many of which are to his earlier columns > on the topic: > > http://www.slate.com/id/2282376/ > > ----- > > Note: There was one experiment I recall reading about in > which subjects wore special glasses that turned what they > were seeing upside-down. At first it was terribly > disorienting, but after a few days wearing the glasses, > their brains figured out--spontaneously, without any > training--how to change the body's orientation to the > visual image so they could function normally. Then when > they took the glasses *off* they had to go through the > same process in reverse. > > There's an interesting discussion of this experiment > and others like it here, with links to the original paper > and other material on the phenomena involved: > > http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=127812 > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu<noozguru@...> wrote: >> Roger Ebert has >> commented before on his disdain for 3D but this article has >> a letter from award winning editor Walter Murch on 3D pretty >> much nailing the problem with 3D. I predict it will go away >> just as it did in the 1950s and remain only for an occasion >> "road show" feature. BTW, 3D TVs aren't selling either no >> matter how hard they push them. People are saying "I just >> bought a new TV a couple years ago and 3D gives me a headache." >> >> http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/post_4.html
I'm probably not going to waste my time reading rebuttals of Ebert's reasonable analysis especially when I do video production myself and even have the capability to do 3D and have experimented with it. That said when I was doing management in the game industry I told developers who were trying to figure out the "next big thing" to look at the Star Trek holodeck as the ultimate game machine and work backward from that to create a evolutionary path. There are a lot of advocates of 3D who see it as buttering their bread or their "rice bowl" but it does nothing for improving the story telling. I think it was A E Van Vogt who used the "rice bowl" thing and in fact he wrote a story with it in the title. It was a bit of an allusion to communism where everyone had to have a "rice bowl" but we can extend it to our overcrowded world where people are crawling one on top of each other to get their "rice bowl." Understandable but the more sensible among us just think why not just give everyone a "rice bowl" and use their minds for other thing than just survival. Capitalism creates chaos and should only be practiced within limits. It can be "free" when you have low populations where is plenty of slack and survival is not an issue. We don't have that now, it's like we live in trees hopping from leaf to leaf and if you aren't careful you'll fall. Besides there are always people trying to push you off the leaf to get you out of the way. Again what has that to do with 3D? Everything since there is an intense campaign to get the public to buy so that it's backers get their "rice bowl." Buyer beware.
