Haha .. I really wanted to pick up an active shutter system to play with. The price had kept me away. I was hoping that eventually the prices would come down.
As an aside, it seems 3D projectors are still around. A friend showed me his setup just the other day.
Active shutters are crappy and IMO one of the main reasons why 3D never took of. If you can get a passive 3d 4k panel from LG - great experience and no "half res" problem that full hd lg panels had.
Generally a new piece of tech getting popular is a good time to buy the old tech. When 3D was popular you could buy an excellent non-3D panel for a bargain. Now, if you actually like 3D, you can buy a 3D HD panel for a bargain. But I suspect most people don't actually like 3D.
Out of curiosity, did anyone here regularly use the 3D features of a television? I've seen them used to good effect for various demonstrations and interactive displays and such, but don't know any regular end-consumers who used the features regularly (despite knowing people who owned the televisions).
I actually quite enjoyed Sky Sports 3D but they had different commentators than on the main channels (due to fewer cameras and different angles, presumably), which soured it slightly.
Was there enough content available to do so? Some movies on Blue-Ray I guess, but in my experience the kind of person doing that has a projector (and shutter-glasses for that). I guess PC gaming would be an option?
No, but somehow I hoped the following would happen that could have made the tech useful: instead of having a pair of glasses each one with left+right filters, have two pair of glasses, one with "left" filters on both eyes and one with "right" filters on both eyes, with "left" frames coming from one input and "right" frames from another one, so that the TV can be used by two persons simultaneously (obviously without 3D). Basically that's interleaving two input sources and demuxing each one to each corresponding viewer with the glasses. For audio headsets would be fine.
Of course watching a romantic movie next to someone frantically playing a BF1 match probably wouldn't fly.
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:
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.
I've tested it with some games, especially Assassin's Creed: Revelations and Uncharted 3.
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 bought a Toshiba passive 3D TV. Never really used it much in 3D mode. I played a few PS3 games in 3D which was fun but ultimatley I preferred watching in 2D once I got bored of the 3D gimmick. I had a few 3D blue-ray disks but just did not impress me that much
I have watched a number of movies in 3D on our Philips TV and it's a very good experience, much better than in the movie theater. I tend to buy the 3D Bluray version of movies when available.
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.
We did, up until my son accidentally chucked the Wii remote into it :(. Ours was an LG set with passive 3D. It was great for the kids' animated movies. I didn't really find any non-animated movies for it. By the time we had to replace the set (last year), the number of movies being released without a 3D version was increasing, so I saw the writing on the wall and opted for a cheaper set without 3D.
3D Blu-ray on a decent TV (i.e. Samsung plasma) is far and above better than any theater. It got me buying 3D blu-ray discs (instead of doing streaming).
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...
I only buy 3D blu-rays. If its not 3D, I don't buy it. No point: I just rent it on Amazon Instant Video or iTunes. I have a Sony 4K/3D(passive) and its amazing, and a Visio 3D TV which is still good. We have maybe 15 (free) glasses so any number can watch. I will miss 3D, and 3D will be the #1 deciding factor when I buy my next TV.
Theaters are starting to get there. The laser projectors are just still way too expensive. I'm glad to see a lot of theaters finally upgrading their seats to be wider recliners. That's something I'll pay a premium for.
It depends; the cheaper ones have passive 3d glasses (polarisation filters), the cinema nearby then sells them for €1 apiece. I have two of them at home. The fancier cinema, brand new etc, has Dolby Atmos and active 3D glasses - they hand those out and collect them when you enter and leave the room. The ticket price of those is higher though (€15 ish).
I happened to be working as a Projectionist around the time 3D and Digital Projection began to really take off, and yeah... pretty much this.
[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.
I've certainly seen movies where that was the case, but The Martian in 3D was amazing. I also thoroughly enjoyed Doctor Strange 3D, though that was on IMAX laser projectors, which are amazing by themselves.
I saw Doctor Strange on IMAX 3D as well and I must say it was very impressive however there needs to be a good system for rating 3D movie experiences beforehand that way the consumer is not subject to wasting money on a horrible experience.
I find that I can often tell based on a baroque reading of the credits. Some of the 3D "upconversion" houses are better than others at their job. Some of the special effects houses have dedicated stereoscopic staff. Some of the studios themselves have dedicated stereoscopic departments. Obviously too, if there were stereoscopic cameras/film units involved in the main production crew of the film, that's usually a sign that the director cared about the stereoscopic output of the film.
I'm stereo-blind, so 3D movies annoy me more than anything. It always annoys me when people want to go see a movie in 3D and I have to decline since it will give me a headache 15 minutes in.
I don't quite understand that argument. If people hadn't purchased enough of the higher prices 3D tickets, it wouldn't be profitable, and cinemas would have given up. If people "have no choice" because of a lack of sufficient competition, then the cinemas would have just raised the price without adding a new feature which costs them money.
Not that you asked me, but here's one reason: I have keratoconus and even with glasses and multiple eye surgeries don't see 20-20. Moreover, my right eye is considerably worse than my left, which means that I can't quite get binocular vision to work, making 3d viewing impossible for me. I realize folks like me are a tiny minority, however.
Perhaps a broader reason is that 3d seems to encourage filmmakers to go for visual spectacle over good storytelling.
The 3D movies I've seen were just too dark. Add to that fingerprints on ill-fitting glasses and the faintly cross-eyed feeling I get watching scenes where the 3D is pronounced, and I'll much rather watch a nice, bright, 2D version.
To each his own, I guess: the lower brightness is actually the main thing I like about 3D. It's occasionally done well enough to add something to the movie. Other than those cases, the only benefit is having not as bright a screen in a dark room.
"Because I don't like gimmicky depth, distraction from the story, and worse dynamic range, and I'm not 5 years old to care for floating Ice Age characters...".
3D movies aren't real 3D, they leverage a subset of what we have learned to judge depth by independent of (and inconsistent with) other depth cues.
I can certainly see how too much early exposure would actually interfere with the development of the usual association of cues that support perception of distance.
3D gives me a headache. It also looks rubbish. I watched Gravity in 3D after Mark Kermode admitted it added something. It was bearable because it was a concise film and was enjoyable. But it works only in specific cases like these. It's more like a theme park ride than something that works on any film. Other times I was forced to watch 3D were: Dredd (only available in 3D), The Hobbit (was curious about 60fps which was only available in 3D). I regretted it each time.
Speaking only for myself, there are two big reasons I never go to 3D shows anymore.
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.
For us it was Avatar, but at least both of us couldn't stand it. I couldn't focus due to the 3D glasses not sitting at the right distance in front of my real glasses, and my bespectacled girlfriend got sick about 20 minutes in. We left, got our money back, and never bothered with 3D again.
It seems ridiculous now that you can get 4K TV sets for a reasonable price now and yet all the cinemas are touting their "New" 4K projection technology. Either bring back film or start projecting at 8K+.
So don't go to the theater. Complaining that some other people do a thing that you aren't interested in and are not compelled to participate in is petty and obnoxious.
From the viewing distance of movie theaters 8K wont do anything at all.
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).
Accurate reproduction has always been seen as a negative among a certain set of people used to what came before. Other examples include higher framerates for movies, digital photography, and compact discs.
If you live with a technology for long enough, you can start to see its flaws as advantages instead.
>Plenty of tech-savvy people are hung up on 24fps or vinyl, too. It can happen to anyone.
Maybe take the opposite reading of this observation? E.g. that those tech-savvy people know what they are talking about, and are not merely nostalgic or whatever?
First, vinyl vs mp3/WAV is not the same as 24fps vs higher frame rates, and conflating technical issues (each with their own characteristics and/or tradeoffs) is not really illuminating the subject matter.
Some things are not merely an issue of "technological capability" but tied to human physiology (the eye, etc).
The same way that a screen with 50,000 lumens is not naively "brighter = better" but blinding, or a 150dB headphone is not "louder = better" but physically damaging the ear.
Yeah, 150dB dynamic range is great, but nobody can hear it, and nobody can tolerate the upper range of volumes it takes to reproduce the full range on a speaker.
With color, on the other hand, it's not like that. The more, the better (24bit, 32bit, 64bit, etc).
With fps, again, there are issues related to the eye, how the "afterimage" works, when visual information becomes too distracting or overbearing, etc.
Note also that we, for example, have been technically lowering the resolution of photographs (smoothing the skin) to make portraits appear more pleasant since forever. It's one of the main staples in fashion and magazine portrait photography.
And that's not because "some old-fashioned people like smoother skin vs detailed skin". It's inherently better looking unless one likes wrinkles, pores and detailed nose hairs.
I'm not exactly clueless myself. I've yet to see an argument for lower-fidelity technology that is remotely convincing.
Reality is basically infinite fps. We all get by just fine, and the general consensus is that the effect is quite pleasing as long as the subject matter itself is.
Smoothing skin in photographs is entirely different. That's a selective effect applied before it reaches the display. Using higher resolution doesn't somehow force photographers not to airbrush.
As another commenter said, sometimes people deliberately decrease fidelity for effect, like filming in black and white after color was available. Doing it deliberately in a specific context for one work is totally different from a blanket declaration that 8k is fundamentally worse than 4k.
>I'm not exactly clueless myself. I've yet to see an argument for lower-fidelity technology that is remotely convincing. Reality is basically infinite fps.
Extreme close ups, action sequences, camera panning and traveling are not part of reality. Nor do we change camera angles several times per minute in a discontinuous fashion. Cinema is not a full real world simulation, it is a technical way to tell stories.
Sure reality has extreme close ups, action sequences, and panning. I'm not sure what traveling refers to, since the obvious interpretation is absurd. I don't get the argument with changing camera angles. If our eyes really do need 1/24th of a second to adjust for a cut, then a high-fps film can replicate that with multiple blank frames.
I get that cinema isn't reality, but the more capable the medium is, the more choices the filmmaker has for telling their story. I can buy that 24fps might be the best choice sometimes. I don't buy that it's the best choice for everything. It would be a crazy coincidence if a framerate chosen a century ago due to technical limitations when dealing with cellulose just happens to be the perfect framerate for cinema.
HFR and 8k require rewriting the rules of set design, makeup, lighting and post-production for non-documentary work as they expose the artificiality of fictional narrative. Rather than feeling like you're in the movie, you feel like you're on the set, seeing all the fake backdrops, cables, and acne. HD (and 4k) had similar issues, but not to the extent that HFR and 8k does. Although both HFR and high resolutions do work extremely well for sports and nature documentaries where suspension of disbelief is unnecessary, at the moment both are worse for narrative filmmaking using current techniques.
The Hobbit (shot 48fps 5k 3D)had mixed results using HFR. The scenes shot on location with less CGI looked awful (like low budget early 80s BBC mid day dramas) while the green-screen, heavy CG scenes felt like being in a video game (in mostly a good way). Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (shot at 120fps 4k 3D) looked absolutely horrible, like early HDCam home movies. It was impossible to get swept up into the movie and made an ok script and good acting feel much worse than it actually was.
I do believe someone will crack the code on HFR, but it will first require the right source material (The Hobbit and Billy Lynn's Long Walk Home were not it). I suggest utopian sci-fi or something set in a sterile environment. But even beyond that they have to figure out the lighting, makeup and set-design (and the extra burden HFR and 8k puts on post-production, especially for CGI/VFX).
One element that actually helps make a film feel cinematic is a slight softness to the image. The best looking digital cinema uses on camera filters and/or post-process to help achieve this look that comes naturally from film shot at 24fps.
Younger audiences who've grown up on HD and HFR video games are less bothered by the differences, but audiences usually don't really know what they want until they see it (one reason that early audience feedback is poison to the process).
background note: 20years experience working in production and post-production
I don't like the "feel cinematic" argument. It's rather circular: what feels cinematic is defined by what we're used to, so of course anything new won't feel the same. That's not an argument against the change, unless you want everything to stay static forever.
As for the rest, I don't doubt that it's hard, requires new techniques, isn't always the best choice, etc. But I don't buy this idea that it's always worse. Which doesn't seem to be the argument you're making, but it is the one I was responding to.
I'm getting a lot of good arguments about why certain videos should be shot using less than the maximum possible. But that's quite different from saying 8k and HFR is just plain worse.
> With fps, again, there are issues related to the eye, how the "afterimage" works, when visual information becomes too distracting or overbearing, etc.
There is no physiological phenomenon that makes low frame rates more natural or appealing. The real world doesn't have a frame rate. The preference for low frame rate is learned. No one ever selected 24 fps because it was better. They selected it because it was technically feasible at a reasonable cost and crossed the line into acceptable fps.
> Note also that we, for example, have been technically lowering the resolution of photographs (smoothing the skin) to make portraits appear more pleasant since forever. It's one of the main staples in fashion and magazine portrait photography.
This is wildly different. Firstly because most things on screen are not human skin and secondly because we've been smoothing skin in real life for centuries with makeup. The desire to see skin as smooth and flawless doesn't mean that people generally want the world to be blurry.
Depends on the movie. Pretty sure pores weren't problematic for Avatar, or March of the Penguins, or many other movies. For the majority of movies that do focus primarily on humans, there are typically still scenes (e.g. outdoor panoramas) that clearly benefit from high resolution. And a competent film crew should be able to soften the look if it is appropriate. It's slightly absurd to suggest that 4K is the max resolution we should allow because some films might be diminished by the use of 8k.
It takes more than just a competent film crew to adjust for 8k and HDR. New lighting, makeup and set design techniques have to make up for the higher fidelity. Suddenly the line where makeup is applied is highly visible, as happened during the switch over to HD (this led to makeup artists switching to air-brushing in the early days). Set design needs to look even more real than before (if you've ever been on set, you probably noticed how fake everything looks, yet on screen the flaws disappear). This will take time and experimentation. And money, money that the industry really doesn't seem willing to spend yet as they've spent tons moving over to a 4k pipeline. It'll take a blockbuster success from someone like Cameron releasing an 8k HDR film for the industry to even seriously entertain the idea (and they'll be more gun shy since the 3D push wasn't as successful as they hoped). And unless annual attendance shrinks drastically, they have little reason for the extra expense (and theater owners won't want to bear the cost of the upgrade since they're still working on the upgrade to 4k).
Douglass Trumbull, a pioneer in cinema techniques, is developing technology to allow mixed frame rates and resolution. So those panorama shots could be 8k HFR, while maybe the close up shots of the actors are 4k 24fps. It will be interesting to see if this actually works in a film that requires suspension of disbelief. I wouldn't hold my breath for this to reach cinemas in large numbers anytime soon.
All this is to say, it is much more complicated than you make it out to be.
> It takes more than just a competent film crew to adjust for 8k and HDR....
Your list boils down to "use it appropriately and don't assume old techniques are appropriate". Obviously there is a lot of learning the industry would need to do to use 8k well.
> Douglass Trumbull, a pioneer in cinema techniques, is developing technology to allow mixed frame rates and resolution. So those panorama shots could be 8k HFR, while maybe the close up shots of the actors are 4k 24fps. It will be interesting to see if this actually works in a film that requires suspension of disbelief. I wouldn't hold my breath for this to reach cinemas in large numbers anytime soon.
Sounds interesting, and promising, though I agree that it seems unlikely to be widespread anytime soon, even if it works beautifully.
> All this is to say, it is much more complicated than you make it out to be.
That's an odd comment to end on. At no point did I ever say it was simple. I said it's absurd to treat 4k like it's the pinnacle and anything beyond that is somehow actually a loss.
> All this is to say, it is much more complicated than you make it out to be.
Sorry, I think this was meant for another comment, not yours, as I don't see the sentence I thought I was responding to in yours.
>Your list boils down to "use it appropriately and don't assume old techniques are appropriate". Obviously there is a lot of learning the industry would need to do to use 8k well.
This takes more than a "competent film crew". A competent film crew should have no problem working in well established techniques and workflows but wouldn't necessarily be prepared to venture outside that. If I was directing a production in 8k, HDR, VR, 3D or any edge cases, I want more than a competent film crew. I want creative thinkers and problem solvers. I want crew members who have experience on a wide range of projects, everything from digital video to imax (you might be surprised at how often even the crews of big budget productions have limited experience outside the status quo).
In the early days of the RED camera, the best footage came from cinematographers who had worked in lower budget HD productions, not film cinematographers. The HD crews had already been working in similar workflows, but the competent film crews were flummoxed by this one piece of equipment and even though they could see the results on set, they would still send back footage that was way underexposed and often unusable (and this was often from very well respected and experienced cinematographers).
I believe few people in the industry believe that 4k is the pinnacle. But most do believe that the technology to move to 8k is not even close to ready or worth the added cost, that workflows for 4k are just now becoming standard (the majority of projects are still finished in 2k, although that will change with distributors like Netflix now requiring 4k delivery). And that audiences won't care enough about beyond 4k enough to pay extra. Are you ready to pay extra for an 8k screening? The theaters have to recoup the cost for new projectors while they're still paying off the brand new 4k installs. Oh, and there aren't many cinema lenses that can cover an 8k image (especially since many DPs prefer the quality of older lenses).
There are old timers that lament the loss of film and resist moving from 24fps. But they'll be replaced by the younger generation who will be more open to experimentation and pushing the medium beyond its limits. The industry is driven first and foremost by profits, so once the pencil pushers see profit in 8k and HDR, the whole industry will move in that direction.
In fairness, I did not say that the transition to 8k was easy or that any "competent film crew" could make a beautiful 8k film or leverage 8k to its max. I said that a competent film crew could soften the look if appropriate. The lazy fix for "too sharp" is to just scale down to 4k or throw a slight blur at the frames. A slightly less lazy fix would be use lenses that yield a softer focus (which I assume some of the insanely expensive film lenses can deliver).
But I wasn't saying it's trivial to leverage 8k well, just that if 8k is too much to deal with in some cases, effectively reducing the resolution seems a tractable problem.
What makes it difficult to mix frame rates and resolution? I would naively assume that you could just record each scene with whatever framerate and resolution you wanted, combine the whole thing into a single movie with the max resolution and framerate you used out of the bunch, and be done. For example, if you put 24fps material into a 48fps video, it still displays at 24fps.
Edit: since it's an ongoing theme in this discussion, I should point out that my "just record each scene" description is from a technical perspective only. Making it result in a nice-looking work of art is, of course, another matter entirely.
Current playback technologies only playback one frame rate. yes you can mix frame rates in an edit, but they will be converted to the master frame rate of the timeline (so that 24fps footage would be converted to playback at 48fps, not it's native frame rate). Sometimes this looks fine, other times this can cause image problems.
And it's only recently that mixing frame rates in the same timeline has worked well. 5-10 yrs ago, we would have to convert the footage, typically using hardware specifically built for conversion (Teranex or Alchemist). Then came along desktop software that could do decent jobs converting. Now, if i'm cutting in Premiere or FCPX, I can just drop the footage in and the software will take care of it, usually without issue (Avid still has problems with non-native frame rates and it's recommended to convert before importing the media).
And it's been this way since playback frame rates were standardized (and automated). Projectors had no way of changing playback speed on the fly depending on what frames were projected. Television was locked into one broadcast frame rate spec (29.97 in N. America, 25 in Europe) and TVs were locked into one of those specs. Tapes and disc playback was typically locked into one in the early days, although DVD eventually allowed for multiple playback options, as does Bluray, but the hardware typically converted them for playback on 29.97 screens (pre-HD). We're still limited to what the screen can playback to some extent, the broadcast specs of 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60.
With computers and monitors we have the capability to playback multiple frame rates, if the software allows it, and that is where the current issue is. I can playback different frame rate QTs on the same screen, at the same time without issue. But there is no software (that I know of) to create or playback videos consisting of multiple frame rate videos. Game engines might be able to change playback on the fly, but I have zero knowledge of that tech.
And it would be advantageous to have tech that allowed switch on the fly playback. I'm currently consulting on a documentary that uses source footage from at least 3 frame rates (24, 25 and 29.97). And the editor is cutting in Avid, so we have to convert before import, which slows down the creative process and adds complications to the finishing process.
With higher FPS i feel like i see more of the flaw on acting. Like im watching theater. I think low FPS increases the expérience by letting our brain fill some gaps.
Or rather, you learn to take advantage of the flaws of the current technology to create the kind of visual experience that you want. When the technology changes, it will take a while for everyone to learn how to take advantage of the strengths and weaknesses of the new platform to create different kinds of visual experiences, and in the meantime you get less than optimal results.
Some directors still shoot movies in black and white from time to time, not because they think color is inferior, but because they think black and white is better suited for the specific movie they want to shoot.
Definitely. I feel like "The Hobbit" was the wrong vehicle to introduce audiences to HFR, for example, and I hope it hasn't soured directors or studios on exploring what's possible artistically at higher frame rates.
Say, your nephew is an inexperienced driver. He used to drive an old beater but has worked hard for a year and buys a new car with a lot of horsepower. He gives you a lift, and it's an uncomfortable constant stop and go. Technically, the new car is better, but the driver doesn't understand that he should treat it differently, resulting in a worse ride than the old car.
Say, your cousin has been cooking as a hobby for a while. They move to a bigger house with a new kitchen and can finally get a big spice rack and a deep frying machine. They proceed to deep fry everything and put all possible spices on it. It tastes bad and monotonic.
Your friend plays in a band. They've been gigging a while and got new PA equipment that they say sounds less muddy than their old cheap crap. You go to a concert. The treble is so harsh you can't stand it and have to leave.
Some examples where some new tool is, in theory, better. But it turns out a worse end result because lack of skill in using it.
I find many technically oriented people don't understand this. They point out to some number saying "well this makes it absolutely better". Sure, numbers might be easy to measure. But it's the end result that's important to most people.
None of those would be reasons to avoid a new car, bigger kitchen, newer PA equipment, etc. They just show that there can be a learning curve. Your cousin's cooking is probably going to be a lot better once he gets the hang of it, and your friend's music will too. Your nephew's driving may not improve, but only because what we see as "good driving" lines up poorly with what a nicer car provides.
Not every film has to be made with the latest technology. Sticking with analog or black-and-white or 24fps is a perfectly valid artistic choice. But it's an artistic choice made by the film creator, not some advantage to the older stuff. Cinemas should be using the most accurate reproduction they can. Filmmakers can then dial it back in the actual film if they think that's better.
The comment I was replying to wasn't saying 8k might produce worse results sometimes, it was arguing that 8k and higher fps would just be worse, period.
Ok, so we agree the things that were limitations could also be used for artistic effects. (I technically disagree about the avoidance: don't buy something if you're not going to bother learning how to use it.)
Then, let's look at the reproduction part only.
Technically, it might work. More choice in reproduction. But maybe in the real world, movie theaters (and certainly in the television world!) would crank up the brightness and edge sharpening and frame interpolation to make the director's artistic material look totally horrible.
If you think about the whole life cycle of any kind of art delivered to some audience, it's lined with these huge pitfalls at every point.
Theaters certainly could screw it up. Wouldn't be the first time. But maybe they wouldn't! I have no problem acknowledging and discussing potential downsides. But blanket statements that better reproduction will provide a worse experience don't seem to be supported by the facts, and it bugs me.
"Better reproduction" probably means very different things to different people.
Likely a lot would depend on good defaults and good training. If you were as skeptical about people and organizations as I am, you would assume it could on average worsen many movies. The original Murphy's Law and all that. :)
I'd accept "on average." The original comment up there didn't even say that. It just said, blanket statement, high resolution would be worse, and high framerates would be worse still.
That's like asking "feeding yourself is now somehow a negative" when people talk about obesity.
It's not always a naive "the more the better" issue.
Too much resolution can result in unnatural and distracting results -- your eyes don't have that much resolution as when you see a person in 8K in a extreme closeup. It's neither natural not flattering to see an actors individual skin pores, for example.
Similarly, faster frame-rates capture motion more accurately (sharper under motion), but result in a movie that looks distracting and soap-opera-ish to the viewers eyes.
> Too much resolution can result in unnatural and distracting results -- your eyes don't have that much resolution as when you see a person in 8K in a extreme closeup. It's neither natural not flattering to see an actors individual skin pores, for example.
Your eyes can't see human faces 8 feet tall either but no one seems to think that movies are better on 20 inch screens. To the extent that movies look unnatural in extremely high resolution, that's an issue where directors need to learn to use the medium effectively. It's certainly not more natural to see blur or pixelation instead of pores.
> faster frame-rates capture motion more accurately (sharper under motion), but result in a movie that looks distracting and soap-opera-ish to the viewers eyes.
Only because we've been trained to expect films to be a juddery 24 fps experience. If high frame rates become commonplace they'll look commonplace.
I don't follow. Even looking painfully close to my retina displays the picture still looks great. There is no point where suddenly skin pores become noticeable when they weren't previously. If you see skin pores in a movie then that's the fault of the makeup department--I recall reading early HDTV productions struggled with this.
Rather, I think the reason why theatres don't benefit from 8k is that from a certain distance increased resolution doesn't have a benefit. E.g. If you ever get close to a billboard you may notice that the resolution of the ad is quite poor, but from street level it looks perfectly fine. We aren sitting much farther than 10' from the theatre screen, so more resolution won't be noticeable given the distance from the screen for most of the audience.
>your eyes don't have that much resolution as when you see a person in 8K in a extreme closeup.
If I move close enough to your face that it fills my entire vision I can see it in glorious 16k, skin pores and all. It's the extreme close up that's unnatural, not the fact that you can see details in extreme close ups.
As with 3d, most directors are lagging behind in adapting their style to changes in the medium. Some things that were developed for low-fidelity grainy film don't work in 8k. Some fight scenes that look good at 24hz look garbage at 60hz. But on the other hand 60hz and 8k allow for speed and details that just produce blurs on old 24hz mediums.
It's just a matter of what you're used to. I think higher frame rates look great! If you had grown up watching 60fps movies, and then someone released a 24fps movie, you'd complain that it looked rough and jittery.
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.
No, you'd complain they'd look blurry, and smoothed out. 60fps makes everything look sterile, and rough. Because you see every single minute detail on everything. Rough edges included. It's like using anti-aliasing and more recently motion blur in games, blur out the edges, and it's more "lifelike". Make everything a billion frames per second, and absolute, and it looks uncanny.
How do you know what another person would complain about? I've seen the Hobbit films in both 24 and 48 FPS, and the higher frame rate looked better. Period. I also don't watch soap operas or sports, so I have no aversion to a technically superior image.
AA isn't used to make things look more "lifelike", it's to make up for the fact that you're looking at a 1080p image (or lower) and since you're dealing with pixels shit looks jagged without it.
On that note, to hell with motion blur in games. The first thing I look for when I notice a game has it enabled by default is a way to turn it off, I'm not watching a film and responsiveness is much more important when I'm not sitting there mindlessly consuming content being played for me.
> Right, so real life isn't made of jagged lines, and blurring that gives illusion they are not.
Blurring is a hack to deal with the fact that higher res is expensive. Higher resolution is preferable over AA if you can afford the monitor and the GPUs to drive it.
It was a historical accident, in that 24fps was the cheapest frame rate that looked decent on the equipment at the time. Film stock cost money, and cameras and projectors that could reliably handle higher frame rates were more expensive. If the motion picture industry was starting from scratch today but with all of our modern equipment then I'm certain the standard frame rate would be higher.
I know you've heard this argument before, but isn't that the same thing people said about color movies? This sort of reminds me of arguments about Snapchat. A lot of people really enjoy 3D, trying to logically convince them that they actually shouldn't like it is not going to work.
>I know you've heard this argument before, but isn't that the same thing people said about color movies?
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.
Well, I love 3D movies but I've never been interested in a 3D TV, I think because watching movies in a theater and at home are very different experiences. If I always watched TV sitting up straight without leaving my seat, I'd probably buy a 3D TV.
I don't really understand how enjoyment is a moot point. Enjoyment is pretty much all that matters for a consumer entertainment product.
This implies that "large numbers" of people complain about 3D. I suspect this isn't true, and that it's really a very loud very small minority.
> 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.
Yes, but the point is that some evidence needs to be provided. Since some statements are wrong and some are right, the argument needs to be more than "it's true because I said it."
> and they have never been that many to make it not be a fad in the cinema either.
What does this mean? At what point do you concede that it's not a fad in the cinema?
>This implies that "large numbers" of people complain about 3D.
No, it just implies that they don't care about it enough to e.g. sustain a 3D TV lineup.
>Yes, but the point is that some evidence needs to be provided. Since some statements are wrong and some are right, the argument needs to be more than "it's true because I said it."
The article is one piece of evidence, isn't it?
>At what point do you concede that it's not a fad in the cinema?
At the point it surpasses regular viewing and studios don't stop making such movies 5-10 years down the road?
It varies a lot. E.g. the Transformers movies are poster-children for overdone 3D for the sake of making the effects look cooler, while in Prometheus the 3D looks fantastic but is subtle enough that they don't become the focus of any of the shots.
Like with "fad," it's important to define "novelty." Is it a novelty if cinemas profitably offer 3D for 20 years before moving to some other technology? What about 50 years?
Yes, it can still be a novelty even if it exists for a long time. The question is whether people continue to value it after it's no longer novel and surprising; if a steady stream of people try it once or twice for years on end it could last a long time while still being a novelty.
I don't really understand that argument. It seems like everything would be a novelty under that definition. Will we be watching 2D movies in 100 years? What about 1,000 years? Even ignoring the halting problem, how can we possibly guess what is and isn't a novelty under your definition?
> how can we possibly guess what is and isn't a novelty under your definition?
By observing the typical behavior of one person using it?
Think of a Chinese finger trap. It's been around forever. And yet one person is not going to play with a Chinese finger trap every day. Once you experience it and figure it out there's not much to do with it. That's a novelty.
pretty much the whole population who can see perceive color. about 15-20% don't see in stereoscopic 3d. I'm one of those and i like seeing this 3d trend die...
Why? Maybe it's just my area, but I've never seen a 3D release that isn't also available in 2D. I guess it's slightly annoying when once in a while you can tell a scene was designed for 3D, but I don't think it's that big a deal.
Chaplin fought against sound in movies on a similar basis.
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.
Personally I loved it - it's one of my all time favourite moies. I find a lot of the criticism of it tends to boil down to whether or not people believe the science expedition was meant to be a serious effort vs just an thin veneer of a cover for Weyland. There's nothing to indicate that it was meant to be serious. E.g. it has the wrong set of specialties for an expedition looking for live aliens, for starters, and Weyland clearly see everyone but himself as expendable.
It's not a gimmick, it increases immersiveness when done right. The problem is the technology isn't quite there and directors haven't been trained in it (and usually don't make the effort) - so it's basically never done right.
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.
There's a huge difference between immersiveness (you feel surrounded by the image) and presence. Good modern VR gives you a sense of presence, which tricks the body at a level below conscious awareness that you are somewhere else.
And presence is characterized by lack of nausea.
If your only experience with VR is cell phones or the Playstation 4, then you probably have never experienced presence.
Yeah, if you want to experience presence you basically have to use a Vive - a Rift might just about do it but you'll probably run into a whole lotta tracking issues thanks to their (awful) tracking solution.
Wow, even HN has been infected! JK, but Rift tracking is great too. For "room-scale" with good tracking you basically need 3 sensors (you can buy additional sensors). For some games that cause heavy occlusion due to needing to lie on the floor or whatever, you would have to put the sensors in ceiling mounts to get the full volume tracked accurately. And the tracking volume will be smaller for the Rift compared to the Vive, but very few people have a bigger than 2.5m by 2.5m space, which the Rift can track just fine.
I just got my third sensor a couple days ago, and it has made a night and day difference (there is also an option for 360 tracking with two sensors, but I didn't set that up). But even when I had two sensors the tracking was fine except under certain situations where my body would occlude the controllers. Not a problem anymore after the third sensor.
Anything that's 3D animated IMO, your pixar or dreamworks kinda stuff - they all work far better than camera-3D stuff as the '3D gimmick' fits with the fact that it's animated, as well as the nature of 3D CG allows for the stereoscopy to be tweaked and perfected far easier.
I saw Gravity in 3D and strongly hated it. One scene in particular killed it for me. In what should have been an emotional scene when the hero looses all hope and sheds a tear. The tear floats into 3D space and the camera changes focus from the distraught hero to the tear drop instead. So, the audience is taken from what should be an emotional scene to admiring a fucking tear drop floating in 3D space.
Doctor Strange is, but unfortunately at least in my town it's only showing in 2D at the cheap ($1) theaters now. I was blown away by the appropriate use of 3D and visuals in 3D IMAX for that movie. I saw Rogue One in 2D and then IMAX 3D and hated it in 3D.
Ohhhhhh. I saw Dr Strange in 2D and thought the rippling building effects and hurling of bodies and such was kind of goofy. Didn't think of 3D at the time, but now it makes sense.
Dredd was fantastic in 3d, but it was 90-95% 2d, only exploding to 3d for dramatic effect, particularly in the slo-mo scenes and some of the other set pieces.
Obviously, that doesn't help very much since it isn't in cinemas.
It seems that 3D is better suited to slow-moving, large-scale images than typical Hollywood action sequences. I can't stand 3D action movies, they make me dizzy. Especially when it's combined with shaky cameras!
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.)
Gravity was spectacular in 3D, but I have a much larger list of films (many of which aren't great) that have immersive and not distracting 3D. Off the top of my head:
3D was a big part of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. It made me wish Moulin Rouge had been done in 3D.
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.
Plot and story are very important. To me the most enjoyable movie of the year is usually the best script winner. Almost never the best movie winner.
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.
3D films give me a headache. I think it's something to do with a slightly lazy right eye. I've not actually been to a blockbuster theatrical release in the better part of a decade. There were plenty of films I would have gladly payed a ticket for, if only they were released in 2D.
Maybe it's different in different markets, but in my area, every movie released in 3D is also released in 2D.
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.
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.
People with amblyopia (lazy eye) are much more prone to stereo-blindness than people without, since your eyes aren't properly aligned stereoscopic 3D not only "doesn't work" for many but the tricks your brain normally uses to compensate don't work correctly and can cause headaches.
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).
It contributes to story if movie designed ground up for 3D specifically. Actually, the only movie I have seen in this category was Avatar. The environment, colors, action scenes are all designed to look better in 3D. Other movies I watched have always ended up with poor experience.
I went to the IMAX at the zoo in MN and watched Jurassic World in 3D. It was amazing, and actually made me want to see more movies like that. It was much nicer than the standard IMAX.
They had a preview for The Walk and that preview showed the true depth of 3D.
The first Jurassic Park in special release IMAX 3D was pretty good as well. The larger screen helps a lot, as well as them not going crazy with the post 3D
3D != 3D. If they can do away with non-IMAX 3D, I'd be happy. The typical cinema experience is just crap - especially because the brightness being usually cut in half compared to the regular, flat movie. But IMAX screens I actually enjoy (even though I wear prescription glasses, which makes watching 3D movies a tricky problem in general).
I remember hugely enjoying a traditional film-based IMAX 3D, but there isn't such anymore close to me.
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.
Yeah, no - it wouldn't be great. I love seeing movies in 3D. Every 3D movie is also offered as non-3D for those that don't like it. This "stop doing something because I personally don't like it!" mentality is what should be done away with.
Well, the total number of movie showings in an area are somewhat limited, and don't increase that fast. By splitting the types of experience shown between 2D and 3D, they are reducing the number of showing for people that prefer a certain type of experience compared to if they were all that experience. For people that prefer 2D, this is a reduction in the total showing they could expect, so a loss. Of course it's a gain for those that prefer 3D, and a huge one, since it was effectively nonexistent previously.
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.
On (most?) non English speaking countries, on top of the choice between 2D and 3D, you have to choose between subtitled and dubbed.
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.
8 Theaters showing Star Wars movies, only one of those theaters is not 3D.... Sure you can see those movies in non-3D, but they sure like having a lot of 3D versions in the theaters. Nothing I like more than watching a movie wearing 2 pairs of glasses, especially if the second pair is really unfomfortable and don't fit right.
Psychology. People have an inner understanding of how much things "ought" to cost. If you charge more than that, you need a differentiator or it will trigger their scam detector and they'll reject you.
3D is a good differentiator, and allows for a price raise that otherwise doesn't appear justified.
Actually yes. As a commenter above me hinted at, you would if it was the only option you had.
I had to see ep 7 in 3d because there was no 2d showing on release day.. But I'd rather pay a bit more and watch it in 3d than to not watch it at all
If it's the only option you have they could just raise the price without implementing 3D. After all, ticket prices have risen over time for the same formats. Of course, the reality is that you always at the bare minimum have the option to just not go to the cinema.
No not quite. The thing is that they have a normal mix of 2D and 3D showings but not on the release day. So the issue is of wanting to see it the first day. So they have the normal division of prices between the two of them, but you are essentially forced to go for the more expensive one if you want to see it when it is released.
Because in a lot of markets they control the supply. 3D provides leverage to increase revenue across the board, and if 3D is the only option to see Star Wars, people will choose to pay more and see it in 3D when faced with the option of not seeing it at all.
It's more of a hint of how much money 3D makes the theater. As far as I can tell, most of my friends are pretty neutral on 3D. I don't like 3D, but I'll go to a 3D movie with my friends, especially if the only time we can find that works is a 3D showing.
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.
> Even if you can see a movie in 2D, you are consuming a product that was creatively compromised by filming it in 3D.
Mind you, for movies where the majority of many shots are CGI-composited (or for works that are just plain-old digital animation in their entirety), the 3D is "free": you have a 3D master whether you want one or not, and any 2D release is a post-processed edit.
> 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.
I've always wondered whether this problem could be "solved" with eye-tracking in VR. The gear would project a ray from your pupil to the image, hit a pixel, map it back through the projection matrix to the surface of an object in the scene, and then dynamically adjust the depth-of-field so that that part of that object (and everything else at the same depth) was in focus.
> Mind you, for movies where the majority of many shots are CGI-composited (or for works that are just plain-old digital animation in their entirety), the 3D is "free": you have a 3D master whether you want one or not, and any 2D release is a post-processed edit.
It's not free because although the assets are in 3D, the final render still needs to be done, and for stereo you need to render every frame twice, once for each eye. When I was working on animated features the extra production cost for stereo was ~10% of the total production budget.
> Sure you can see those movies in non-3D, but they sure like having a lot of 3D versions in the theaters.
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.)
3D takes up time slots that could otherwise go to 2D showings, so it's zero-sum and the mentality is logical and reasonable for 2D fans to celebrate the decline of 3D. The faster the 3D showings phase out, the faster the movie-going experience returns to its former convenience of having all showtimes be acceptable. Or not having to go to a worse theater that has a 2D showing at the only available time.
Nobody's trying to oppress you personally or trying to control your experience out of principle. (I hope.)
> 3D takes up time slots that could otherwise go to 2D showings, so it's zero-sum
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 doubt it. When 3D movies started to appear in the cinema, 2D prices did not go down. The 3D tickets were simply higher by, in Ireland, several euro, ostensibly to pay for the extra production costs.
Ticket prices generally increase over time. It's quite possible that 2D prices would.have increased faster without 3D, but obviously impossible to verify.
When the 3D movies disappear, is it more reasonable to expect that cinemas will take the cut to their income, or try to raise their 2D ticket prices to make up for the lost extra revenue? I'd expect prices to go up, at least in the formerly-3D theatres that already have the upgraded, premium equipment. In fact, one of the ones nearby does sell tickets to their premium-level theatres for a few extra dollars, even for 2D shows.
3D also usually monopolizes the best (tech) screens/sound systems.
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.
There's always an option to bring 2D glasses [1] to a 3D movie showing.
[1] Not a joke: on Amazon you can find polarized glasses that work with most theaters where both lenses are polarized to just a single camera (left 2D and right 2D). I've got a friend that experiences motion sickness at 3D showings that uses them to see movies where everyone else wants to see 3D. One of the lesser utilized but awesome tools with some of the home 3D TVs (like my LG) is to have one player with left 2D glasses and the other with right 2D glasses and play a "full screen" coop game.
My bet is that people just wouldn't be willing to pay as much for a 2D movie. If there were only 2D movies at 3D prices, people would just go to the theatre less. Which is why, whether consumers like it or not, theatres won't let 3D die: it's their profit margin, like "whales" are for casinos.
No problem. I haven't been to a 3D movie anywhere, ever. I used to go to lots of them. Now I hardly set foot in a theatre. So I voted with my feet - until the 3D fad passes, I'm good with Netflix thanks.
Because sometimes it's worth the camaraderie to "take one for the team". Sometimes if you're the only one in a large group that actually dislikes something, you keep your trap shut.
It depends on the personalities of everyone involved, the strengths of their feelings on the matter, etc. There's a lot of variability involved.
I'll do something I fear will be boring or go to restaurant I don't love for my friends. But I won't take a 3D headache or eat at a restaurant that has nothing but stuff I'm allergic to, because headaches suck. (Turns out both my clauses converge on that "because".) At the risk of channeling $STEREOTYPICAL_MOM, are people who'd ask that of you really your friends?
Lack of sleep gives me headaches. Sometimes (but not always), 3D movies do too. They're always more fatiguing than 2D movies, at the very least.
> At the risk of channeling $STEREOTYPICAL_MOM, are people who'd ask that of you really your friends?
They don't know, because I don't tell them. Otherwise, they'd bend over backwards to accommodate me, which would make me more uncomfortable than the physical pain does.
You'd choose differently than I would, apparently. Having tried both approaches to dealing with the situation (with other groups of people), I've decided that I prefer this one. You can take your condescension and shove it up your ass; it serves no useful purpose here.
I just checked local Cinemark and most movies showing (including the Star Wars one) are available in non-3D. So it may be not the function of availability :)
3D can reduce the availability of 2D showings by 50%, so if there are half as many times when 2D is showing, then there will be customers that choose not to see the film because showtimes don't fit their schedule.
Source: Myself, a dad that only sees movies a couple times a month during a very limited time period when the babysitter is available
So you used your feet to vote against something despite never giving it a try? You just assume you'll hate 3D? What if you're wrong and missing an amazing experience just because you're afraid to try new things? Worst case scenario is you were right to begin with and you wasted 2 hours and maybe an extra $3.
Out of curiosity, did you end up watching 3D IMAX? There is a single IMAX cinema in my city (so I cannot do a comparison), and Rogue One was awful in it. Blurry, dark, slightly out of focus. I wonder whether this is a flaw in all 3D IMAX showings, or maybe this particular cinema had some technical problem?
My experience was that 3D IMAX is way worse than regular 3D (which I'd also rather not watch).
The only passable 3D experience I've ever had was in a 3D Laser IMAX. The brightness was leaps and bounds better than any other 3D screen I've seen, and it wasn't constantly distracting like most are. The laser imax experience blew away any other 3D movie on a regular screen I've ever seen and it wasn't remotely close.
At my local theater, the IMAX movies I've seen have all been incredibly bright and sharp, both 3D and 2D. I don't think it's something inherent to the format.
I would actually recommend against it. I saw it in 2D IMAX, and there was enough shaky-cam that the giant screen just felt disorienting and a bit nauseating. I don't think Rogue One is well-suited to that kind of environment.
>This "stop doing something because I personally don't like it!" mentality is what should be done away with.
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.
It would be a thing of beauty and wonder if someone could accurately re-dub all of Batman Begins with Adam West dialog from the original series. Instant meme-success.
I don't know if you're joking, but regardless there is a point to be had.
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.
Not at all joking that Adam West is the best. He owns the character like Shatner owns Kirk.
That said, I like the campier interpretations of the TV show and Burton/Keaton but I also like the grittier Miller/Mazzuchelli Year One and Nolan/Bale interpretations, too. There's a proud tradition of both, and they complement each other (one interpretation playing straight man to the other, if you will).
> 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.
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.
Building on top of the gaza pyramids doesn't destroy the original, it changes it.
Sequels absolutely can affect the integrity of the original by expanding the universe of the plot in ways that it's original design never intended or the way it was originally perceived.
> You're not obliged to pay attention to any of the sequels.
That statement does nothing but detract from the conversation. Of course I'm not obliged to pay attention to any of them. I'm not making the generalization that all sequels are bad.
No but you are saying that a bad sequel can make the original worse. I don't think so. The original is still there, untouched, and you can hone your skill at putting yourself in the context in which it was originally released.
Yes, but it's a fictional universe, so you're free to disregard any elements of it that fall outside of your favorite entries into the canon.
If you think that some new works expand the universe in a stupid direction, there's no reason you can't pretend they don't exist and still derive the same meaning from your favorite works.
I don't know that making a new season of a tv show is anything like building on top of the Great Pyramids of Giza. It's like building another pyramid.
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.
Derivative work is a little different than building a sequel though. A sequel may stand alone on it's own, but it also can take away from the original intention of it's prequel because it usually further builds out the universe or plot that took place in the original.
Movie producers often reach for sequels because they are guaranteed cash grabs and prop them up with nothing more than a shallow plot and a few A-list celebrities. To many, this takes away from the intent and meaning of the original.
I like a well-done sequel. As much fun as it is to step into a movie world for the first time and find out what's going on, there's a certain sameyness to the requisite beats to establish origins, establish personalities, establish locations, just a whole lot o' establishing going on. Again, that's great and all, but it limits the amount of time for the story itself, and limits the range of stories that can be told.
Look at all the superhero origin stories that have come out lately, and summarize to yourself the story in the movie, without including any of the establishing. Even in the best ones... in fact, to some extent, especially in the best ones... the story itself is quite simple.
The sequel will have a chance to spread its wings much more. The fact that so many fail to do so is... well... an interesting discussion on its own. But the really great sequels are often movies that had to be sequels, because they told a story too big to also have 45-75 minutes of establishing in there with them.
Tangential, but the bad thing about 50 seasons of the Simpsons isn't the product, but rather all the comedy writers and voice actors it ties up making schlock, who would otherwise be off making much more interesting and coherent works in smaller teams. The Simpsons is to TV production staff what EA is to game devs or Google is to software engineers: a place where promising talent is absorbed into a black hole.
> If they reboot Batman a dozen more times, it doesn't keep you from thinking that Adam West was the best Batman.
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.
It's a gimmick. If you don't care about plot and story and acting ability have at it, but to call it a "movie" is a stretch in any classic sense of the word. More like a theme park ride. This is why people are dismissive of it.
It's no more of a gimmick than "talkies", or color films. It's just newer in wide use, and so there are more people who are still more used to film without it.
In my view, the problem is actually that theaters often do not have equivalent quality for 3D and non-3D. The biggest, best screen may show 3D IMAX all day long, because that's what is most profitable. Seeing movies in 2D on the highest quality screen/projection/sound has been fairly difficult in the last year or more.
The worst thing about 3d is that most 3d movies aren't even shot in 3d. It's all "fake" and done in post. So it adds even less in that case than a movie that's actually shot with 3d in mind.
I do find it said that it is near impossible to find non-3D IMAX showings. My wife isn't a fan of the 3D. So I'm often forced to go to the normal showing and skip the IMAX showing.
> Every 3D movie is also offered as non-3D for those that don't like it
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.
Some 3D theaters are great, the IMAX ones tend to be the best because the projection equipment is top-notch, but others are really awful. The picture's dim.
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.
Well, for every one of you, there's one of me, and I hate it. Sure it's also offered in standard, but sometimes (too often) the only showing I can make is 3D.
You know... if you take 2 of those 3D glasses (you criminal!) and swap out the left lens for the right lens between them, you can make 2D glasses. That way when you go to the movies, you and a friend can share different views during the film... one with the right view and one the left. If you have friends with differing viewpoints, it might help... as long as they don't like 3D either.
Or if you don't want to fiddle with very fragile things just buy 2D glasses, I won't link because I do not want to spam but they exist and they do the job.
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".
Well, many people get headaches. It's not a stretch to say whatever causes a headache in a sensitive person might cause worse.
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.
Here's my speculation on why you got downvotes, based on how I would criticize your post. You're missing a third possibility: That it is a stretch to say that the "worse [than headaches]" could be seizures. It's a somewhat extraordinary claim, and you provided 2nd-hand, circumstantial anecdotes in support of it.
I'd be pretty happy to never see another terrible chase scene that has been crammed into a movie where it didn't need to be, just to justify showing the movie in 3D.
I think 3D is so much more of an effective gimmick in movie theaters than at home. It's kind of a "special" thing to go out to a movie, etc. so I think the effect kind of works there.
3D at home... on a smaller screen... just doesn't work as well as a spectacle.
I wish more movies would be done like Superman Returns.
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.
Outside of IMAX cinemas, it seems ticket sales for 3D movies are lackluster as well (compared to 2D showings of the same film at the same location). Not sure if it's the actual format or just the 3D surcharge.
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.
Before downvoting this commenter, think about how he or she is making a fair observation about technology hype, and the stomach consumers have for consuming entertainment while wearing awkward equipment. It did not work for 3D TV or Google Glass.
Not really, the observation can be made about any new technology and sometimes will be correct, sometimes not. Without further explanation why 3D TV and VR, two completely different technologies, are somehow comparable it's just noise.
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.
>Not really, the observation can be made about any new technology and sometimes will be correct, sometimes not. Without further explanation why 3D TV and VR, two completely different technologies, are somehow comparable it's just noise.
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).
The original comment seems to be saying that VR is a fad because it's similar to 3D TV. You're saying that VR is similar to 3D TV because it's also a fad. You may well be correct, but that can't be used to support the original comment, since it would be circular reasoning.
I also think VR is overhyped, but not because it's a fad (though that's part of it).
It's similar to 3D TV in that it presents content in a better way that nobody asked for, and nobody ever found a way to massively leverage the tech that truly felt natural.
3D content ended up falling into two camps:
- Films that are largely the same experience as their 2D counterparts. You barely notice that the 3D is there, and after the fact you'd be hard pressed to claim that the 3D made the experience substantially better in any way. A lot of VR tech demos fall into this category - things that are "well, that's very cool, but..."
- Films that exploited the 3D technology by throwing baseballs at your face, having characters literally fly out of the screen, etc, to fully drive home the 3D effect - but ultimately all of them were gimmicky and done for the sake of showing off the tech. VR has a boatload of these, where the entire experience is about the spectacle of VR, rather than VR tech being the vehicle to some more substantial experience.
3D films never found a way to integrate the tech in a way that felt substantial, and VR is struggling with the same. Some niche VR categories (see: cockpit games like driving and flight sims) have certainly embraced VR, but more generally VR is dominated by tech demos and games that simply don't feel like a meaningful upgrade over their 2D counterparts.
VR is a (very cool) solution looking for a problem, and IMO in that way it is similar to 3D TVs, and unless it finds its killer problem to solve, will suffer the same fate as 3D TVs.
I don't know if VR will take off, but I do think it has a lot of potential.
3D just doesn't add that much to videos. It can add a little bit to the immersion, but we're already good at picking up other depth cues. I can think of videos which could potentially be better with 3D, but I can't think of any video experience you fundamentally couldn't have without 3D.
With VR, it's pretty easy to come up with things it can do which fundamentally can't be done without it. Flight sims, as you mention, are a big one that come to mind. Being able to freely look around is huge. I think this stuff is going to become a really useful tool in learning to fly. Simulation is already proving really useful even without VR, but seeing everything through a fixed monitor is severely limiting. Being able to look around to get the same visual cues you'd get in the real airplane will be a big improvement.
Obviously, that's fairly niche, but a really useful technology that greatly appeals to a few is different, and much more interesting, than a not-very-useful technology that vaguely appeals to many.
I'm skeptical about some of the wacky stuff people predict for VR, like using it to hang out with friends or watch movies together or whatever. But if you get away from areas where you just do the same old stuff a little bit better, there do seem to be some properly interesting things it can do.
> It's similar to 3D TV in that it presents content in a better way that nobody asked for...
No, that's where VR is so different from 3D TV. Nobody was making 3D TVs in their basement. But people have wanted VR for so long that they have been hacking together their own VR headsets. I had been experimenting with using smartphones in cardboard boxes for years before Google Cardboard came out. The significance of Google Cardboard is that it signaled a moment when smartphone hardware was finally "good enough" to do it.
And while Google Cardboard is of course not a great experience, in a lot of ways it's still the basis of the core technology behind most of the other headsets. The Rift and the Vive wouldn't have their relatively high DPI display modules if it weren't for the advances in display module tech built for smartphones. The original Rift DK1 and the Gear VR wouldn't have their motion tracking tech if it weren't for the advancements in high-frequency, low-cost IMU technology built for smartphones.
And the problem is not that VR does not have a cool solution for any problems. It has plenty of those. You just don't personally care about the problems that VR solves. And that's fine, we all have our different interests. But don't assume that means that nobody wants VR.
> "You just don't personally care about the problems that VR solves."
On the contrary, I do. I have the Oculus Rift and the Touch controllers, and I enjoy trying all the content there is. I also love VRs and flight sims - but I've been a flight sim nerd since I was a kid...
The problem is that I don't think the vast majority of the world cares about the problems that VR solves, and that's precisely the similarity with 3D TVs.
I still know some people who love their 3D TVs and watch as much content in 3D as they can get their hands on, but ultimately these people are a very small market, and manufacturers have decided this market isn't serviceable profitably. VR faces the same issue - the places where it's truly well integrated are very niche, and despite multiple attempts at broader appeal, has yet to break out.
Heck, you say mostly the same:
> "But people have wanted VR for so long that they have been hacking together their own VR headsets."
"People" being a vanishingly small community of makers and tinkerers.
VR has been a dream for a long time for many people - especially in the hacker community - but it was never a mainstream desire. In the same way people have been hacking stereoscopic tech together for a long time before 3D TVs, and yet 3D TVs still failed in the mainstream.
VR will always have a place in some niches - the issue here is if major hardware manufacturers will be able to support this niche at the level they are doing right now. The Rift and the Vive are both incredible leaps in VR tech, but both are predicated on the expectation that VR goes mainstream in some major way. Both products will not be sustainable if VR continues to be a very small market like it is right now.
I think one major difference between the two will be that VR content should be much more accessible. A lot of computer games were already trying to be VR, just with clumsy controls and a fixed monitor. Taking a typical first-person game and VR-izing it is pretty easy, and there's a thriving indie game scene. 3D movies require quite a bit more effort and have much more room for stupid stuff like using parallax on an object that's supposed to be gigantic and distant.
Having the hardware be something totally different may well be helpful too. A 3D TV is just a regular TV with a weird feature tacked on. It's hard to justify a higher price, so there isn't much incentive to add that feature. VR headsets are seen as a totally different technology, so their price can be set independently.
> "Taking a typical first-person game and VR-izing it is pretty easy"
This isn't true, though. Developers have found that existing genres are incredibly difficult to adapt into VR. First-person games have had the most trouble adapting to VR because moving the player without a corresponding real-world movement is disorienting.
The abstraction of moving with a controller actually made FPSes even possible - what we've found is that allowing free-look with a VR headset and movement with a joystick is basically impossible to implement well.
If you're looking to your left and push up on your joystick, should the player move in the direction you're looking? Or in the direction of your torso? Worse, having the player move through the world even though the player is physically still causes nausea and disorientation in even seasoned VR users.
First-person game devs have largely settled on teleportation as the replacement - you can't move the player around like you do in a normal game, you can only teleport them to fixed positions. This has solved the disorientation problem at the cost of immersion - most games don't have a convenient in-world explanation for why the player gets to teleport around - and also removes dimensions of gameplay (teleportation makes dodging enemy attacks stupidly easy, after all).
Some modders have shoved VR support into traditional FPSes, and for all of the above reasons these are unplayable. Some have altered their gameplay to support teleportation, and some have disallowed player movement at all (see: Superhot VR). In any case, adapting games to VR is really hard, and in many ways controllers/keyboard/mice were much easier.
Thanks for the info. There are, however, a lot of first-person games where the player controls some sort of vehicle, where all of this is basically solved by default. That's still enough for a lot of content.
I think 360 degree video and other POV style video is going to be the killer app for VR. Even more so than gaming because passively watching video doesn't require complicated/gimmicky controls and half a dozen sensors. Coverage of sports in 360 video is going to be huge.
I suspect once the tech is good enough, it could become quite useful for non-entertainment uses. E.g. viewing houses before buying them, or house designs before building one. Maybe integrate it with something like Google Maps street view, so you can get a feel for where something is, and where to park, before you arrive.
I'm sure there are plenty of other uses, but it will probably be a while before the tech is good enough to be convenient for these uses.
There are decades of hard scientific research driving VR towards its current position. Shooting robots with it at home might turn out to be a fad, but dismissing the entire technology outright as a pointless toy is disingenuous. You really, honesty, don't see any market applications for VR? Any scientific applications? You don't think the Navy is going to train pilots with VR?
Sure, there are verticals that get extra value out of it. But flight sims (for example) are actually easier to "get right" with regards to subsonics, etc by constructing a box to put the person in, and immersing them directly.
Similarly, telemedicine was a thing 20 years ago and it does work in some cases, just like robotic surgery with the DaVinci system. But most people want to have a doctor diagnose them and then perform whatever procedures might be necessary, and especially the wealthy customers hospitals really want tend to prefer doing that with a human. So most of the value add comes from the surgeon rather than the surgery. (Even in oncology, bedside manner is worth a tremendous amount -- to the tune of 8-figure restricted endowments for colleagues of mine)
Speaking as someone who participated in said research, I've seen this cycle before. Maybe it will end differently. But I personally am skeptical. YMMV.
I think at some point being able to tour houses for sale online, or even to be able to view designs in VR would be very useful.
Imagine if you were buying a fixer upper, and hiring someone to renovate it. It would be pretty cool if you could see their design for the renovation in VR and make sure it feels good before investing in the house and the work.
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.
> 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.
"Workable", as far as I know basically everyone who used VR then and used it now agrees that there is a big difference due to technological advancements.
The argument that people don't pay extra for it is also only relative, because that's a function of the price they have to pay extra. I'm pretty sure if a high-end VR headset would cost 30 Euro many more people would buy it, as I'm sure more people would buy it for the current price point if the tech would be more advanced.
To sum it up with an comparison: Your argument reminds me of all the people who said a file hosting service will never be something people want as others had failed before and it is a useless idea. Dropbox proved the opposite.
In the end no one knows the future, but at least we now have had a fruitful discussion with arguments for both positions.
True, if the marginal cost is tiny, a lot more doors open. But my recent experience with a VR headset we got my daughter for xmas ... did not knock my socks off.
Predictions are difficult when they concern the future. I'm skeptical, but I've certainly been wrong before. We shall see.
VR 20 years ago was hampered by the same reasons that video game and professional graphics were: you couldn't render visually convincing detail in realtime, which greatly limited the "reality" portion of the name. Today, the graphics problem is no longer an issue.
3D TV is a gimmick that requires support. If you don't have 3D content, you're paying a premium for a set with unused tech inside. A lot of people also hate 3D, because it's not always done well. It's a garnish. Create a spectacular story with good characters, actors, writing, and plot lines. Then beef it up with 3D to add to the movie going experience.
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.
I'm extremely sceptical about VR in the home. You just have to look at how 3D went. Consumers don't want friction, they don't want the hassle of having to put something on and off their face. In this respect VR is the same as 3D, except even worse.
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.
One counter argument I've considered is industry excitement (I'm a game developer). No one in my network was excited about 3D TVs. No one in my network was excited about the Kinect. Both seem to have failed.
Almost everyone in my network is excited about VR. Having the content creators on board is huge.
VR doesn't necessarily need to be active. Passive VR might be a great way to start, especially if it can display the content already created for 3d TVs. I think the jury is still out on the best VR control interfaces when you are actually engaged with the content.
I'd love to see Passive VR content and active VR content develop side-by-side like Movies and Videogames did.
I watch videos in VR. It completely blows me away in a way that no other display technology has. I can simulate a theater experience fairly well, ignoring the current low resolution of 1st gen HMD's. Its really an unbelievable experience for cinephiles. My tiny spare room can magically be converted into something close to a full size theater. That's not something to dismiss outright.
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.
Apples and oranges.
3D TVs and cinemas serve no new purpose. There is objectively little to no difference between watching a movie in 3D or in 2D, it is literally a gimmick to attract customers.
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.
vr has a variety of applications outside of games. assuming people can realize that potential, i think it could be. especially if lower price point stuff evolves like the samsung kit.
I loved 3D TVs because I got into it at the end. The story of home 3D in general is a little sad, the first attempts on both computers and TVs were mediocre but somewhat expensive (really expensive on PC), which burned people. Towards the end attempts improved, but it was too little too late and 4k was the new "must have" feature.
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 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.
I'm sorry, but if you believe that 10 people and 5000 people signing a petition are close enough to be insignificantly different, you're objectively wrong.
Where can I read about this "hardware"? My understanding was that it was simply TV's with better color clarity and then marketing fluff. I've never heard about this "hardware".
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.
Active 3D required an emitter that synced glasses to the TV's output, and the glasses themselves.
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
It requires a polarizing filter/film that's aligned with the screens dot matrix.
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.
I was aware of passive 3D being done with aftermarket filters (mostly as a joke, printed on laminate), but proper consumer 3D had to support the same formats that Active 3D did, which usually meant side-by-side and top-bottom
OLED is fundamentally different than LCD for 3D purposes. OLED can near-instantaneously flip between the left/right eye views, so your perception in each eye is a clear image. LCD's refresh rate is much slower by comparison, leading to each eye getting a more blurry image.
I really hope they continue offering 3D TVs, especially since 4K offers the option for full 1080p passive 3D to be a possibility. I found a couple TVs that can do it already, but right now they're pretty expensive.
If they actually do fully do away with 3D sets, I'll be looking to nab an older model when they drop in price.
I was completely surprised by how great home 3d is! And I don’t really like 3d in the theatres at all.
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.
I agree. Passive home 3D is great, and it's a shame that so many people have made up their minds about 3D before experiencing it on a passive 3D TV at home.
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.
Curved TVs seem interesting for large TVs in 'home theatres', but in actual living rooms it seems like a disaster. Sorry, you're off the centre axis so 50% of the screen is warped for you, if not completely occluded.
Just as a counterpoint, I've seen it on a 4K LG OLED tv and I thought it was just as "meh" as theater 3d.
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.
I coughed up the money for a LG 4K OLED set last year, and suddenly I'm in love with 3D. For those that hate 3D, the experience on OLED is a while different world. Well-done 3D releases like Tron Legacy and Mad Max: Fury Road really come alive on this display. If you're in a store where you can demo one of these, get the salesperson to put on a decent 3D Blu-Ray release, I think you'll be impressed.
I saw Tron Legacy in 3D in theatres, and it was one of the most well-done 3D movies I've ever seen, in large part because they almost never used it. Except they did, it just wasn't obvious, and when it was it was obvious for the right reasons.
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.
Indeed, doing the real-world portions of Tron Legacy in 2D and the in-the-grid portions in 3D worked beautifully. I also happened to pick up a magazine about visual effects which contained an extensive interview with one of Tron's vfx designers, and it mentioned lots of cool details I missed when first viewing the film, e.g. check out the fireworks when they introduce the light cycle battle.
Interesting. I bought a top-end 4k set a few months back, and I'm not even sure if it supports 3D, but I think it does -- it seems like it was basically 'standard' on anything high-end enough. I could look into picking up a set of glasses, but then I'd probably need a new player -- my PS3 might not support 3D, and then maybe I have to worry about HDCP because I don't have the latest 2.2 HDMI receiver. Or maybe they're just interlaced 1080p/30 frames.
I believe to be in the minority, but I actually enjoy watching movies with passive 3D glasses. The problem for me was lack of easily accessible content.
I believe the same fate awaits VR headsets. AR (augmented reality) has the potential to be be the game changer, especially AR contacts, whenever they become available!
No, because 3D never really had "wow this is so much better" appliances, meanwhile (if you don't get motion sickness with VR headset) racing games with VR are so much better and work insanely well.
I would cautiously agree. The overall quality of VR - the headsets, the displays, the content - is just not good enough on current-gen devices (especially considering the price).
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.
Yea it's very much in the enthusiast market for now. If in the next 5 years they can get it down to £350 for the whole system and it all fits on your head it'll break into mainstream I think.
Price won't be an issue unless there will be content worth that £350 coming out in the next 5 years. If the VR hype fizzles down in the next year or so, it won't happen.
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.
I feel like in a TV metaphor VR is more like black and white TV and AR is Colour.
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.
You'll have to pry my Vive from my cold dead hands!
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.
I wonder what, if any, effect this has on the VR market. I could see investors getting spooked. Sure they are different, but enough to differentiate them with non savvy folk?
RE HDR ... I saw a side-by-side setup recently and could not tell the difference. I think you can only tell the difference if you turn the brightness way up. Or maybe it is just me.
HDR seems like another TV sales gimmick. Isn't HDR more about capturing the image with a lot of range rather than displaying it as such?
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.
If you literally could not tell the difference, then something may have been wrong with the demo. It is true you do need the brightness turned up, since you can't get the range if you cut the top end down too far in the first place, and I've seen it said you really can only get it in a dark room because of that.
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.)
I wish they would use this technology to show two different content at the same time. Example, the kids could play their game on mute while the parents watch another show.
Not sure who this market was intended for. It lacked the convenience of a regular TV set and also the "wow" factor of VR. I've started watching youtube and Netflix on my Vive and the difference between that huge virtual screen and what a 3D TV can do is enormous, even if the videos themselves are just plain 2D videos projected onto a virtual space.
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.
Oh, I don't see it replacing TV. I think TV is here to stay because we've built our lives around it. We surround it with couches and put in our most prominent rooms, for example. Or we have TV on our phones, laptops, and tablets ready to be consumed at any time, anywhere.
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.
The HoloLens could make it because it doesn't lock people into their own display. However it's still a long way from being ready for prime time. Two big problems:
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.
It seems like the same thing as the wireless companies trying to avoid becoming dumb pipes, except it's dumb boxes. They have to pretend they're creating value with "smart" functionality, HDR, and for a time 3D.
But all it really does is keep prices high and creates no real value.
“I live my life in 3D, I go to movies for the 2D. If I want to see something hurdling towards [me], I’ll just stay at home with my son.” - Paula Poundstone [1]
I never saw the point in 3d TVs. But I built a home theater with a 140 inch screen and a 3d projector to recreate Avatar at home, which worked fantastically well. I hope that technology doesn't go away.
Kill "smart" TVs, too, please! It's mostly unnecessary (set top boxes exist), confusing (for many), and they don't get updated nearly long enough as the TV's 10 year life span. So you may get yourself some ransomware through it.
I assume what kills it is the need for an accessory and the need to press various buttons on the remote to ensure 3D is enabled with sometimes frustrations.
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As an aside, it seems 3D projectors are still around. A friend showed me his setup just the other day.
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 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.
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...
It pains me that they aren't just focused on higher and high quality of projection instead of 3d.
[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.
4D==time :).
Perhaps a broader reason is that 3d seems to encourage filmmakers to go for visual spectacle over good storytelling.
When it's badly done it makes my eyes hurt after a while and I find it tends to make everything look blurry
I generally am not a fan of 3D, but my theatre seems to light 3D movies perfectly, while their 2D showings often seem dark.
I can certainly see how too much early exposure would actually interfere with the development of the usual association of cues that support perception of distance.
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.
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.
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).
If you live with a technology for long enough, you can start to see its flaws as advantages instead.
Only I'm someone working with 4K video and beyond professionally, not some grandpa tied to the ways of yore.
Maybe take the opposite reading of this observation? E.g. that those tech-savvy people know what they are talking about, and are not merely nostalgic or whatever?
First, vinyl vs mp3/WAV is not the same as 24fps vs higher frame rates, and conflating technical issues (each with their own characteristics and/or tradeoffs) is not really illuminating the subject matter.
Some things are not merely an issue of "technological capability" but tied to human physiology (the eye, etc).
The same way that a screen with 50,000 lumens is not naively "brighter = better" but blinding, or a 150dB headphone is not "louder = better" but physically damaging the ear.
Yeah, 150dB dynamic range is great, but nobody can hear it, and nobody can tolerate the upper range of volumes it takes to reproduce the full range on a speaker.
With color, on the other hand, it's not like that. The more, the better (24bit, 32bit, 64bit, etc).
With fps, again, there are issues related to the eye, how the "afterimage" works, when visual information becomes too distracting or overbearing, etc.
Note also that we, for example, have been technically lowering the resolution of photographs (smoothing the skin) to make portraits appear more pleasant since forever. It's one of the main staples in fashion and magazine portrait photography.
And that's not because "some old-fashioned people like smoother skin vs detailed skin". It's inherently better looking unless one likes wrinkles, pores and detailed nose hairs.
Reality is basically infinite fps. We all get by just fine, and the general consensus is that the effect is quite pleasing as long as the subject matter itself is.
Smoothing skin in photographs is entirely different. That's a selective effect applied before it reaches the display. Using higher resolution doesn't somehow force photographers not to airbrush.
As another commenter said, sometimes people deliberately decrease fidelity for effect, like filming in black and white after color was available. Doing it deliberately in a specific context for one work is totally different from a blanket declaration that 8k is fundamentally worse than 4k.
Extreme close ups, action sequences, camera panning and traveling are not part of reality. Nor do we change camera angles several times per minute in a discontinuous fashion. Cinema is not a full real world simulation, it is a technical way to tell stories.
I get that cinema isn't reality, but the more capable the medium is, the more choices the filmmaker has for telling their story. I can buy that 24fps might be the best choice sometimes. I don't buy that it's the best choice for everything. It would be a crazy coincidence if a framerate chosen a century ago due to technical limitations when dealing with cellulose just happens to be the perfect framerate for cinema.
The Hobbit (shot 48fps 5k 3D)had mixed results using HFR. The scenes shot on location with less CGI looked awful (like low budget early 80s BBC mid day dramas) while the green-screen, heavy CG scenes felt like being in a video game (in mostly a good way). Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (shot at 120fps 4k 3D) looked absolutely horrible, like early HDCam home movies. It was impossible to get swept up into the movie and made an ok script and good acting feel much worse than it actually was.
I do believe someone will crack the code on HFR, but it will first require the right source material (The Hobbit and Billy Lynn's Long Walk Home were not it). I suggest utopian sci-fi or something set in a sterile environment. But even beyond that they have to figure out the lighting, makeup and set-design (and the extra burden HFR and 8k puts on post-production, especially for CGI/VFX).
One element that actually helps make a film feel cinematic is a slight softness to the image. The best looking digital cinema uses on camera filters and/or post-process to help achieve this look that comes naturally from film shot at 24fps.
Younger audiences who've grown up on HD and HFR video games are less bothered by the differences, but audiences usually don't really know what they want until they see it (one reason that early audience feedback is poison to the process).
background note: 20years experience working in production and post-production
As for the rest, I don't doubt that it's hard, requires new techniques, isn't always the best choice, etc. But I don't buy this idea that it's always worse. Which doesn't seem to be the argument you're making, but it is the one I was responding to.
I'm getting a lot of good arguments about why certain videos should be shot using less than the maximum possible. But that's quite different from saying 8k and HFR is just plain worse.
There is no physiological phenomenon that makes low frame rates more natural or appealing. The real world doesn't have a frame rate. The preference for low frame rate is learned. No one ever selected 24 fps because it was better. They selected it because it was technically feasible at a reasonable cost and crossed the line into acceptable fps.
> Note also that we, for example, have been technically lowering the resolution of photographs (smoothing the skin) to make portraits appear more pleasant since forever. It's one of the main staples in fashion and magazine portrait photography.
This is wildly different. Firstly because most things on screen are not human skin and secondly because we've been smoothing skin in real life for centuries with makeup. The desire to see skin as smooth and flawless doesn't mean that people generally want the world to be blurry.
Most, no, just the most important (actors' faces).
Douglass Trumbull, a pioneer in cinema techniques, is developing technology to allow mixed frame rates and resolution. So those panorama shots could be 8k HFR, while maybe the close up shots of the actors are 4k 24fps. It will be interesting to see if this actually works in a film that requires suspension of disbelief. I wouldn't hold my breath for this to reach cinemas in large numbers anytime soon.
All this is to say, it is much more complicated than you make it out to be.
Your list boils down to "use it appropriately and don't assume old techniques are appropriate". Obviously there is a lot of learning the industry would need to do to use 8k well.
> Douglass Trumbull, a pioneer in cinema techniques, is developing technology to allow mixed frame rates and resolution. So those panorama shots could be 8k HFR, while maybe the close up shots of the actors are 4k 24fps. It will be interesting to see if this actually works in a film that requires suspension of disbelief. I wouldn't hold my breath for this to reach cinemas in large numbers anytime soon.
Sounds interesting, and promising, though I agree that it seems unlikely to be widespread anytime soon, even if it works beautifully.
> All this is to say, it is much more complicated than you make it out to be.
That's an odd comment to end on. At no point did I ever say it was simple. I said it's absurd to treat 4k like it's the pinnacle and anything beyond that is somehow actually a loss.
Sorry, I think this was meant for another comment, not yours, as I don't see the sentence I thought I was responding to in yours.
>Your list boils down to "use it appropriately and don't assume old techniques are appropriate". Obviously there is a lot of learning the industry would need to do to use 8k well.
This takes more than a "competent film crew". A competent film crew should have no problem working in well established techniques and workflows but wouldn't necessarily be prepared to venture outside that. If I was directing a production in 8k, HDR, VR, 3D or any edge cases, I want more than a competent film crew. I want creative thinkers and problem solvers. I want crew members who have experience on a wide range of projects, everything from digital video to imax (you might be surprised at how often even the crews of big budget productions have limited experience outside the status quo).
In the early days of the RED camera, the best footage came from cinematographers who had worked in lower budget HD productions, not film cinematographers. The HD crews had already been working in similar workflows, but the competent film crews were flummoxed by this one piece of equipment and even though they could see the results on set, they would still send back footage that was way underexposed and often unusable (and this was often from very well respected and experienced cinematographers).
I believe few people in the industry believe that 4k is the pinnacle. But most do believe that the technology to move to 8k is not even close to ready or worth the added cost, that workflows for 4k are just now becoming standard (the majority of projects are still finished in 2k, although that will change with distributors like Netflix now requiring 4k delivery). And that audiences won't care enough about beyond 4k enough to pay extra. Are you ready to pay extra for an 8k screening? The theaters have to recoup the cost for new projectors while they're still paying off the brand new 4k installs. Oh, and there aren't many cinema lenses that can cover an 8k image (especially since many DPs prefer the quality of older lenses).
There are old timers that lament the loss of film and resist moving from 24fps. But they'll be replaced by the younger generation who will be more open to experimentation and pushing the medium beyond its limits. The industry is driven first and foremost by profits, so once the pencil pushers see profit in 8k and HDR, the whole industry will move in that direction.
But I wasn't saying it's trivial to leverage 8k well, just that if 8k is too much to deal with in some cases, effectively reducing the resolution seems a tractable problem.
Edit: since it's an ongoing theme in this discussion, I should point out that my "just record each scene" description is from a technical perspective only. Making it result in a nice-looking work of art is, of course, another matter entirely.
And it's only recently that mixing frame rates in the same timeline has worked well. 5-10 yrs ago, we would have to convert the footage, typically using hardware specifically built for conversion (Teranex or Alchemist). Then came along desktop software that could do decent jobs converting. Now, if i'm cutting in Premiere or FCPX, I can just drop the footage in and the software will take care of it, usually without issue (Avid still has problems with non-native frame rates and it's recommended to convert before importing the media).
And it's been this way since playback frame rates were standardized (and automated). Projectors had no way of changing playback speed on the fly depending on what frames were projected. Television was locked into one broadcast frame rate spec (29.97 in N. America, 25 in Europe) and TVs were locked into one of those specs. Tapes and disc playback was typically locked into one in the early days, although DVD eventually allowed for multiple playback options, as does Bluray, but the hardware typically converted them for playback on 29.97 screens (pre-HD). We're still limited to what the screen can playback to some extent, the broadcast specs of 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60.
With computers and monitors we have the capability to playback multiple frame rates, if the software allows it, and that is where the current issue is. I can playback different frame rate QTs on the same screen, at the same time without issue. But there is no software (that I know of) to create or playback videos consisting of multiple frame rate videos. Game engines might be able to change playback on the fly, but I have zero knowledge of that tech.
And it would be advantageous to have tech that allowed switch on the fly playback. I'm currently consulting on a documentary that uses source footage from at least 3 frame rates (24, 25 and 29.97). And the editor is cutting in Avid, so we have to convert before import, which slows down the creative process and adds complications to the finishing process.
Some directors still shoot movies in black and white from time to time, not because they think color is inferior, but because they think black and white is better suited for the specific movie they want to shoot.
Say, your cousin has been cooking as a hobby for a while. They move to a bigger house with a new kitchen and can finally get a big spice rack and a deep frying machine. They proceed to deep fry everything and put all possible spices on it. It tastes bad and monotonic.
Your friend plays in a band. They've been gigging a while and got new PA equipment that they say sounds less muddy than their old cheap crap. You go to a concert. The treble is so harsh you can't stand it and have to leave.
Some examples where some new tool is, in theory, better. But it turns out a worse end result because lack of skill in using it.
I find many technically oriented people don't understand this. They point out to some number saying "well this makes it absolutely better". Sure, numbers might be easy to measure. But it's the end result that's important to most people.
Not every film has to be made with the latest technology. Sticking with analog or black-and-white or 24fps is a perfectly valid artistic choice. But it's an artistic choice made by the film creator, not some advantage to the older stuff. Cinemas should be using the most accurate reproduction they can. Filmmakers can then dial it back in the actual film if they think that's better.
The comment I was replying to wasn't saying 8k might produce worse results sometimes, it was arguing that 8k and higher fps would just be worse, period.
Then, let's look at the reproduction part only.
Technically, it might work. More choice in reproduction. But maybe in the real world, movie theaters (and certainly in the television world!) would crank up the brightness and edge sharpening and frame interpolation to make the director's artistic material look totally horrible.
If you think about the whole life cycle of any kind of art delivered to some audience, it's lined with these huge pitfalls at every point.
Maybe I'm obsessive compulsive about it.
Likely a lot would depend on good defaults and good training. If you were as skeptical about people and organizations as I am, you would assume it could on average worsen many movies. The original Murphy's Law and all that. :)
It's not always a naive "the more the better" issue.
Too much resolution can result in unnatural and distracting results -- your eyes don't have that much resolution as when you see a person in 8K in a extreme closeup. It's neither natural not flattering to see an actors individual skin pores, for example.
Similarly, faster frame-rates capture motion more accurately (sharper under motion), but result in a movie that looks distracting and soap-opera-ish to the viewers eyes.
Your eyes can't see human faces 8 feet tall either but no one seems to think that movies are better on 20 inch screens. To the extent that movies look unnatural in extremely high resolution, that's an issue where directors need to learn to use the medium effectively. It's certainly not more natural to see blur or pixelation instead of pores.
> faster frame-rates capture motion more accurately (sharper under motion), but result in a movie that looks distracting and soap-opera-ish to the viewers eyes.
Only because we've been trained to expect films to be a juddery 24 fps experience. If high frame rates become commonplace they'll look commonplace.
Rather, I think the reason why theatres don't benefit from 8k is that from a certain distance increased resolution doesn't have a benefit. E.g. If you ever get close to a billboard you may notice that the resolution of the ad is quite poor, but from street level it looks perfectly fine. We aren sitting much farther than 10' from the theatre screen, so more resolution won't be noticeable given the distance from the screen for most of the audience.
If I move close enough to your face that it fills my entire vision I can see it in glorious 16k, skin pores and all. It's the extreme close up that's unnatural, not the fact that you can see details in extreme close ups.
As with 3d, most directors are lagging behind in adapting their style to changes in the medium. Some things that were developed for low-fidelity grainy film don't work in 8k. Some fight scenes that look good at 24hz look garbage at 60hz. But on the other hand 60hz and 8k allow for speed and details that just produce blurs on old 24hz mediums.
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.
The same reason we know what people would find too salty or too spicy. Because, outliers aside, humans tend to have the same psychology.
On that note, to hell with motion blur in games. The first thing I look for when I notice a game has it enabled by default is a way to turn it off, I'm not watching a film and responsiveness is much more important when I'm not sitting there mindlessly consuming content being played for me.
Regarding motion blur, I agree, it's way overdone in games, and I disable as well.
Blurring is a hack to deal with the fact that higher res is expensive. Higher resolution is preferable over AA if you can afford the monitor and the GPUs to drive it.
Not really. It's not just some historical accident why we ended with 24fps (or close) and not 50fps or 5fps or such.
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.
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.
I don't really understand how enjoyment is a moot point. Enjoyment is pretty much all that matters for a consumer entertainment product.
This implies that "large numbers" of people complain about 3D. I suspect this isn't true, and that it's really a very loud very small minority.
> 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.
Yes, but the point is that some evidence needs to be provided. Since some statements are wrong and some are right, the argument needs to be more than "it's true because I said it."
> and they have never been that many to make it not be a fad in the cinema either.
What does this mean? At what point do you concede that it's not a fad in the cinema?
No, it just implies that they don't care about it enough to e.g. sustain a 3D TV lineup.
>Yes, but the point is that some evidence needs to be provided. Since some statements are wrong and some are right, the argument needs to be more than "it's true because I said it."
The article is one piece of evidence, isn't it?
>At what point do you concede that it's not a fad in the cinema?
At the point it surpasses regular viewing and studios don't stop making such movies 5-10 years down the road?
By observing the typical behavior of one person using it?
Think of a Chinese finger trap. It's been around forever. And yet one person is not going to play with a Chinese finger trap every day. Once you experience it and figure it out there's not much to do with it. That's a novelty.
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-...
Too bad they didn't put as much thought into the script.
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.
And presence is characterized by lack of nausea.
If your only experience with VR is cell phones or the Playstation 4, then you probably have never experienced presence.
I just got my third sensor a couple days ago, and it has made a night and day difference (there is also an option for 360 tracking with two sensors, but I didn't set that up). But even when I had two sensors the tracking was fine except under certain situations where my body would occlude the controllers. Not a problem anymore after the third sensor.
Article about it: http://www.thisisinsider.com/doctor-strange-how-you-should-s...
When new movies come out, google "should I see it in 3D $moviename" type articles. Unfortunately it's January now; not many good movies coming out.
Obviously, that doesn't help very much since it isn't in cinemas.
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 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
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.
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.
Why not just listen to radio plays?
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.
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.
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).
They had a preview for The Walk and that preview showed the true depth of 3D.
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.
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.
3D is a good differentiator, and allows for a price raise that otherwise doesn't appear justified.
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.
Mind you, for movies where the majority of many shots are CGI-composited (or for works that are just plain-old digital animation in their entirety), the 3D is "free": you have a 3D master whether you want one or not, and any 2D release is a post-processed edit.
> 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.
I've always wondered whether this problem could be "solved" with eye-tracking in VR. The gear would project a ray from your pupil to the image, hit a pixel, map it back through the projection matrix to the surface of an object in the scene, and then dynamically adjust the depth-of-field so that that part of that object (and everything else at the same depth) was in focus.
It's not free because although the assets are in 3D, the final render still needs to be done, and for stereo you need to render every frame twice, once for each eye. When I was working on animated features the extra production cost for stereo was ~10% of the total production budget.
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.)
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.
[1] Not a joke: on Amazon you can find polarized glasses that work with most theaters where both lenses are polarized to just a single camera (left 2D and right 2D). I've got a friend that experiences motion sickness at 3D showings that uses them to see movies where everyone else wants to see 3D. One of the lesser utilized but awesome tools with some of the home 3D TVs (like my LG) is to have one player with left 2D glasses and the other with right 2D glasses and play a "full screen" coop game.
That's a very friendly way to put it :)
But I don't know your friends.
It depends on the personalities of everyone involved, the strengths of their feelings on the matter, etc. There's a lot of variability involved.
I'll do something I fear will be boring or go to restaurant I don't love for my friends. But I won't take a 3D headache or eat at a restaurant that has nothing but stuff I'm allergic to, because headaches suck. (Turns out both my clauses converge on that "because".) At the risk of channeling $STEREOTYPICAL_MOM, are people who'd ask that of you really your friends?
> At the risk of channeling $STEREOTYPICAL_MOM, are people who'd ask that of you really your friends?
They don't know, because I don't tell them. Otherwise, they'd bend over backwards to accommodate me, which would make me more uncomfortable than the physical pain does.
Source: Myself, a dad that only sees movies a couple times a month during a very limited time period when the babysitter is available
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.
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.
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.
That said, I like the campier interpretations of the TV show and Burton/Keaton but I also like the grittier Miller/Mazzuchelli Year One and Nolan/Bale interpretations, too. There's a proud tradition of both, and they complement each other (one interpretation playing straight man to the other, if you will).
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.
Making sequels in no way affects the integrity of the original.
They are wholly different circumstances.
Sequels absolutely can affect the integrity of the original by expanding the universe of the plot in ways that it's original design never intended or the way it was originally perceived.
Countless Shakespeare productions and remakes and reinterpretations don't diminish the original form.
That statement does nothing but detract from the conversation. Of course I'm not obliged to pay attention to any of them. I'm not making the generalization that all sequels are bad.
If you think that some new works expand the universe in a stupid direction, there's no reason you can't pretend they don't exist and still derive the same meaning from your favorite works.
Disney does this as a matter of policy.
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.
Derivative work is a little different than building a sequel though. A sequel may stand alone on it's own, but it also can take away from the original intention of it's prequel because it usually further builds out the universe or plot that took place in the original.
Movie producers often reach for sequels because they are guaranteed cash grabs and prop them up with nothing more than a shallow plot and a few A-list celebrities. To many, this takes away from the intent and meaning of the original.
Look at all the superhero origin stories that have come out lately, and summarize to yourself the story in the movie, without including any of the establishing. Even in the best ones... in fact, to some extent, especially in the best ones... the story itself is quite simple.
The sequel will have a chance to spread its wings much more. The fact that so many fail to do so is... well... an interesting discussion on its own. But the really great sequels are often movies that had to be sequels, because they told a story too big to also have 45-75 minutes of establishing in there with them.
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.
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.
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...
It'd be great if they had both!
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.
So yeah, go away you stupid gimmick.
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 at home... on a smaller screen... just doesn't work as well as a spectacle.
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 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.
I'll show myself out.
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).
It's similar to 3D TV in that it presents content in a better way that nobody asked for, and nobody ever found a way to massively leverage the tech that truly felt natural.
3D content ended up falling into two camps:
- Films that are largely the same experience as their 2D counterparts. You barely notice that the 3D is there, and after the fact you'd be hard pressed to claim that the 3D made the experience substantially better in any way. A lot of VR tech demos fall into this category - things that are "well, that's very cool, but..."
- Films that exploited the 3D technology by throwing baseballs at your face, having characters literally fly out of the screen, etc, to fully drive home the 3D effect - but ultimately all of them were gimmicky and done for the sake of showing off the tech. VR has a boatload of these, where the entire experience is about the spectacle of VR, rather than VR tech being the vehicle to some more substantial experience.
3D films never found a way to integrate the tech in a way that felt substantial, and VR is struggling with the same. Some niche VR categories (see: cockpit games like driving and flight sims) have certainly embraced VR, but more generally VR is dominated by tech demos and games that simply don't feel like a meaningful upgrade over their 2D counterparts.
VR is a (very cool) solution looking for a problem, and IMO in that way it is similar to 3D TVs, and unless it finds its killer problem to solve, will suffer the same fate as 3D TVs.
3D just doesn't add that much to videos. It can add a little bit to the immersion, but we're already good at picking up other depth cues. I can think of videos which could potentially be better with 3D, but I can't think of any video experience you fundamentally couldn't have without 3D.
With VR, it's pretty easy to come up with things it can do which fundamentally can't be done without it. Flight sims, as you mention, are a big one that come to mind. Being able to freely look around is huge. I think this stuff is going to become a really useful tool in learning to fly. Simulation is already proving really useful even without VR, but seeing everything through a fixed monitor is severely limiting. Being able to look around to get the same visual cues you'd get in the real airplane will be a big improvement.
Obviously, that's fairly niche, but a really useful technology that greatly appeals to a few is different, and much more interesting, than a not-very-useful technology that vaguely appeals to many.
I'm skeptical about some of the wacky stuff people predict for VR, like using it to hang out with friends or watch movies together or whatever. But if you get away from areas where you just do the same old stuff a little bit better, there do seem to be some properly interesting things it can do.
No, that's where VR is so different from 3D TV. Nobody was making 3D TVs in their basement. But people have wanted VR for so long that they have been hacking together their own VR headsets. I had been experimenting with using smartphones in cardboard boxes for years before Google Cardboard came out. The significance of Google Cardboard is that it signaled a moment when smartphone hardware was finally "good enough" to do it.
And while Google Cardboard is of course not a great experience, in a lot of ways it's still the basis of the core technology behind most of the other headsets. The Rift and the Vive wouldn't have their relatively high DPI display modules if it weren't for the advances in display module tech built for smartphones. The original Rift DK1 and the Gear VR wouldn't have their motion tracking tech if it weren't for the advancements in high-frequency, low-cost IMU technology built for smartphones.
And the problem is not that VR does not have a cool solution for any problems. It has plenty of those. You just don't personally care about the problems that VR solves. And that's fine, we all have our different interests. But don't assume that means that nobody wants VR.
On the contrary, I do. I have the Oculus Rift and the Touch controllers, and I enjoy trying all the content there is. I also love VRs and flight sims - but I've been a flight sim nerd since I was a kid...
The problem is that I don't think the vast majority of the world cares about the problems that VR solves, and that's precisely the similarity with 3D TVs.
I still know some people who love their 3D TVs and watch as much content in 3D as they can get their hands on, but ultimately these people are a very small market, and manufacturers have decided this market isn't serviceable profitably. VR faces the same issue - the places where it's truly well integrated are very niche, and despite multiple attempts at broader appeal, has yet to break out.
Heck, you say mostly the same:
> "But people have wanted VR for so long that they have been hacking together their own VR headsets."
"People" being a vanishingly small community of makers and tinkerers.
VR has been a dream for a long time for many people - especially in the hacker community - but it was never a mainstream desire. In the same way people have been hacking stereoscopic tech together for a long time before 3D TVs, and yet 3D TVs still failed in the mainstream.
VR will always have a place in some niches - the issue here is if major hardware manufacturers will be able to support this niche at the level they are doing right now. The Rift and the Vive are both incredible leaps in VR tech, but both are predicated on the expectation that VR goes mainstream in some major way. Both products will not be sustainable if VR continues to be a very small market like it is right now.
Having the hardware be something totally different may well be helpful too. A 3D TV is just a regular TV with a weird feature tacked on. It's hard to justify a higher price, so there isn't much incentive to add that feature. VR headsets are seen as a totally different technology, so their price can be set independently.
This isn't true, though. Developers have found that existing genres are incredibly difficult to adapt into VR. First-person games have had the most trouble adapting to VR because moving the player without a corresponding real-world movement is disorienting.
The abstraction of moving with a controller actually made FPSes even possible - what we've found is that allowing free-look with a VR headset and movement with a joystick is basically impossible to implement well.
If you're looking to your left and push up on your joystick, should the player move in the direction you're looking? Or in the direction of your torso? Worse, having the player move through the world even though the player is physically still causes nausea and disorientation in even seasoned VR users.
First-person game devs have largely settled on teleportation as the replacement - you can't move the player around like you do in a normal game, you can only teleport them to fixed positions. This has solved the disorientation problem at the cost of immersion - most games don't have a convenient in-world explanation for why the player gets to teleport around - and also removes dimensions of gameplay (teleportation makes dodging enemy attacks stupidly easy, after all).
Some modders have shoved VR support into traditional FPSes, and for all of the above reasons these are unplayable. Some have altered their gameplay to support teleportation, and some have disallowed player movement at all (see: Superhot VR). In any case, adapting games to VR is really hard, and in many ways controllers/keyboard/mice were much easier.
I'm sure there are plenty of other uses, but it will probably be a while before the tech is good enough to be convenient for these uses.
Similarly, telemedicine was a thing 20 years ago and it does work in some cases, just like robotic surgery with the DaVinci system. But most people want to have a doctor diagnose them and then perform whatever procedures might be necessary, and especially the wealthy customers hospitals really want tend to prefer doing that with a human. So most of the value add comes from the surgeon rather than the surgery. (Even in oncology, bedside manner is worth a tremendous amount -- to the tune of 8-figure restricted endowments for colleagues of mine)
Speaking as someone who participated in said research, I've seen this cycle before. Maybe it will end differently. But I personally am skeptical. YMMV.
Imagine if you were buying a fixer upper, and hiring someone to renovate it. It would be pretty cool if you could see their design for the renovation in VR and make sure it feels good before investing in the house and the work.
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.
"Workable", as far as I know basically everyone who used VR then and used it now agrees that there is a big difference due to technological advancements.
The argument that people don't pay extra for it is also only relative, because that's a function of the price they have to pay extra. I'm pretty sure if a high-end VR headset would cost 30 Euro many more people would buy it, as I'm sure more people would buy it for the current price point if the tech would be more advanced.
To sum it up with an comparison: Your argument reminds me of all the people who said a file hosting service will never be something people want as others had failed before and it is a useless idea. Dropbox proved the opposite.
In the end no one knows the future, but at least we now have had a fruitful discussion with arguments for both positions.
Predictions are difficult when they concern the future. I'm skeptical, but I've certainly been wrong before. We shall see.
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.
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.
Almost everyone in my network is excited about VR. Having the content creators on board is huge.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
http://www.3dtvguide.org/3d-tv-technology.html
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kg-dFSE2IY
If they actually do fully do away with 3D sets, I'll be looking to nab an older model when they drop in price.
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.
First is that it is interactive.
Second is that it is not shared like a TV in a room is.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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...
But all it really does is keep prices high and creates no real value.
[1] http://variety411.com/article/a-night-of-high-spirits-for-ar...