3D Changing your Eye
 

Hi
I've just bought and watched the home edition of Final Destination on 3D. I have a 42" monitor and my viewing distance is roughly 4-5 feet. I noticed a very strange thing. After about fifteen minutes of viewing this horrible 3D DVD, I took off my glasses and...
When I close my right eye, I see the world in a blue tint, and when I close the left, I see things in a red tint. The glasses had L-Red and R-Blue. Was my eye compensating for the color change? Now if this is what I experienced after just 10 minutes of the movie, imagine what will happen on a continuous red/cyan 3D movie or programming.

Well, it's been half an hour since I stopped watching and my eyes are back to normal (I hope), but I haven't found one single post anywhere on the internet mentioning this problem. If anyone has experienced this, please share your thoughts.

Is the moral: Stay away from anaglyph?

This is common with anaglyph.

It also happens to me when I use a CRT monocular viewfinder on a camera. I find that after a while my perception of colour is different between my left and right eyes. I've been using video cameras for 20+ years and have not noticed any lasting effects.

Not your eye, your brain. Perfectly natural and nothing to worry about.

Also a difficulty in focusing - one eye becomes used to focusing at a plane 4" in front of the eye while the other focuses on a plane 20+ FEET away.

Cool, but
 

Guys, thank you for your replies. It surely is reassuring. However, would it be pertinent to say that anaglyph is a dead format as far as future 3D filmmaking is concerned? Should one aspire towards RealD or Dolby 3D?

from the point of view of filmmaker, you do not really need to care about HOW movies will be displayed. anaglyph is dead since a long time, unfortunately nobody knows it.

Speeking with respect to TV, not to movies - Couple of days ago they broadcasted tribute to Michael Jackson during the Grammy Awards in that dead anaglyph. It took us over 10 years to make HD more less common in the US, and there is no eye-strain and other objective complaint agains it like there are various complaints against 3D (I actually like 3D, but let's be honest). That is the only 3D broadcast on major US network in a very long time. I have a large screen DLP display with gorgeous 3D, but need to provide my own content so far. There's been lot of talk.. we will see. Until all the other fancy display technologies become common (big IF), the major networks will not be interested. Content is going to be bottleneck as well. Thankfully there are sports, games, Avatar and pornography, else there would be almost no audience. Now someone needs ot provide it. Until then the only technologies working on almost any display device are anaglyph and cross-eye. It will be long time before anaglyph dies. That is my take on it. It is shame that ColorCode3D is not promoted more, it beats red/cyan hand down, IMHO. I hate to be negative, but let's see the actual obstacles and work on overcoming them, ratner than pretending that they don't exist. Sorry if I offended someone....

Weird
 

What should I do to watch Final Destination properly on my system then? Is it my LCD panel, the DVD itself (3D), the glasses (anaglyph) or my viewing distance?

How's This?
 

Nonsense. It reminds me of the warnings when I was a kid: Don't get a color TV, they said, or you will lose the ability to see colors in the real world!

I agree with Adam. I think that most of our brains learn new things, wighout forgetting things previously learned. We can adapt. I think that Mark Pesce is totally irresponsible to publish his silly theories in mass media. I've been looking at 3D in many different forms, anaglyph, polarized active and passive, lenticular and cross-eye and I can see just fine. I did learn how to accomodate to the viewing methods after a little while, it didn't come immediately, but I never forgot how to see without those technologies. The article is silly in so many ways.... Sure people tried many different techniques and technologies that didn't become commercially successful, but even more did. Otherwise he would have to carve his unproven fantasies onto a cave wall (maybe even doing that would cause permanent health damage).

The phenomenon you experienced is called afterimages. Look here and you can find some fun tricks for your brain:
Afterimage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Continuing to make the news on the safety issue ....

3D TVs need safety testing, says CHOICE consumer magazine

Andrew

BTW, if someone gets eye strain from watching 3D content, then it could well be because they have a "lazy eye". The 3D tech makes both eyes work, thus the lazy eye will have to work harder than what it is used to .

Which leads to better news .... 3D viewing prescribed as treatment for having a lazy eye! :-P

Andrew

It is still nonsense.

...and in the need to get some taxpayers money to do perform the tests...

There are risks/dangers attached to virtually EVERYTHING...

I'll only observe that cigarettes were once considered "safe" and even "healthy"... and the list is rapidly growing of "technological innovations" that aren't all they are cracked up to be, some of which IMO have the potential to endanger the continued existence of life itself.

Since I have serious physical reactions to some of the frankengredients now put in food for those people who have no willpower to push away from the table, I have certain reservations about anything "new and better". Just because a small sample over a short test period didn't show adverse effects, doesn't mean a darn thing... if you think for one second that those "studies" are always scientifically valid (IOW not influenced by the $$ involved), you're kidding yourself.

AND the reports of people experiencing discomfort or adverse effects ARE out there with the resurgence of 3D movies in the popular realm - it may be a small percentage of the overall population, but so is the canary in the coal mine...

Which reminds me, I REALLY want to go see Avatar in 3D!! I've heard it's good, and seems like it would be worth the theater experience... so what if I'm googly eye'd?

Maybe 3D porn really will send you blind? :-0)

As for the 3D Avatar experience, I highly recommend it. 3D technology has come a long way.

Andrew

Instinct
 

What I'm trying to figure out is that the 3D experience is instinctively wrong. something doesn't feel so perfect about it. Like Avatar for instance, we all saw it because it was a highly publicized event, which turned out to be good.

But how many Avatars can one take? A few years from now, when most blockbusters will go 3d, won't the glasses/single plane discomfort pop up again.

Watching pure 2D is okay and watching pure 3d is what our eyes do, but watching 3d on a 2d plane is something that we're not evolved to do.

Will they? I doubt it.

Optometrists would disagree with you. Here is a reference link: "Seeing Avatar Movie in 3D, How to See 3-D Eye Exercises, Magic Eye 3D, Stereograms, Stereo Views, Games, Puzzles, Lazy Eye, Cross eyed, Vision Therapy"

The Article
 

Hi Pavel
I've read the article and it stresses on how to improve your natural stereovision with 2D images which are static. You need to cross-eye for a few minutes and the image pops out from the 'noise'. This is different from live-action 3D footage on a 2D plane:
1. Interocular distance changes with the cut
2. Convergence changes sometimes even within a cut
3. You cannot focus on what you want - your focus is decided for you.

Just wanted to add that I have no personal problems watching 3D, except anaglyph (I hate my eyes seeing colors long after the film), but maybe tests need to be done, and maybe we are the test subjects!

The seeing different colours afterwards will be as a result of the plasticity of the brain, and hence some temporary "brain training" during the anaglyph encoded movie whereby your brain adapts to what the eye is receiving.

Nothing you won't recover from. It won't be permanent.

Andrew