Problems of the 3D in cinema, television and videogames

The human being, the stereopsis, stereoscopic vision o simply 3D vision, it's built in the cortex V1 of the brain from different kinds of information:

- The lighting.

- The movement of the objects: When we move, the objects more near are displaced more than the objects in the background.

- The adquired knowledge that we have of the size of the objects.

- The differences that they are between the image that we percibe from the right eye and the one of the left eye.

The cinemas and 3D television try to explode this last characteristic making that each eye see a different image. To achieve that there are several techniques:

1.- With glasses (it's important clean the glasses at the cinema to avoid infections):

- Anaglyph: a red glass and another blue. Remove the image of its respective colour, making that each eye see a blue image and the another a red image. The problem is that we lost colour information.

- Polarized glassed: projecting the light of each image in a distinct angle and filtering the light, in a way that each eye see the light that comes from its assigned angle. The problem of this technique is that we lose the half of horizontal resolution.

- Active Glasses: Pass an image to one eye and no one to the another. After, with a speed sufficiently high to unaware us, is passed the corresponding image to the another eye. With this method, although we don't lost horizontal resolution, it's needed glasses with batteries that will be, consequently, more heavy.

2.- Without glasses:

- Instead of send the light in all directions, send the light in only one and with an angle or another depending for what it's the eye assigned. The problem with this method is that to see correctly the screen, we need put us in front of it, by the way this isn't a good technology for the use of varios persons, but it's ideal for portable devices as the Nintendo 3DS.

To create the images for each eye, also there are different techniques: Sometimes, the movie is recorded with two cameras or, if it's a computer generated movie, it's generated for each eye. But there are a lot of other movies that without have been recorded originally for 3D, they convert to this format with the help of a program that get a 3D of dreadful quality, where the characters seem be detached from the background although really are planes, as in those books for childs made of paperboard with mobile elements, and the worst is that sometimes appears distortions of the size of the elements and other undesirable effects.

We don't born with the 3D view capacity, we go adquiring it during the chilhood to the seven years old. What happens to the childs that go to a 3D cinema, to see a distorted 3D, during his stereoscopic learning? Well, apart of the fact that they feel dizzy, we don't know very well how can influence them the excesive use of this kind of cinema. Perhpas it could affect the way that they see the world.

But the childs are not the exclusively the ones that get dizzy. When the adults get dizzy it's produced more due to a maladjustement between the information that is recibed from the brain to the eyes and the equilibrium sense that is in the inner ear. When we travel in a car and look to the floor of the vehicle, the disarrangement and the consequent dizzy, it's produced because the imagen is fixed but our equilibrium sense tell us that we are in movement. In the 3D cinema, on the contrary, the image is moving but our equilibrium sense tell us that we are stopped, producing an strange dizzy, similar to the generated by a car.

Also there are a lot fo people with ocular problems like amblyopia and phorias that can't see the 3D cinema due a maladjustement of the images that see each eye. Althoug go to the 3D cinema and discover that you can't see it, at least serve us to realize that we have some of this problems.

According to Samsung can produce problems of insomnia, problems of vision, dizzy, convulsions, cramps, disorientation, etc. and extends the group of risk in addition to children, to adolescents, pregnants and the consumer of alcholic drinks.

Nintendo has already announced that its next portable console, the 3DS, will come with similar warnings. Although the 3D can be deactivate in this device.

Finally other great problem it's the abusive price in the cinemas of 3D proyections. If you pay tickey and the one of your couple, the price its greater than the price of the movie in blu-ray, and don't talk about if you has children... Also if it's a bad movie, as usual, the 3D it's not going to improve the experience.