1-in-10 can't see 3D properly - report
Eyecare Trust says headaches a symptom.
UK charity The Eyecare Trust has discovered that more than one-in-ten of us cannot properly process a stereoscopic 3D image.
If you've experienced headaches or visual discomfort when watching a 3D film then you could be one of 6 million people with "poor binocular vision", the company stated on its website.
You see, 3D signals require both eyes to work together, but 12 per cent of people (in the UK) have a "visual impairment" that leads to an "inconsistency" when processing the two images and the three spatial dimensions.
"You may not have realised that you have poor binocular vision before because your brain will often try to compensate for any visual inadequacies," the website warned.
"If left untreated binocular disorders such as amblyopia can affect your ability to read well and result in a greater propensity to suffer from screen fatigue when working at a [visual display unit] or watching TV for long periods of time."
The "good news", however, is that this can be diagnosed during an eye test and fixed with a bit of visual therapy of a fetching new pair of spectacles. Maybe they sell those too.
Last week, Ubisoft told Eurogamer that a 3DTV will be in every home in three years. "We can't ignore it," UK marketing boss Murray Pannell said.
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Comments (75) Latest comment 2 years ago
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When I see 3d movies I see a red image with a green tinge due to a scar on the retina from cricket practice.
I am intrigued to see if it's different with the shutter glasses.
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3D TV for the win!
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Isn't technology great...
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Avatar gave me the mother of all migraines, after which I vowed not to bother watching any movies in 3D again.
However, I'll give the 3DS a go, since minus the glasses I doubt it will give me the same problems.
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In other news, 1-in-10 guys (apparently less common in girls) can't see color!
I figure the problems with 3D would be comparable to that. Didn't stop color TVs from becoming a big succes, or help keep the original gameboy in vogue.
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The almighty 3D will simply create a new breed of outsiders: "the weird friend who can't see 3D". I hope for his entertainment's sake that he's not left-handed as well.
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In fact I’m going to see another 3D film tonight
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Costing twent quid for the eye test and then God knows how much for the 'visual therapy'. I bet they're really hoping 3D takes off then.
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I know exactly why too; I had whooping cough when I was a toddler which led to partial deafness and a bad squint. The squint has been corrected by several operations but it means my left eye is effectively undeveloped. I can see out of it but I can't read or see detail with it. This unevenness means that 3D doesn't work for me 99.9999% of the time. The only 3D I saw in Avatar for example were those floaty flowery things; everything else looked as 3D as a standard 2D movie!
It's for this reason that I outright refuse to buy a 3DTV and why I prefer to watch the 2D version of a movie rather than the 3D one.
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The term 'colour blind' is a misnomer. most colour blind people see a slightly smaller range of colour than normal. Only a tiny percentage of people are completely achromatopic.
& the original gameboy beat the crap out of it's full colour competitors.
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I seriously doubt that viewing 3Dtv, has been tested to the lengths they might claim it has, especially with games, and that if the long term effects were negative, the media and tv companies would cover up the true data, in order to push sales. I don't know, perhaps Digital Foundry should do a test of 3Dtv gaming, for 8-10 hours (possibly with different 3Dtvs, while being monitored by someone) and give us gamers the results. We need to know the truth that those sellng 3Dtv aren't telling us.
As for those who can't see 3D, Sony think maybe they can become an extras in They Live, where awesome dark 3D glasses make you a wrestling king of alien hunting.
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But it does mean that all tvs have allways been in 3D as far as i am concerened so have that!!
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Sony said so!
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This.
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I could see it fine a year ago, but I had an eye infection and now my right eye sees slightly double at distance; anyone know a place I can look at some 3D to find out if I can still percieve it without spending a small fortune on a cinema ticket?
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I wonder how much if this is related to "refresh rates" (for screens for example, or even in some lights) in regards to the shutter type glasses. Since I can clearly see a "flickering" effect for the screen (or light)when the rate is set too low... Hmm...
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With 3D glasses on top of my "seeing" glasses, (6 eyes? lol ) i can see Despicable Me in wonderful 3D. (the ending Credits is awesome)
But Toy Story 3 give me headache in first 15minutes i think. (the very fast scene in train)
3D in fast-paced game, i think i wont use it. I dont like the headache >_
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I have no trouble with three dimensional images - my problem is with artificial 3D images projected via a 2D medium like a screen (Such as in polarised and shuttered 3D)
Basically, my eyes and brain try to treat it like a real three dimensional scene, and I end up adjusting my focal depth to look at things which are closer or more distant, which of course DOES NOT WORK when the two images I'm receiving are actually each a two-dimensional image with no objective depth.
End result, everything keeps going blurry and out of focus, and I get a headache.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJHX5ip68p4 FTW
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I can just about stomach a 2 hr film but even then my eyes feel very strained and overworked.
The thought of a whole evening of 3DTV or 3D gaming makes me feel deeply unwell.
I imagine no studies have been done yet but I would be surprised if prolonged repeated viewings of 3D images didnt have the potential to seriously fuck your eyes up.
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I hate to break it to you, but I think you just suffer from what is described in the article.
What you describe regarding your brain focussing at the wrong depth would also happen to you if you watched a 2D TV image with one eye shut, it it were the true cause. The brain simply doesn't work the way you describe.
You have the cart before the horse - the brain doesn't focus the eye for the distance it "knows" the object viewed to be at (your brain of course has no way of "knowing" how far away an object is in that way). The brain in fact applies the correct focal depth required to bring the image your eye is seeing into sharp focus, whatever that might be.
The other way we determine depth is via our binocular vision, but that is a physical ability. If you brain is using binocular vision to gauge the distance to the viewed object (such as the simulated 3D image on a 2D screen), it will get the correct result because it is being GIVEN the correct information by the 3D glasses. In fact, that is exactly WHY 3D cinema works.
I don't doubt that you are struggling with 3D images, but you are wrong about the reason for your problem (unless your brain and eyes have an ability everyone elses lacks - such as sonar). If the focal depth of your eye is not being set correctly, that is not because 3D has "tricked" it, it is because your eyes are not working effectively (again, as suggested in the article). Its probably worth getting them checked in any event.
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"Heh.
In other news, 1-in-10 guys (apparently less common in girls) can't see color!
I figure the problems with 3D would be comparable to that. Didn't stop color TVs from becoming a big succes, or help keep the original gameboy in vogue.
Just in case that wasn't for humorous effect... Colour blindness doesn't mean that you see in monochrome. Most colour blind people in the UK are red-green colour blind, which means they have difficulty seeing the difference between certain shades of those two colours. It doesn't mean that everything is grey to them.
This article shows how the hacking from Bioshock 2 looks to colour-blind gamers. It's quite cool:
"http://nukezilla.com/2010/02/11/what-bio...
(I keep showing this to mates who think that the only reason I have trouble with some colours is that I'm not trying hard enough.)
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Awareness of focus being missing from '3D' displays is the real main reason for people getting headaches. Oddly enough people with one eye or amblyopia are less likely to get headaches in this case than people with two healthy eyes, because there's nothing to trick their eye muscles into thinking they are seeing something with depth and should be adjusting focus!
Amblyopia is not treatable unless caught in early childhood, and in some cases even that isn't enough to overcome it and it's certainly not a quick fix. Opticians do check for it because it is common, so it's completely ridiculous that something like a 3DS would inform you that you're a sufferer for the first time and that you can be made better...
This report offends me in its wrongness. But the headline is valid, if you read 'properly' as 'ideally'.
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But i bet out of all those non glasses wearing people a large chunk will havce 1 eye weaker/stronger than the other which would expain the headaches and the like.
Very few people have perfect vision in both eyes but alot claim to have perfect vision as there in denial about glasses as they can do without most of the time.
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Because stuff can't be shot or run over in reality. At least not if you are in your right mind.
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If you are over 6 years of age, this is Horse-Shit!
After this point, reduced neural plasticity means that amblyopic supression rules supreme and 3D is not possible.
Perhaps the 3D hardware manufacturers hope all of us with amblyopia will just fuck off and die?
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Because it's illegal for me to go outside dressed as a space marine and start shooting people in the face.
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"The Trust is leading the way providing public advice and information on viewing 3D media."
That's a shame. I'm not sure if their report is accidental misinformation or an outright deliberate lie.
Edit: okay, that sounds a bit extreme, but surely whoever wrote it knew that maybe they should ask a qualified optician, or at least attempt to research eye disorders and depth perception, rather than just bluff it!
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I think you may be misunderstanding me. My eye tests confirm my binocular vision is 100% fine. I have no problem which affects the ability to perfectly composite the images from them. The only flaw is the short sightedness in my left eye, which merely means part of the image is out of focus (corrected when I wear my regular glasses, although one set over another is a bit of a pain on the bridge of the nose) and a hypersensitivity to the blue end of the spectrum (which is equal across both eyes but may affect the ability to interpret the polarised images)
Bander hits the nail quite well on the head about OTHER frames of reference we use for 3 dimensional vision, and they are likely also connected to why I can view polarised screens fine but not view through polarised lenses.
To clarify,my problem mainly seems to come from my peripheral vision interfering. other things which I perceive to be at the same subjective depth as the images I'm seeing in 3D are NOT at the same depth, my brain develops a conflict there as it knows they cannot both be at the same depth as one image is in focus, the other is not. As long as I possess the ability to see ANYTHING but what is on the screen, my brain has an objective plane of reference.
It's kind of like trying to do a magic eye picture and read a book at the same time.
The only thing I can imagine working for me at all is some kind of VR headset like were popular last time this was supposedly about to take off.
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To those doctors - I drive a car, I've graduated from university and I'm a 3D artist.
Though when I've watched Avatar 3D when tired it did give me a headache and nauseia, when I'm not tired the illusion or 3D effect works just fine! And I say effect, because 3D TV's aren’t 3D (yet).
In other words those in the percentage of suffers who want to train, do it when your fresh and awake!
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What I feel far too few articles pay attention to though is how much more information you can see if you have 3D available. Try this for instance - find a wall with structured paint, and look at it at an angle first with one eye closed, then the other eye closed, and then both eyes open. You'll see a surprising amount more detail with both eyes open, loads more smaller pieces of sand etc. There are quite some examples of this, and there is a lot of research available already also in the advantages of 'binocular' vision (as I think it's called).
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For that reason i dont think we should make stereo games..
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That makes sense, as the light reflected from paint and sand would look different from two different points of view, making it easy to make out how rough the surface is without moving around it. This is something games developers should bear in mind when figuring out the best way to produce a stereoscopic display, because using the same lighting for both sides isn't going to reproduce this effect.
However, I don't think it applies to something completely smooth, like a poster. I do have amblyopia, but my good eye is better than 20:20 (which is 'normal', not an upper limit) as far as reading charts go.
This doesn't mean that I have no interest in stereoscopic games though. Video games have been proposed as a fix for this condition! If the left and right eye receive only parts of the display, the brain is encouraged to pay attention to both sides, as opposed to allowing one side to become dominant and treat the weaker eye as redundant. An example would be something like a racing game where the track is invisible to one eye and cars are invisible to the other. This should be more effective than an eyepatch, and bump the age at which amblyopia can no longer be treated up from about 5-8 years to something higher. I'm probably still too old, but my fingers are crossed (as are my eyes sometimes).
There was something called I-BiT that was about this, but its page doesn't seem to exist anymore. I hope this didn't turn out to be a blind alley (sorry).
And of course I will be more interested in 3D displays when they account for focus awareness, which probably won't be anytime soon.
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I actually could see 3D in Avatar when I focused, but not with those old red/green glasses... i really don't know if 3DS brand 3D will work for me... I hope so! But I imagine I'll have to strain to see it properly.
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]http://newslite.tv/2010/03/09/oneinten-w...[/link]
One in ten surf without antivirus protection. [link url=http://www.free-av.com/en/news/77/one_in_ten_surf_without_antivirus_protection.html
]http://www.free-av.com/en/news/77/one_in...[/link]
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]http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/media-ce...[/link]
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]http://www.itpro.co.uk/624097/one-in-ten...[/link]
.
There you go, more one-in-ten news for today.
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So all this 3D stuff coming out is actually really good as it will make people more aware that they are suffering from a problem they were not previously aware of and so can then get it sorted out.
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When I say about directors not knowing how to make 3D what I mean is... If I look around my office here I can look anywhere and it's in focus. If I look at the people near the back of the room they are in focus and if they are audible my brain does a pretty good job of filtering out other sound so that I can hear what they are talking about too. If i change who I'm looking at suddenly that's clearly in focus and I can concentrate on their conversation instead. But none of this works properly in a 3D film. I cannot change whats in focus on screen, the wrong people are talking if i look at someone else.
Directors usually use these 'tricks' to tell the viewer where to look to see the story, and to be fair I have learned over a lifetime how to watch film/tv, they need a new bag of tricks for 3D. If they don't work them out then it's not going anything more than a gimmick and nobody is going to have enough time to learn how to watch 3D.
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You mean this, right?
<a href="http://www.virart.nottingham.ac.uk/ibit/
">http://www.virart.nottingham.ac.uk/ibit/
</a>
"The aim of our research was to provide a new way to treat amblyopia, that young children would find interesting and so comply with treatment. Working as a unique collaboration our multi-displinary team involved orthoptists and ophthalmologists from the hospital and IT technologists from the university. Together we devised a novel virtual-reality based system, the I-BiT™ system, in which children play interactive computer games. The innovation here is that the game is played with both eyes open and the amblyopic eye is given additional visual stimuli to encourage the eye to be used and hence the vision to improve. Amblyopia treatment with both eyes open is a world first.
Early clinical trials showed encouraging results, with rapid increases in vision in some children after only two hours of treatment. These results have been observed consistently in patients both under 8 and up to 12 years of age. The treatment worked in newly diagnosed children and those in whom previous occlusion therapy had failed. This means that, for the first time, it is now possible to provide treatment for older patients with amblyopia."
@Captain Chris: if done right, 3D movies and games take out any depth of field or other 'forced focus' effect. Avatar is a good example, where it is used in the first 5 minutes (and sucks), and then never again, almost as if Cameron wanted us to show us and his peers that it shouldn't be used, ever. Uncharted 2 has a depth of field effect that focusses on whatever you are aiming on with your gun. That works great as long as you're looking at what you're aiming at, but if you aren't always, then it can be jarring as well.
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/picks up a 3D pin off the floor
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Fair do, thanks for the extra info.
Interesting stuff. Seems I don't know as much about it as I think I do