[Colonol Dekker]

From Yahtzee's EXTRA PUNCTUATION

(ironic mis-use of an apostraphe above )
First paragraph reads -

Don't be fooled by 3D. Just ... don't. 3D is nothing more than an expensive experiment being carried out by the entertainment industry. Not a technological experiment, mind, a psychological one. The entire entertainment industry is trying to determine if it's possible to pass off an inferior gimmick as the next step towards the technological singularity simply by having every media outlet on the planet tell everyone that it is. And that's why you mustn't be fooled by it, because if this works out, then this will just be the beginning. They'll start selling us puppet theatres and say we're one step away from the holodeck. They'll flog LPs made of pressed ham for the all-in-one entertainment and dining experience. Then they'll probably think, "Ah, why not cut out the middleman?" and then just kill us and take all our money.

3D is not the future. It's not "immersive." At best it makes everything look like a six-inch paper cut-out, and in order to create that effect it has to reduce the quality of the image. After years and years of the entertainment industry working towards making bigger and crisper images, suddenly they're trying to make us forget about all that because, holy ****, a thing looks like it's in front of another thing because of an exploitable quirk in binocular vision. Well, they can't do it. You either need glasses or you need to keep your head still at all times, and no new technology has ever lasted that's less convenient to use than what it's supposed to replace.

Poor, misguided Nintendo. Like a teenage runaway, they became desperate and fell in with a bad crowd. But who can blame them? No-one knows where the console industry is going at this point; taking gambles is really all anyone can do. The game has changed to the point that no-one even knows if they're carrying the right ball.

Up until the current generation, consoles were easy; you just had to have better graphics than the last generation. But it's only with the PS3 and 360 that we discover there was another factor all along: accessibility. A console had to survive on both the strength of its hardware and the ease with which third party developers could create games for it. The balance was best around the PS2, but now processing power is about at the highest level it can be for practical purposes. Sure, we could still staple more and more memory on but there are going to be fewer and fewer companies in a position to make the most of it.

That means that the future of consoles has to lie in one of the lesser aspects, such as the controller or the visual. And fair play to the industry, attempts have been made to innovate in both those areas. Motion controls on the one side, 3D on the other. Nintendo was the smarter company by incorporating the mechanics right into the starting hardware with the Wii and the 3DS respectively, because this effectively forced players to use it. Developers used it with a sense of, "Might as well, since it's there." Sony and Microsoft both made their versions optional add-ons, and that's why they will both fail. People get set in their ways, you need to drag them kicking and screaming into the new. That's what Nintendo and the rest of the entertainment industry are doing with 3D.

The problem is, if you take this strong-arm strategy, you have to be certain that your new technology actually is the way of the future, because otherwise you just make a giant mess of everything, as you can see in the state of things now. I'm all over manipulating the ****head masses for their own good - that sounds like a plan - but you need to think about it more. Neither motion controls nor 3D represent the way forward because they both involve making games and movies less immersive. I've gone off on that at length before. So, Nintendo, career innovators that you are, lead the way. Where to next, coachman?

[Dark Hunter]

Just out of curiosity, where are you quoting this from?

[The E]

That's Yahtzee's rant about the 3DS, if I am not mistaken.

I very much agree with this. It might work in the next generation, but for the moment, it's nothing but a gimmick, especially for a handheld system like the 3DS.

[headdie]

 i haven't even gone hd yet 

[Kolgena]

I've never seen a 3D movie myself, but AFAIK, there are two types of 3D movies. Those that are filmed/rendered in 3D and are therefore quite good (Avatar, How to train your dragon, Toy story 3), and those that got 3D post-processing (Last airbender)

The former group rocks, if you don't mind the glasses. The latter group is wtf full of fail.

As for games, I really like the 3D effect, because it's awesome and rendered the same way the former group of movies is. That is, as long as the game uses 3D glasses and doesn't have weird rendering problems in 3D mode (borderlands shadows and coronas). However, people hate 3D glasses and opt for cheap 3D "hacks" that don't actually work. That's the real problem, IMO.

I've read about a year ago that Apple was working on a new 3D projector/screen set-up that is glasses-free, 3D, and quite versatile. Because it tracks user head movement, it's 3D regardless of viewing angle and position. Of course, that all falls flat when you have more than one person looking at the screen

[Rodo]

Snuffy.

On topic, I'm waiting for holo deck and food replicators to become reality, then I can drop RL and start the RRL

[Colonol Dekker]

Snuffy.

On topic, I'm waiting for holo deck and food replicators to become reality, then I can drop RL and start the RRL

When that happens...............Shiela 3.2 will be mine.

[Enigmatic Entity]

Cool. More than 50% votes go to the bogus options, too many people have looked inside WoD's vp's I'm not really up for the "no glasses" 3D, it looks like paper cutouts and only works within 10cm and 10 degrees of a certain head pos.

I haven't seen a real #D movie with the glasses, so can't really comment on that, however, at this stage I would go for Full HD and smoothness - I hate those cheap LCD's that look like they're run at 15FPS. Some of the good ones seem so smooth that even animations are...real.

[Hero_Swe]

Yes, quite obviously a bad gimmick

[newman]

It certainly can be a gimmick. It has to stop being the current hottest thing ever so the industry can approach it rationally and stop putting it in every single movie. Certain CGI cartoons do look good in 3D and I don't mind it there. I just think the majority of the movies in theaters should be in 2D.

[Klaustrophobia]

of course it's a gimmick, but that doesn't automatically equal "bad"

[Zacam]

Being an old cuss myself, this is not the first time that 3D has been "hyped" as the wave of the future. And I suspect that it won't be the last. And I don't just mean having red/blue glasses, but actual polarized visuals. (I still have my Stereoscopic Glide Matrox glasses from way the hell back when SLI was still owned by Voodoo and Cyrix was a going competitor with AMD and Intel. Silly IBM.)

People in general didn't like it then, any more than they like it now. Which is why I can't entirely disagree with Croshaw's assessment that it really is just a gimmick built around bilking the consumer from their cash. It's the new age "snake oil" for the masses. And it's being done just as badly now as it was then, even though it's been easily over a decade. Which means that while everything else has matured, the understanding of how to implement 3D hasn't. Which means that it's simply a rebuilt system by some Nostalgia nerd that vaguely remembered it being "cool" because he showed it off to his friends and they were too polite to tell him they didn't give a **** and he felt like he finally got some credit to his name.

And since we are (shamelessly) quoting Croshaw here, I'd like to close with the comment from his Zero Punctuation review: "I will be impressed by 3D only on the day it can literally slap me in the face"

[Nuke]

boobs, definitely.

but really it depends on the technology used. that said most of it is bull****. shutter glasses and anaglyph are hard on the eyes, autosteroscopic screens are too restricrtive. the only setup i have ever felt that really worked is polarized glasses + dual projector. both eyes get the same framerate at the same time and it doesn't screw with color or give you epilepsy. id also like to see more development in terms of head mounted displays. mainly increased resolution. hmds are something you can get now, if you want to spend a lot of money and get a suckey resolution. its kind of a geeky oddity which has never been made popular to the general public. likely do to cost and lax performance.

i kinda think the idea of 3d movies is somewhat of a gimmick. they have already made movies cheap by spending the entire budget on special effects and almost none at all on professional actors. now these full on cgi abominations are in 3d! and that is somehow supposed to make up for the fact that there hasn't been a decent movie in years.

games on the other hand have potential here, if they can come up with a technology that does not produce eye strain. in this situation i think i would either want an hmd (a good one at a sane price), or a dual projector and polarized glasses. ive had little luck with shutter glasses and anaglyph glasses discolor the picture and both give me eyestrain and headaches. and furthermore nvidia has gone out of their way to push their own overpriced 3dvision technology (which is really just stylish shutter glasses) while blocking every other product from using the stereo features of the video card drivers. so yea, it sucks right now. too much proprietary technology, no standardization, and you will need to buy something to make it work.

[Flipside]

One of my biggest problems with 3D is that you can always tell that a movie was originally 3D because of the directors habit of shoving stuff right in your face just to show you the 3D effect. My other concern is this, after about 15 minutes of watching Beowulf in 3D, I didn't notice it any more, and realised that the human brain fills in the 3D information anyway, in fact, it caused my brain confusion on occasion because it couldn't quite seperate what it thought was the depth perception of the image and what the image was projecting.

[qazwsx]

My other concern is this, after about 15 minutes of watching Beowulf in 3D, I didn't notice it any more, and realised that the human brain fills in the 3D information anyway.

This. A thousand times this, I really don't see the point in a technology which is designed to "improve" the cinematic experience if you forget about it after 10 mins and removes from the immersion in the film.

[Mongoose]

One of my biggest problems with 3D is that you can always tell that a movie was originally 3D because of the directors habit of shoving stuff right in your face just to show you the 3D effect. My other concern is this, after about 15 minutes of watching Beowulf in 3D, I didn't notice it any more, and realised that the human brain fills in the 3D information anyway, in fact, it caused my brain confusion on occasion because it couldn't quite seperate what it thought was the depth perception of the image and what the image was projecting.

The only thing I've yet seen in 3D was Avatar, and that depth-perception thing gave my brain a few fits too; I think I was so used to everything on the screen being at the same focus level that the "fuzziness" around the edges was messing with me.  The one real thing I did appreciate about that movie's treatment of the effect was that James Cameron didn't pull the cheap jumping-out-at-you stunts; the 3D blended naturally into the scenes, so it was a much more subtle experience.

As far as the 3DS in particular goes, I am honestly curious about how well it works in practice, just because Nintendo chose to attempt doing away with the glasses for it.  There's also a nifty slider that affects the level of the effect, so if it winds up giving you issues, you can just turn it off completely.

[Iss Mneur]

The only thing I've yet seen in 3D was Avatar, and that depth-perception thing gave my brain a few fits too; I think I was so used to everything on the screen being at the same focus level that the "fuzziness" around the edges was messing with me.  The one real thing I did appreciate about that movie's treatment of the effect was that James Cameron didn't pull the cheap jumping-out-at-you stunts; the 3D blended naturally into the scenes, so it was a much more subtle experience.

I have never seen anything in 3D and probably won't for some time to come (I can't stand the inconvenience of a movie theatre).

However, I have seen Avatar, and the whole 3D "is the next biggest thing" has more to do with the success that James Cameron had with Avatar (and possibly the filming technique [the live CGI stuff]) than anything to do with the 3D technology itself.  That is, I don't think the success of Avatar had anything to do with the optional 3D, but rather everything to do with Avatar being a James Cameron pet project (one that he waited until technology was good enough to make and then had a custom system created just to film the movie) and James Cameron able to tell stories in a way that "everyone must see".

Aka, I completely agree with "Yahtzee", its all about getting more money from consumers and almost nothing to do with new technology, considering as far as I can tell none of the technology (specifically the techniques) to make the 3D effects are novel in any way.

[Colonol Dekker]

The last film i saw in 3D was Gnomio and Juliet..... But i got boob for it so i'm content. Hackingly bad film content aside, the effect as you say, wore off after a while. Hence my gradual disinterest in it and progression to other activities.

[Scourge of Ages]

Voted Suffie, AKA no clear answer. It all depends on the film/game.
With a good film, shot in 3D (or CG) with the director not throwing it in your face, it's a really great effect. "How to Train Your Dragon" was an awesome movie that the 3D made just a little more immersive.
I still refuse to see anything that was converted to 3D, I agree that those are pretty universally a cash grab. (Did you hear the George Lucas is planning to convert the Star Wars movies to 3D?)

As for the 3DS and the hypothetical other games and systems which will do 3D, it's the same principal. If it's done well, it should work well. I played a little bit of Pilotwings 3D, and it was pretty cool. The 3D effect actually looked good, and made sense in the context.

Bottom line: As with most things, there is no clear answer, you must judge each item individually.

[Herra Tohtori]

It's not a gimmick, it just needs to mature into normality. I also don't expect pure 2D to expire at all, until 3D projection systems get more accessible in price and useability.

The concept is sound, however, and I expect it to greatly improve films and games in the future.

Also lol gimmick hype, this thread is no godwin'd