I know titans wasn't shot in 3D. You could actually see the 2d image bleeding slightly around the the 3d objects as they got closer. :D

I'll have to see something else in 3D then. The issue is there's not really anything I'm willing to spend an extra $3 on to see in 3D, except Titans.

Dear Friar - see Avatar in 3D - IMAX if possible (but really not necessary). No matter what you think of the story, the technical achievement is amazing.

However, I agree that 3D is still a gimmick - an expensive and entertaining one though.

Having said that I think 3D is still a gimmick :-)

Yeah ... just like stereo sound is a gimmick ;-)

We hear in 3D. We see in 3D. It's just natural that movies follow along.

Yes, but we don't have to wear headphones or glasses to hear or see 3D in real life and even with those not quite the same as real life 3D, so it doesn't quite apply.

I think I'd have a pretty hard time watching a serious movie in 3D. For eye candy gimmicky movies, fine, but otherwise I don't think so. It's another tool to distract you from the fact that they couldn't come up with a decent story.

If it's not "real life" then there is going to be someone out there that considers the technology a gimmick. Why is it that so many people really hate 3D? 2D is a gimmick and always has been but that hasn't stopped any of us from creating 2D material. 24P is not particularly convincing gimmick but people still worship at the 24P altar.

There is some 3D technology being developed at Los Alamos Labs and if any of you 3D haters saw it you would completely change you tune. It is captured with an array of 40 2K cameras and projected using an array of 4k projectors inside a huge sphere in which you stand. It does use glasses but you can stand there and look all around you including up and down. It is as close as I have ever been to being somewhere without actually being there.

I don't hate it, it just looks too fake and plasticky. I'm trying to imagine watching something like Goodfellas in 3D. It would look ridiculous.

Compare Sopranos ( 24 frames + other things ) to some other show or a movie using over the top too real image at 30 or 60i. It just hurts to watch. It's gotten better with HD ( used to look beyond ridiculous back in the SD TV days ) , but for some reason aiming for the film look just seems to yield better results.

People ONLY prefer 2D and 24P because that's what they're used to.

24P was chosen for PURELY economic reasons, film is expensive and it was the slowest frame rate they could use and still get relatively smooth motion out of it.

John, I'm with you. Every sort of imaging since the cave days is a gimmick. It's not the same thing as human perception. It represents life -- it evokes our memories and experiences and creates emotion in us. An image of an apple cannot be eaten -- no matter how real it may look to us. All of art is an attempt to capture and hold and communicate to others what in life we cannot. Imaging, of every sort, is a tool of expression and, yes, they are a gimmick. Movies or video all rely on a trick made possible by persistence of vision. We think we are actually seeing a smooth moving image when what we are seeing is 24 or 30 or 60 still images a second. A gimmick. My cat is not impressed and never watches TV. Critics dismissed those first moving images as a side show. How little they understood that a new tool for story telling had been born. 3D is merely another tool. Story tellers of the future will no doubt make good use of it as they have all the other technologies since the days of cave painting.

I think 3D is fine for some material. Big sweeping shots, panoramas, space scenes etc.

But for fast cut sequences of dialogue with close ups it's pointless.

Would Pulp Fiction have been better in 3D?

I also think there is a flaw in the logic. When I watch a movie I don't see the screen as a flat 2D surface, I see it as a window onto a 3D world.
It doesn't have to actually be 3D to give that illusion.

3D is a gimmick to get people back into the cinemas (again) and to fuel another round of technology purchases.

Just my opinion :-)

Would Pulp Fiction have been better in 3D?

Maybe. Maybe not. A subjective thing. But Quentin is no fool ... Kill Bill 3D ??

I agree the hope is to get more people into theaters with something big screen TV can't offer --- A well made story will always succeed -- a well made 3D story will just do even more business -- IF I could raise a few hundred million to work with --- I'd be thinking 3D as well -- but the great script comes first.

The 3D I saw reminded me of the 3D you get with the magic eye things (played a game like that once. Awesome & annoying @ the same time!).

The whole "real" 3D thing can already be done & has been done in home on computers for over a decade now (our "$15 tripod" guy made a full 3d head tracking rig with a wiiremote). Yeah, it was low-res stuff (descent, quake, duke) but it still worked. I'm not expecting to turn your head & look around a tree in a theater but I did expect some kind of depth vs what I've seen before.

After seeing it i'd say it's pretty cool, but not worth the extra $$ on my ticket. It seems to me no different then the 3d glasses stuff from games 10 years ago. That went away because it wasn't good enough & expensive. If people REALLY want to spend an extra ~$3-5 on a movie ticket then there should be no complains about the cost of gas, food, lack of pay raises, etc. ;)

"3D is a gimmick to get people back into the cinemas (again) and to fuel another round of technology purchases."

And as content creators explain to me why we should oppose this? Some of you talk exclusively like media consumers and not media creators.

"My cat is not impressed and never watches TV."

Back when i had a CRT TV and a CRT computer monitor, my cats would never look at the TV. They would actively avoid getting it in their field of view rather than just simply ignoring it. However, after i got a computer powerful enough to start handling some video, i could have the same thing on the computer screen and the cats would stare at it endlessly, following the moving objects with their eyes. I wonder if the interlace jitter of the TV hurt their eyes. Now that everything's LCD they pretty much ignore them again, but at least they don't deliberately avert their eyes anymore.

When i was a kid we had a cat who would hop up on top of the big ol' console TV every time there was a football game on. He would lean over the front of the TV and try to catch the players running around the screen with his paws. Nothing but football ever interested him.

This alone keeps me from wanting a 3D TV

http://www.samsung.com/au/tv/warning.html

Dave T2

And as content creators explain to me why we should oppose this? Some of you talk exclusively like media consumers and not media creators.

I'd say everybody consumes much much more media then they could create. Just based on time.

But why should people oppose it? Because of the fear it will turn more people away vs bring them in. For every person I hear that got an HDTV/DTV OTA, I heard of ~3 or 4 who either don't get TV any more or got cable/satellite for a SD set. I don't see US HD as a success on anything except the broadcast/marketing end. So soon after that, changing the requirement to 3D won't get any more people on board.

The consumer in me says it's not worth the extra $$. I still have bought more DVD's vs BD's just because of the price. W/o seeing things side-by-side I couldn't tell the difference @ home anyway. I'm sure many feel the same.

I noticed a number of years ago that I have two viewing strategies for looking at 2D images, both yielding very different results.

My usual way of looking is, for lack of a better term, flat: I see the whole image in its entirety as meaningful relationship of form and colour. It’s kind of like looking at the words on a page for their formal characteristics. I can see and understand everything about the image, but there remains a distance between myself and what I am seeing.

The other way requires intentional effort, and again for lack of a better term, I’ll call it immersive: if I pay attention, that 2D image pops into 3D, with real depth and it feels as though I can see around objects in the picture. In a strange way, it’s like the first time I understood what words on a page meant rather than just seeing the lines. The image is no longer separate from me, and I can selectively attend to different elements in the image as if present in real life.

I remember reading once that an anthropologist discovered that remote groups had difficulty in interpreting photographs. Picture-literacy, like reading, is culturally-acquired.

My flat and immersive ways of seeing 2D pictures suggests to me that there might be two analogous viewing strategies for 3D material as well, one which attends to form, and another, perhaps built upon the first, which attends to the content of the form. 3D in 3D. Or 3D in 4D. Something like that.

My prediction: someday, viewing 3D will be as invisible to us as how we see the world.

Tim Robertson

"W/o seeing things side-by-side I couldn't tell the difference @ home anyway. I'm sure many feel the same."

Then you really need to get your eyes checked. I can absolutely tell the difference 100% of the time.

When audio CDs came out, there were people that said that their LPs or cassettes sound fine. When DVDs came out, there were a lot of people that said VHS looked good enough. Thankfully, there were a LOT more people that COULD tell the difference and audio CDs replaced LPs and cassettes and DVD replaced renting VHS tapes.

I'm not a 3D hater (I really was blown away by Avatar and the 3D I've experienced so far - Avatar, Coraline, Alice - has been mostly flawless) and this thread has helped focus my thoughts on the subject a bit.

For me I think it's the glasses that bother me. I prefer speakers to headphones while listening and I prefer an unencumbered face (except for my nose and looks!) when viewing.

When I put on the glasses I feel like I'm in a room full of people with headphones on.

So if a 3D experience were available without the facial attachments, I think I would be more willing to characterize it as something other than a gimmick.

3D Stuff that has been shot in 3D (Coraline) is really very good and I'm pigheadedly critical of image quality. Can't say the glasses bothered me at all, but I've got past the age of hoping to be seen as "cool". Good 3D does require excellent definition.
Side by side comparison is not needed to see that Blu-Ray gives higher definition than DVD (even with enhancement), so I think what you're saying is that DVD is good enough for you. That's fair enough, as a personal choice.

Some of the comments above remind me of an interview I shot once with T REX. David asked Mr Rex what he thought about those warm blooded creatures that had started to evolve.
Mr Rex replied, "Well they're sure tasty but Its A Fad, us cold blooded animals are the largest and most powerful and we shall rule the planet till the end of time".


Bob.

Then you really need to get your eyes checked. I can absolutely tell the difference 100% of the time.

My eyes are fine, content producers need to do a better job of producing content to take advantage of the medium. The reason DVD's looked better vs VHS's isn't just because of the medium, the hardware was better, the duplication was better, the connections were better. You can take a VHS, put it in a broadcast quality VCR deck & record SD digital content to it from a digital VCR & it will look as good as the SD digital recording. Put in a crappy VHS recorder & it looks like crap. Or putting a crappy copy to DVD & comparing that to an original BetaSP.

Same with this here. I can see more individual pixels on my screen, sure, but it doesn't look any BETTER then less pixels.

So Bob, as long as something doesn't kill 2d cameras, projectors, TV's & discs we're OK & it will live on forever? ;D

Can't tell the difference between Bluray and DVD? Your vision is failing.
JJK