3D? I’ll Stick With 2

Nintendo’s handheld game console, the 3DS, launched in North America this week. Though not the first example of a glasses-free 3D device, it is certainly the most widespread, and its success is yet another sign that 3D technology is here to stay. However, though the device is an impressive piece of engineering and is certainly a fun novelty, 3D technology remains a costly gimmick that doesn’t live up to the hype or justify its expense.

To first speak briefly in its defense, many of the classic arguments against 3D have been addressed since the technique began to see a revival near the end of the end of the last decade. The film Avatar showed that a successful 3D feature film doesn’t have to thrust pointy objects at the audience’s faces every few minutes, and the 3DS shows that glasses are hardly necessary, at least for devices.

However, the more serious knocks against 3D are inherent in the technology. A major class of issues with 3D is that our mammalian brains are not well-suited to the illusion created by 3D devices. For one thing, the 3D technology forces us to tilt our eyes straight ahead to look at a screen 80 or so feet in front of us, but 3D filmmakers sometimes put objects right in front of our faces, requiring us to tighten our focus. Since we normally also narrow our eyes when we focus on something so close up, this induced discrepancy between tilt and focus may account for the headaches people feel while watching 3D.

Since focusing takes time, 3D also limits the choices film editors can make. Rapid transitions between shots at different distances would be disorienting because they leave no time for the audience to change their focus.

There is also the issue of brightness. 3D works by sending a different image to each eye, and glasses only allow one of the two images to enter each lens. This blocking property causes images to appear darker because each eye is receiving less light that it does normally. Individual filmmakers can compensate somewhat by increasing the brightness, but correctly addressing the problem means we need twice the light, and doubling the power to projectors would burn out bulbs or generate too much heat. Many IMAX theaters compensate by using two projectors, but doing so is much more expensive and still doesn’t match recommended luminance standards. Projectors that use laser technology to crank up the brightness are theoretically possible but remain years away from production.

However, even if the technical problems were miraculously solved, it’s hardly worth it, because our brains just don’t care about depth very much. While we live in a 3D world, our visual systems are far more sensitive to information in the up-down and sideways dimensions. Researchers sometimes refer to our visual space as having 2.5 dimensions, rather than 3, because so much more processing power in the brain is devoted to analyzing flat images. A big reason we don’t care so much about stereoscopic depth is that many of the depth cues our brains use are encoded in flat images as well, such as shadows, size, and shading.

Because of this, flat images are more than adequate for providing an immersive experience in movies or video games. For instance, when we see a rocket ship that starts full-size and then shrinks down to a speck among the stars, we believe that it is hurtling off to hyperspace. We don’t need the third dimension to help us understand that it is moving away from us.

The technology has its fans and detractors, but up until now people have had a choice between 3D and 2D. Nintendo’s 3DS, for instance, comes with a slider that allows users to reduce the extent of the 3D effect down to zero. However, we are on the verge of crossing the threshold where the minority of 2D stalwarts may no longer have the option. Even with the slump in 3D sales at the start of this year, theater operators prefer 3D movies because they can charge a ticket premium, and we are not far away from all animated or action movies being released in 3D.  The next generation of home entertainment consoles and TVs will certainly be 3D equipped. These concerns are more than idle fears about new technology: Movies certainly didn’t make books obsolete, nor did video game consoles supersede television, but the current trajectory of 3D might mean that someday 2D displays will be a thing of the past.

As concerned citizens, we should opt to see our movies in 2D whenever possible and only purchase 3D devices if turning the 3D display off remains an option. Such determination might seem overblown, but it is worth defending the art forms we cherish before they are changed forever.

Adam R. Gold ’11, a Crimson editorial writer, is a physics concentrator in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.