Panasonic’s Response To Concern Over Binocular Dysphoria

was it awesome?

better or worse than at the movies? (I assume they use shutter glasses?)

Reading the articles involved, my gut feel is to call bullshit on the ABC article. I welcome anyone to explain what I’m missing.

The article goes on about how 3d movies only use one of the brain’s queues of depth perception but that’s simply not the case. Even while watching a regular 2d movie, our brain is constantly using many techniques to judge depth. We don’t see our TVs in 2d at all. Our binocular vision fights our monocular which reduces the overall effect. The main difference with 3d video is to be able to use parallax to place something closer than the distance from your eyes to the screen. When watching 2d or 3d movies, your brain is still calculating depth using motion parralax, depth of motion, perspective, relative size, familiar size, aerial perspective, occlusion, peripheral vision, texture gradient, lighting and shading as listed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception

3d movies with glasses add Stereopsis and Convergence.

Neither use accommodation, which wiki defines as – “This is an oculomotor cue for depth perception. When we try to focus on far away objects, the ciliary muscles stretches the eye lens, making it thinner. The kinesthetic sensations of the contracting and relaxing ciliary muscles (intraocular muscles) is sent to the visual cortex where it is used for interpreting distance/depth. Accomodation is only effective for distances less than 2 meters.”

So effectively, as long as the television is further than 2 metres away, the brain is using every single method for judging depth.

I would also imagine that any problems you might have with depth perception when you stop watching the movie would more likely be be a result of your eye not changing focus for an extended time but keeping a constant focal length and therefore a problem with focus, not depth.

Another thought. When I was about 22, I got my first pair of prescription glasses for short sightedness. They weren’t very strong but I actually had no idea how much my sight could be improved. I actually had mild headaches for a week or 2 which I put down to my brain working hard to recalibrate how it measures depth. In the past it was easy. If something is blurry, it is far. An interesting talk by Beau Lotto at TED discusses how the brain sees. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html To summarise, we don’t see a picture like a camera sees. Our brain takes impulses from our eyes and pads it with things from our experience.

Therefore maybe it’s reasonable to assume different people see the same thing in different ways. So if we change an aspect (ie. introduce stereo vision), for some people, that could introduce conflicting dominant inputs to the brain that measure depth and confuse the brain causing strain, just as for me once distant objects were no longer fuzzy. But the brain adapts and learns, but I don’t believe it damages the brain or cause binocular dysphoria. I would imagine VR glasses may cause problems if the focal distance is closer than 2 meters which it would be if you were actually interacting with things, reaching for them, looking at your crazy pixelated hands like you’re on acid…. etcetera.

Incidentally, as another example, when I have the in-car view from a Formula 1 car on our 2d tv, my wife has to turn away. She gets motion sickness from it. Her brain is getting more 3d queues than mine, or perhaps the queues in her brain are conflicting.

I’d love some comments by people qualified in the field.

I think I’ll wait for Holographic TV.