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3D Movies Are Bad For You, Says Science

Not just in the _OMG, Avatar was such a piece of shit waste-of-money_ sense, or the _Videodrome_ psychosexual sense, but in an actual real life hurts-your-eyes sense. That's probably not a surprise so much, nor should it be a surprise that researchers...

Not just in the OMG, Avatar was such a piece of shit waste-of-money sense, or the Videodrome psychosexual sense, but in an actual real life hurts-your-eyes sense. That’s probably not a surprise so much, nor should it be a surprise that researchers have been studying the effects of stereo graphic displays (that deliver 3D effects).

MIT’s Technology Review explains:

To look at a three-dimensional object in real life, a set of eyes must do two things. Firstly they must ‘verge’—rotate slightly inward or outward so that the projection of an image is always in the center of both retinas. Secondly, the eyes must ‘accommodate’—change the shape of each lens to focus the image on the retinas. But artificial 3D fakes out this natural process—we focus on the screen, but our eyes verge where the 3D object appears to be in space. As [UC Berkeley’s Martin] Banks said back [last year to Tech Review], “In 3D, the natural linkage between vergence and accommodation is broken.” Now, Banks is back with data. His team experimented on 24 adults, with varying 3D set-ups. (Actually, they performed three separate but related experiments, the intricate details of which you can find in the full PDF of the paper.) The team found that at a short distance—with your computer screen, say—objects that pop out towards you cause greater eyestrain. But at a movie theater, or in another situation where the screen is at a great distance, the opposite holds—objects that seem to recede behind the screen cause greater eyestrain. This holds true even for “glasses-free” 3D experiences, Banks tells Technology Review.

The question now is, will movie studios care? I don’t mean they’ll stop making 3D movies, but how hard will they work toward creating technology to minimize the impact?

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