I agree fully and the facts presented makes it more clear. If depth isn't allowed to use then what point is it to release a 3d-movie at all? Put down the 3dmoviebusiness and keep 3d to games. It seems like it's the only way 3d can be done properly with good and immersive 3d-effect, hours after hours...

Gae43, thanks for posting the link; it looks like an excellent restoration. It's certainly a lot better than the awful field-sequential version.

Fredz, a lot of your points are well taken, but I would just say a couple of things further:

You compare the box office grosses for House of Wax and My Bloody Valentine, but don't forget those film were made more than fifty years apart. 23 million in 1953 translates to a box office gross of about 184 million in today's money. With ticket prices going up all the time, it's no surprise that there is a new "top grossing film of all time" every few months or so.

A few years ago the British Film Institute published a list of the top 100 films of all time, based on audience attendance. Not the box office receipts, but the actual number of film goers who saw the movies. The results were very interesting:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/ultimatefilm/chart/complete.php

You are absolutely right about Bwana Devil - it is a truly awful film. If it hadn't been for the novelty of the 3D it would almost certainly have vanished without a trace, like so many other B movies of the period. Then, as now, Hollywood tried to use 3D to boost ticket sales for films that didn't have much else going for them. The same can be said about Widescreen and stereo sound (which was also a new innovation of that time).

Although it is true that 3D intended for a large cinema screen will look weaker on a television screen or computer monitor, that doesn't completely explain the 3D style seen in most current films. If you look at the stereo effect in many IMAX films, for example (which are composed for huge screens) the sense of depth is very strong, even when viewed in a household environment.
Take this image from the film Transitions, for example:
https://picasaweb.google.com/Shawmkreitzman/3DCaps?authkey=Gv1sRgCImUw_TF89-YqQE#5675545997311460418

Plus, there have been a number of modern films that have used 3D very effectively (in my opinion). Putting aside Avatar for a moment (everyone talks about Avatar) I thought the 3D in films like Monsters vs Aliens, Step Up and The Hole was first rate.
The Hole in particular I thought used the 3D very intelligently. In almost every shot there was depth information for the eye to explore, and the shots tended to be long enough to give the audience time to really look around before cutting to the next shot.
https://picasaweb.google.com/Shawmkreitzman/3DCaps?authkey=Gv1sRgCImUw_TF89-YqQE#5675544736863587378

In all of these films, the 3D felt like something more than an excuse to charge higher ticket prices.

The 3D in a film like Tron Legacy, by contrast, is used stupidly. Take a shot like this, for example:
https://picasaweb.google.com/Shawmkreitzman/3DCaps?authkey=Gv1sRgCImUw_TF89-YqQE#5675544707038913282
There is no way to have a "perception of depth" when there is no depth to perceive!

Yes they've been released 60 years ago, and that is part of my point. They've had 60 years to enhance their attendance with several releases, and a movie like My Bloody Valentine had only 2 years and one release. And despite the fact that Valentine was only a B-grade movie of dubious quality, it was still a lot more successful than any A-grade 3D movie of the 50s.

If I were a producer my choice would be quite simple. There is obviously not a lot of money to be made from older 3D movies but a lot more money can be made with average new 3D movies or conversions of older movies that were successful in 2D (Titanic, Star Wars, Disney classics, etc.). Not that I like this situation, but that's what is happening right now.

Very interesting indeed, I didn't expect older movies to do that well. That said this list is for the UK, here is another one for the US and the results are somewhat different : http://mrob.com/pub/film-video/topadj.html

In your list, 40 movies are made before 1960 and 60 after that date, which still indicates that more recent movies are globally more successful. In the US list, that's 22 before 1960 and 78 after 1960. So that clearly indicates that recent movies are much more successful than older ones, and it can only change in this direction in the future (more recent movies in the list).

Even more interesting, in the US list there are 2 native 3D movies (Avatar and Toy Story 3), 3 movies that have been converted to 3D (The Lion King, Shrek 2 and Toy Story 2) and 7 more in the pipe for conversion (Star Wars franchise, Titanic and Finding Nemo). Except for the Star Wars franchise, all of them date from less than 20 years ago. There must be a reason for this.

Sure, but movies in IMAX 3D theaters are generally very short movies, Transitions only lasted for 20 minutes for example. That's the reason why 3D movies can be less conservative in regard to 3D in these theaters. Feature movies shown in IMAX 3D theaters have the same separation than in RealD or Xpand theaters though.

And by the way that image of Transitions is a pretty poor example of 3D, there is a major vertical disparity in it. Seems in 1986 they couldn't digitally modify incorrect stereoscopy...

Yep, small budget movies (Step Up, The Hole) and the first 3D movie by a studio (Monsters vs Aliens - Dreamworks) used higher separation than other movies and out-of-the-screen effects. Curiously that was not the case for the second 3D movie by Dreamworks (How to Train your Dragon) or any big budget movie.

I completely agree with you on this one, this movie shouldn't have been released in 3D, it was just surfing on the 3D wave to make more money. To me that's the main problem with the current 3D wave, but the kind of 3D I can see in Avatar or How to Train your Dragon for example is absolutely not a problem for me.

Ok, maybe I was a bit harsh. Some 3D movies actually are done well and deserve the treatment. Surprisingly "Step Up 3D" was one of these films (ignore the horrible acting/plot). Also, I thought "Priest" was top-notch, even knowing it was a conversion. "Tangled" was also really well done. And, more recently, "Immortals" had some nice shots in it. But overall I feel like most movies are a wasted opportunity. For example, Tron was a huge let down. The movie and music and everything was awesome. But the 3D was just a waste. They could have done so much more with that. I am glad that 3D is getting some much deserved interest from directors and movie studios, but they need to push the medium further. As it stands now, they are just *way* too conservative and people will just bore of this 2.2D non-sense.

Just so we are on the same page, here are some shots from 3D games that are up to my standard of what 3D should look like. Why can't they just put this on a movie screen?

I didn't find these images particulary enjoyable in 3D on my 19" monitor, didn't test them on my DLP projector though (102" diagonal). The one from Mirror's Edge was even a bit hard on my eyes, probably because there is an heavy window violation in the foreground. Anyway you can't directly use such images as-is in movie theaters, the separation for the farthest points is way too important in both.

For the Batman image, the farthest point has a separation of 107 pixels for a 1920 pixels width. On a 12m wide cinema screen this would give a 67cm separation (89cm on a 16m wide). It's impossible to fuse such images. Even on a 100" projection screen the separation would be 12cm, which is also way too much. For the Mirror's edge image the farthest point would give 20cm and 27cm on resp. 12m and 16m wide cinema screens. It should be ok on a 100" inch projection screen though, even for children (3.7cm).

As I said previously separation should be less than 5cm for the majority of adults, less than 4.5cm for most adults and less than 4cm for all children (5 years old or more). I can understand that these values are somewhat limitating when you've got an eye separation of 6.5cm (which is my case), but movies are unfortunately not made only for you and me.

Talking about Priest 3D, I'm pretty much surprised that you did find it good in 3D, most reviews I have read said that the 3D was very mild, that it was pretty much invisible because of the very dark shots and that it didn't add anything to immersion. I'll try to find captures to see if the 3D in it is acceptable though, but I really doubt it.

Ok, found a couple of pictures taken from the Blu-Ray 3D of Priest 3D on some websites. They were in 1920x800 SBS-half so I resized them to 2048x576 to have a correct aspect ratio and not loose nor incorrectly add too much detail.
As I feared, this conversion is really subpar, you've at best a cardboard effect and at worst no 3D at all. The result is probably more convincing with CGI effects since they've certainly been rendered in stereo 3D, but for live action it confirms that nobody is able to do it even remotely correctly for now.

Here's a good one.......http://www.flickr.com/photos/58022240@N00/4319784168/

Sure there's some ghosting in it but at least it's in 3D. Give me this type over 3D Lite anytime.


Gae43

http://house-on-haunted-hill-3d.blogspot.com/

@Fredz: Those shots of Priest are all close-up portraits, which wasn't the best material in the movie. The really good shots were the ones with more stuff in them: landscapes, the shots in the city, action scenes. I believe because a lot of this was CG and rendered in true 3D. And certainly it was not the best 3D if seen, but it was very good considering it was a conversion.

Lets say someone is viewing extreme 3D gaming on a 27" 3D monitor. And they are sitting very close, about 12" away. This would be a bigger FOV than sitting in the middle of a regular movie theater. But the 3D effect on the monitor can be much greater (ie more separation). Does the FOV not matter at all, is it only a factor of how big the image actually is? Is this because of the vergence-accommodation? I'm not sure I understand.

Shots 1 and 3 are actually showing parts of the city, but I don't see any 3D for the houses or other objects in the background. Here are a couple more shots from the city and landscapes but they are in the same league, even for the last one that seems to be a CG render :
Yep, at 110° that would be quite a bigger FOV than in cinemas, which generally offer between 26° and 61.8° (around 36° for the middle row). But looking at a computer monitor at this distance is really not a good idea. As I already said there you shouldn't be closer than 30" from a screen else the muscles of your eyes will start to hurt after some time (resting point of vergence and accommodation).
You can't have more parallax on a monitor than on a movie screen since your eyes still have the same separation. If an object has a 10cm parallax your eyes will diverge no matter if the viewing distance is 12" or 30m. It'll probably be less painful from 30m but it does still correspond to an impossible situation in real life. The max parallax value shouldn't be greater than your eye separation, whatever the viewing distance or the screen size.
A bigger FOV enhances immersion but doesn't augment the depth perception, on a given screen size it will even flatten everything if you sit closer. If you watch a 27" monitor from a 12" viewing distance you'll have a lesser 3D effect than when you are at 40".

The vergence-accommodation has nothing to do with FOV, it's only related to the difference between the distance to the screen and the distance to the virtual object. And this adds further limitations to what you can and can't do in stereo 3D, independently of the eye separation limitation.

I know this is a controversial topic, but I strongly feel that the vergence/accommodation argument has been greatly overstated by critics of 3D (Walter Murch, I'm talking about you!).
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/post_4.html

The argument is that our eyes can't handle the discrepancy between the virtual position of a three-dimensional object and the actual position of the display on which it appears. Walter Murch said that this runs counter to evolution. He went so far as to say that this has never occurred in 600 million years of evolution; I assume he double checked his numbers before publishing. Because he is Walter Murch (who is actually most famous as a sound designer, by the way) his comments were repeated and re-published all over the media, and this has become a favourite argument of the anti-3D lobby.

Try this, however:

Get up and look at your reflection in a mirror.

If you stand, say, two feet in front of the mirror, your reflection will appear to be four feet away (two feet in front of the mirror, and two feet behind). The reflection is three-dimensional, because each eye is seeing the reflection from a slightly different perspective. So, your eyes will be converging on a virtual image that is four feet away, even though you are actually looking at the surface of the mirror, two feet away. You obviously haven't just developed x-ray vision: you are not staring two feet into the wall.

If your mirror is in a large room, you can carry this even further by focusing on the far wall. Now your eyes are converging on a spot ten, twenty, thirty feet away, even though the mirror is still only two feet in front of you.

We humans have been looking into mirrors for a long time (not 600 million years, I grant you) without experiencing any difficulties. Good 3D photography simply replicates this, and has been doing so since 1838. Our eyes and our brains should have absolutely no difficulty with the illusion.

Frankly, I was amazed to see someone like Walter Murch making this argument. I just don't know how he can look himself in the mirror every morning.

Oh I'm sure he can.....but maybe his reflection is in 2D?

Gae43

It's not controversial at all, Walter Murch is completely wrong on a lot of aspects about the vergence-accommodation conflict.

1) It's not true than the vergence-accommodation conflict is like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, we do it without thinking about it when using 3D glasses.

2) It's also wrong to say that after 20 minutes or so many people get headaches, it depends on the force of the conflict. The duration before it becomes uncomfortable is also variable, for small values of the conflict it's not a problem at all.

3) His blurb on the editing of 3D films that could not be as rapid as for 2D films is also wrong most of the time. It's true only for high values of the vergence-accommodation conflict.

Still, he's right when he says that the vergence-accommodation conflict does exist and his explanation is also correct (conflict when distances of vergence and accommodation are different). He's also right when he says that the problem can't be corrected for stereoscopy and that other techniques must be found to overcome this (holograms, displays with multiple focal distances, etc.).

But for now we only have stereoscopy to play with, so content creators use several techniques to limit the effects of the conflict. And that's precisely why filmmakers have recently been relatively conservative with their use of depth effects in current 3D movies.

Your test is wrong, when we look at something in a mirror our eyes converge to the point we look at, but they also focus to this point and not on the surface. Else the thing we'd be looking at in the mirror would appear blurry. And when it's blurry it's because we both focus and converge on the surface (or another different point).

No, 3D photography doesn't replicate this, our eyes are focusing on the paper but they converge to a virtual object that is at a different distance than the paper. Else we wouldn't feel a depth perception.

--

Anyway, if people want to learn more about the vergence-accommodation conflict - and science in general - they shouldn't listen to journalists but to scientists. There have been several excellent research papers already published on this subject in the past 3 years :
- Vergence–accommodation conflicts hinder visual performance and cause visual fatigue ;
- Consequences of Incorrect Focus Cues in Stereo Displays ;
- The zone of comfort: Predicting visual discomfort with stereo displays.

If you don't feel like reading research papers you can still read this interview of Martin Banks (PhD, Professor of Optometry and Vision Science at Berkeley), but it's quite an oversimplification of the subject :
- In Focus: The Vision Problems Facing Gamers

This executive briefing is also very interesting, probably the best compromise between the interview and the research papers :
- Executive Briefing: Basic Visual Perception Concepts Related to 3D Movies.

Here is the conclusion of this research for 3D movies that can be found at the end of the third paper I gave a link for :

And why not use a more defined use of volume pop-out, there is a setting that would be comfortable for everyone with more volume. I don't think there is such a thing as multiple object stereo separation for two view object displacement, just two cameras displacing two views and you could techically get more volume from multi object render stereo displacment. The point is not with the current involvment and settings, its with a more well defined stereo3d entertainment experience, three dee like a depth hologram not 3d like a cardboard cutout.

I watched pirates of the carribean on stranger tides that i converted from blu-ray 3d to .wmv 3d and the 3d was limited without much convergence and thats ok but it gave my mom a headache, the picture was clear and the 3d was kinda there but when i watch her since we are the only ones who watch 3d stuff as my hobby she gives me a sad look when i say that the 3d is crappy without volume and its like a gamble with hollywood as to what the movie i get will look like in 3d, then its just anther guessing game till the next contruction comes out.

If you can only make one visual cue then why not make the 3d outstand on that certain spot at least and maybe have vergence cues on other spots of the scene just to take a focus for at least 1 or 2 seconds. I don't watch movies just to look at the poeple in them, its nice to see the objects, buildings, hands and light poles and things. I just don't think we need to see the whole screen in our focus, people usually have a line of sight else they are just to relaxed.

Yeah, and 600 million years ago we also didn't fly thousands of feet in the air at 500MPH. But we do today. Its called technological evolution.

Classic 3D vs Modern 3D. Modern 3D kicks Classic 3D's ass. Try viewing modern 3D on a quality display. Full 1080P per eye from a direct 3D blu-ray. Not some ripped stolen copy. A quality display will reproduce inky blacks. Viewing movies on the cheapest 3D LCD you can buy. Will probably make you think modern 3D is poor. I've seen many movies at my local theater that looked like 3D lite. But on my high end display, the same material has a very distinct image clarity and much more 3D wow effect. I don't feel that projectors give enough inky blacks either. At least the so called high end ones I've seen. Also, get back from the screen and let the 3D effect happen. I've read sooo many comments from people sitting way to close to the displays.

chief's verdict: Modern 3D kicks Classic 3D to the curb.


Enjoy.

A lot of it depends on the size of the display, I'll give you that much. However, you really need a screen the size of imax for most of the movies these days to get decent 3D. I still think that it could be helped somewhat by increasing the image displacement more, but it's almost impossible for me to find this out without a lot of hassle.
I still think that the 3D isn't nearly as pronounced as it should be in the modern movies. I understand that they are trying to keep the number of people who will feel ill by watching the movies, but it's making the 3D almost non-existant.

Its like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat but, he has the rabbit under a cloth and puts it in the hat before he takes it out. Stereo3d puts a cloth on the effect and does not pull the effect out.

In the 50's i'm sure they had some good 3d, i've seen good 3d.

Chiefwinston, have you seen 3d float in the middle of your room from your tv set? Most people don't use hardware blu-ray player and use a windows computer.

I see everyones anguish and its from having no Volume, theres depth and popout but what matters most is volume. Let overridden depth and popout come last. I would rather have floating cubic volume objects on the screen anyday.

Ok, here is one with some serious 3D settings up as far as I could comfortably go on a 23" screen.

You won't see this in theaters!

I'm wishing hollywood makes the beat in 3d like you can somewhat get in games. Comfortable effective 3d. Nice 3d picture btw too. It looks pretty well rounded 3d and no window violations.

They are just focusing on the two camera system way to much, I don't even think they have a computer hooked into their cameras to adjust all the objects separations properly, really neither does nvidia, tridef I would assume. Whats wrong with letting a computer help render a film recording? Heck why not even transcode it into directx.

There are a couple of problems with this picture :
- there is popout in the whole 1/5 bottom of the screen which makes the scene quite unrealistic and creates an heavy window violation in the bottom ;
- the negative parallax on the character's hood produces 13.2cm of popout on a 19" screen viewed at a 50cm distance, which is a lot higher than what the comfortable range should be (7cm max at 50cm for the 1/3 diopters limit explained in the last paper) ;
- it's painful to rapidely look at the background and the foreground and vice versa in the zone of the character's head because of the heavy difference between positive and negative parallax ;
- the HUD elements don't appear at the appropriate position in 3D, particularly in the bottom where it looks like they are inside the ground.

All this is not really a problem when looking at the image for some seconds, but playing with these settings for some minutes should make most people uncomfortable. It's certainly out of question to use such settings for the whole duration of a 3D movie too.

Inspite of all the errors in the image it looks completely ok to me. Those old rules needs to be redone. ^^

I'm not talking about old rules here, the last paper I gave a link for has been published only 4 months ago. And their findings are not based on some vague assumptions like the "percentage rule" used by 3D filmmakers, they are based on a scientific method, ie. objective and reproductible experiments that are peer-reviewed before publication.

You may find the image ok, but I guess you can still see the window violation in the bottom and the problem with the HUD. And I guess you can also understand that before being able to tell if this image will be comfortable for most viewers, you'd have to test it on a representative sample of the population first. That's precisely what researchers have been doing in these papers.

Cybereality also said that he pushed the 3D effect as far as it could comfortably go on his 23" screen. So if someone who's been exposed to stereoscopy for so many years has found a limit to what he can handle (13cm popout at a 50cm viewing distance), are you really surprised that casual viewers have a lower tolerance (7cm popout at 50cm according to researchers) ? Also the max. positive parallax I measured in this image was 4.42cm for a 23" 16:9 monitor, which is sensibly lower than the 6.5cm average IPD. Why do you think cyber only used around 68% of the max. depth setting instead of 100% ?

Hugo is supposed to really push the 3D medium forward. Hopefully this will be what we are waiting for. I am going to see it over the break and I'll post my findings.

Did you see "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn" in 3D btw ? What did you think about it in case you watched it ?

I actually missed that one. Used to make a point to catch every single 3D flick, but just been really busy these days.

Nice Assassins Creed 3D photo, Cyber. I like and prefer very strong 3D like that photo. But everyone should remember that a single viewer PC game is developed under different viewing specifications. Modern movies are developed with a large audience in mind. Some of the people in the audience are not in the prime spot of the center of the theater. Also, people's eye spacing and head sizes are different. But 3D is also an art form. I go to the shows to see what these great artist have produced. Sometimes its a dud other times its a great evening at the show.


enjoy

Ok, well I saw Hugo. It was certainly not the breakthrough I hoped it would be, but it was one of the best uses of 3D in cinema to date. You could tell with a lot of shots that the director had 3D in mind and, in fact, some parts wouldn't have made sense in 2D. So this was not an afterthought like in some films. They also did push the 3D effect pretty high in select scenes. Most of the film was fairly standard, in terms of 3D depth. But there were some really nice shots in there, mainly in the clock tower, that really pushed it to the edge of whats comfortable. I took the glasses off a few times, and could see a visibly doubled image. In fact, there was one part at the end that was (sorry to admit) somewhat uncomfortable to watch. This was the part where they zoomed in of Kingsley's face. So I think I can understand why filmmakers are being timid with the 3D effect.

On a brighter note, I think some studios are figuring it out. I saw a trailer for Dr. Seuss' The Lorax and it had the most amazing 3D I have seen in a recent film. Hands down, blew away even Avatar. It was done by the people that made Despicable Me, and that was already a pretty good show. But this took the best 3D part from that film and made (seemingly) a whole movie. Or maybe they just showed all the best parts in the trailer. I don't know. But it looked amazing. This is one to watch out for.

Yeah I know what you mean about the Kingsley shot. It actually looked to me like it was a small conversion 3D shot thrown in. I think this because the head shot seen of Sacha Baron Cohen questioning one of the kids. And the director making his head in 3D space come further and further out of the screen with each question to the kid. The 3D is used to make his questioning more pronounced. Just brilliant 3D use. And with Sachas' last question his head was off the screen and in the middle of the theater. But not like a gimick.

Also, the 3D was comfortable to me through the entire show.


enjoy

Coming up soon. The big boys of cinema are throwing their weight into the 3D cinema ring.

Steven Spielberg- The Adventures Of Tintin: Secret Of The Unicorn 3D (Christmas 2011). I have seen the 3D trailer

James Cameron- Titanic 3D (conversion). I have also, seen the 3D trailer.

George Lucas- Star Wars: Episode I (conversion). And well I've seen the 3D trailer to this, too.

I've seen what Micheal Bay, James Cameron, and Martin Scorseses can do. And I was impressed with what these masters of story telling can do with 3D. I'm thinking that once these upcoming wonders of cinema are released. The movie industry will understand how to use 3D more effectively.

enjoy

Sadly, most of those are conversions.

Update:

Coming soon.

Steven Spielberg- The Adventures Of Tintin: Secret Of The Unicorn 3D (Christmas 2011). I have seen the 3D trailer

James Cameron- Titanic 3D (conversion). I have also, seen the 3D trailer.

George Lucas- Star Wars: Episode I (conversion). And well I've seen the 3D trailer to this, too.

And add these to the list:

Ridley Scott- Prometheus (Stereo Cameras?)

Francis Ford Coppola- Twixt (Stereo Cameras?)

cheers

Also :
Baz Luhrmann, with Leonardo DiCaprio- The Great Gatsby (filmed in 3D)

Please don't miss Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. It had the best 3D I've seen so far in Hollywood (not counting IMAX 3D).

Yeah the Dr. Seuss' The Lorax does look good. There are 2 trailers out for that show. But I try to make it to all the kids animated features. Almost all the kids animated features have really good 3D. There are some duds. I have found most kids animated 3D movies have similar 3D qualities to the Dr. Seuss' The Lorax trailers. And they look absolutely spectacular in 3D Blu-Ray in Full HD 3D. Its why alot of the 3D Blu-rays run close to $50 usd.

cheers