The American Optemetric Association has apparently pointed out that viewing entertainment content (television, movies, games) is not necessarily a bad thing for young children.
This was apparently all triggered by Nintendo's warning label on their new 3DS hand held gaming system (google translated version here ).
Michael Grotticelli's January 21st entry in his Broadcast Engineering.com blog brought this to my attention...and it's an important topic for me as a parent...and as a content creator.
The gamer site 1up.com also has an article taking it even farther, quoting a New York Times article that describes studies using Rhesus monkeys, subjecting one group to constant 3D content for 3 months versus a control group that didn't showed no difference in visual development. It leaves out any findings in the way of the ability of the 3D viewing monkeys to ever get a life, a job or to move out of their parent's basement...but I digress.
I'll go on record as having had some concerns about the long term effects of viewing 3D content in marathon gaming sessions, or even several feature films back-to-back (Star Wars 1-6 if it were all in stereo on a rainy weekend for instance...) on young children. My 11 year old son certainly seems to become hearing-challenged when he's in a particularly prickly HALO scenario and my wife is calling the family to report for dinner...
With the nature of gaming and "forced" or synthetic 3D, it seems that 3D animation for gaming is probably the most cost-effective area to add stereo imaging in all of entertainment. Adding a render camera to a 3D animation to provide the other stereo "eye" is far easier and faster than adding, syncing, and managing a second camera on a feature shoot...at least for the moment. Kids (and some adults of course, though with less concern for visual "development") tend to play games for hours on end. What effect will this have long-term? Particularly in cases where a child may not have an athletic or otherwise physically "active" life in addition to their interests in things competitive, but virtual?
I couldn't find the particular findings that Grotticelli was referring to on the AOA site (not that I'm challenging it, just that "trust but verify" thing is the only Reagan-era strategy that really grabbed me...), but there are several other articles I could find.
First, an article on how many people have vision imperfections that at the least, prevent them from perceiving the difference between visual stereo and standard imaging, and at worst give them the headaches, nausea, etc that are mentioned by some people who view stereo (3D) content:
And second, an article that reminds us of the inability of children to judge when to stop doing something enjoyable, often past the point of apparent exhaustion.
Bottom line? I'm probably not nearly as informed as I should be if my goal was to lead you toward some specific conclusion.
The fact remains that human stereo vision and the way a human brain processes input has to be affected at some level by viewing stereo visual material as when that edit comes where we change from a close up to an establishing shot of the next sequence, our brain sees that we are changing from focusing on something closeup to something far away, but our eyes don't re-converge at all as the actual image plane we focus on is stationary. Does this help eye-brain cooperative function, or cause it to "disconnect" to maintain immersion in the experience? We move from place to place, and change our focus from point to point, but it's all done for us as the focal point remains the reflected, emitted, or transmitted image plane we are viewing.
Am I saying I'm opposed to 3D movies and entertainment? Absolutely not.
I'm saying we all need to be aware of the long term impact of any activity that we repeat often enough whether it's carpal tunnel issues from typing, health or safety issues from drinking (I'm a Single Malt Scotch guy myself), or the effects on our visual acuity and development from viewing our entertainment content in 3D.
...and criticism of Nintendo for issuing a common-sense warning on their products in a world where most of us can't even eat in a way that keeps us healthy, seems absurd.
TimK
