Meant to be Seen

When playing stuff like Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, I notice sometimes a "fuzziness" around certain objects in the foreground. It's kinda hard to explain, and I'm not even sure that "fuzziness" is the right word to explain it. It's kinda like a "magnifying glass effect". It seems like the pixels are bigger, and more noticeable around the outline of an object closer to the foreground. I notice this scenario in pretty much all 3D content that is lower resolution. Motorstorm: Pacific Rift is a perfect example, because that game is running at a sub-720p resolution. I also notice this fuzziness or blurriness around the outline of objects in certain free, downloadable, side-by-side video clips. I've even seen it during some of the world cup soccer games. During certain camera angles, I can notice it. A player will be walking around on the soccer field, and you can see this fuzziness kinda surrounding the outline of the player.

Anybody else notice this?

Is there a specific term for this ?

Hi Anthony1, I noticed this effect on the Sony TV's with the Disney Demo disc. Live action has never looked quite right to me in 3D. The soccer action with the strange "halo" effect I have seen. I believe this was either the camera used to shoot the footage causing this effect. Or the soccer footage I saw was actually 2D that has been poorly converted to 3D. But without question in the instances I've seen. It's the source material. Now your PS3 and motostorm question I can repeat on my set. Any chance you can take a snapshot and circle the area you think looks strange? That way I'll be able to study closer this strange effect. I did see a Sony that had this stange pixelation to it that was running the single track demo in 3D. It looked poor to me. Someone didn't know how to configure that particular set. The PS3 gaming 3D will leave your jaw on the ground. If it doesn't. I tend to think its maybe a setting that is down or upscaling something to much. Possibly in the PS3 settings or the TV itself or a combo.

cheers

This kind of relates. Anyone know how to make screenshots from a PS3 console?

Regards,
Neil

Chiefwinston wrote:Hi Anthony1, I noticed this effect on the Sony TV's with the Disney Demo disc. Live action has never looked quite right to me in 3D. The soccer action with the strange "halo" effect I have seen. I believe this was either the camera used to shoot the footage causing this effect. Or the soccer footage I saw was actually 2D that has been poorly converted to 3D. But without question in the instances I've seen. It's the source material. Now your PS3 and motostorm question I can repeat on my set. Any chance you can take a snapshot and circle the area you think looks strange? That way I'll be able to study closer this strange effect. I did see a Sony that had this stange pixelation to it that was running the single track demo in 3D. It looked poor to me. Someone didn't know how to configure that particular set. The PS3 gaming 3D will leave your jaw on the ground. If it doesn't. I tend to think its maybe a setting that is down or upscaling something to much. Possibly in the PS3 settings or the TV itself or a combo.

cheers

Don't get it wrong, the 3D on the PS3 is awesome, at least for me it is. I thoroughly enjoy playing Wipeout HD, Super Stardust HD and Motorstorm: Pacific Rift 3D. All are amazing to me.

As for the "halo effect", or the "fuzziness" or "magnifying glass syndrome", I can notice brief instances of it on all the 3D PS3 games. It's much, much more obvious on Motorstorm than the other ones. It's probably least obvious on Wipeout HD. On Super Stardust, you can see it when that one ship that holds the bombs goes by. Get close to that ship, and just watch it. You'll notice that it seems to be more "pixely" or more "fuzzy". Hard to put into words actually.

If you were here in person, I could show you in about 5 seconds what I'm talking about, and you would instantly know what I'm talking about, but it's kinda hard to explain. I don't think I can take a picture of it, because I don't think it would show up on a picture. I'll try to play some more Motorstorm Pacific Rift today, and see if there is a certain part of a certain track where it's super obvious or something like that, and then I'll tell you to look for it there.

I've seen it on other stuff besides video games. It's not just relegated to video games only. I've downloaded a number of free sample 3D clips off the web. Side-by-side video clips. Movie trailers, etc, etc. Sometimes you can really see the "fuzziness" on those clips. Also, I definitely saw it when watching the World Cup. It's not something that is going to completely ruin the experience or anything like that, but I'm just trying to understand what it is exactly, whether or not there is a specific term for it, and what causes it.

Right now, I think all 3DTV's suffer from it, so I don't think it's a limitation of any particular 3D display. It might be 100 percent source related. It might be limited to only lower resolution 3D stuff. I don't currently have a 3D Blu Ray player or any 3D Blu Ray's, so I haven't tried any high-resolution sources in 3D at home yet. I've seen demos of them at the store, and can't remember if I noticed any of that same fuzziness or not.

The sound of "magnifying glass"/"fuzziness" phenomena around object contours sounds like a 2d+depthmap conversion for me... I can't say for sure without seeing it though. Do you see the same phenomena when gaming on the computer which mostly uses real 3d? In that case it's a cheap way to do 3d for sony and it probably won't "fool" those who have been doing stereogaming in true-3d before.

Sidenote: I'm incredibly curious on how crysis2 will look since it's suppoused to be 2d-depth as well. But here it's done on the gameengine level which ensures the best possible image using 2d-depth (as with ps3 if it now uses this method...).

For the videos I wouldn't be surprised if it came from poor MPEG compression which is particulary visible around the edges, even more in live action broadcast with its lower bandwith. This problem has already been identified with JPEG compression for anaglyphs, which they simply call ghosting there :
http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/anaglyph/anaglyph.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

For video games I guess it's the same phenomenon that you see in 2D (ie. aliasing) when you look at contents with lower resolution than your eye acuity, and probably the reason why FSAA has been so popular in gaming.

Anthony1, I think I know what your seeing. And its probably an anti-ailiasing related weakness of the PS3. That is being amplified by the 50" plasma image. My generation 2 and 3 ultimate gaming rigs running nVidia cards in 3D and on a huge 21" viewsonic had sharper 3D imaging. But If I were to take that same set-up and run it on the plasma -I believe you might get similair results. Also, sitting real close to the screen like I have been- makes it more obvious. I see it in my 3D blu-ray discs but is far far less obvious. Also, without going into a rambling convo about the limitations to double image 3D. Double image 3D is missing important info for holigraphic type 3D. But by all means sit back and enjoy the current gen. show.

cheers

Neil wrote:This kind of relates. Anyone know how to make screenshots from a PS3 console?

Regards,
Neil

I just put polarized glasses on my 2 cam setup and shoot it from the 3D TV/Monitor.