Whats the deal with 3d? Games, Movies Pictures Content

[Dom]

So I been hunting to find some content worth actually viewing in 3d, that not being to likely atm. So whats the deal with all the content looking so blatantly mashed and undeniably obscured garbage renditions? Why is it that all this stereo3d is out now and 3d games being made and everyone is like yeah thats so cool in 3d when clearly its not and wrong. I'm not saying that the hardware is bad cause in actual fact the hardware is perfect unless theres more to add, the 3d content is out but the 3d in it sucks and I mean like all of it even the 3d ready games. Why is everyone supporting the 3d games and movies when it really does not produce an achievement on only a sub-partial view of a sink in without any actual interception details like popout <--> pop in? Its totally pointless to make 3d without this and its not that you have to get a headache or loose your vision or any of the nonsense related to peoples backlash. Its just the fact 3d is not done right and seems like a child's kindergartens drawing which the parents agree its nice but its not done as if a professional actually went to school for and shows a success. So theres substandard and revealing.

Anyways here are some pictures I got from Nvidia 3d Vision Live to show you that 3d is still strong just not with everyones insight among the force-ably liking of the negative disparity of the content.

[Fredz]

Why is everyone supporting the 3d games and movies when it really does not produce an achievement on only a sub-partial view of a sink in without any actual interception details like popout <--> pop in? Its totally pointless to make 3d without this

Pop-out effects depend on the context, if you're playing a FPS on a monitor viewed at 50cm, the probability of anything appearing between you and the monitor is very low, so it's quite logical that you don't see much pop-out effects in this case.

If you want to add pop-out in this context, then the S3D rendering will not be conform to reality, and indeed totally inaccurate from a technical point of view. Or you'll have gimmicky effects being added just for the sake of it, but that'll not be appropriate most of the time.

You can have pop-out effects with other types of games specifically designed for that though, but not for the most popular genres like FPS, RTS, racing games or flight simulations. In the two latter examples they may introduce flying bees in the cockpit though, that would be one of the only way to see some pop-out since the windshield should be at the same distance or farther than your monitor.

and its not that you have to get a headache or loose your vision or any of the nonsense related to peoples backlash.

In fact yes, heavy pop-in or pop-out (more than 7cm at a 50cm viewing distance, ie. 1/3 diopters) will give you headaches, as has been shown in the research paper referenced here (page 4) : Vergence-accommodation conflicts hinder visual performance and cause visual fatigue.

That's another of the reasons why you don't see much of these pop-out effects at the cinema or in 3D games, and I'm quite glad that they at least respect our eyes most of the time.

[cybereality]

Yeah, I would like to see greater 3D effects in movies. I think 3D games, for the most part, look pretty good. But movies seem really flat in comparison. A lot IMAX 3D films seem to have really nice depth and out-of-screen effects. But hollywood movies seem to be a lot tamer. Going crazy with pop-out effects might give people headaches, but I don't care. For $16.50 a ticket, they can afford to give out Asprin with the glasses. Come on, I want to be blown away!

Here are some cross-eye shots that I think look really good, and they don't have any pop-out or uncomfortable effects. Why can't movies look like this?

Side_Street_by_artbytheo.jpg

Market_by_artbytheo.jpg

[Dom]

Pop-out effects depend on the context, if you're playing a FPS on a monitor viewed at 50cm, the probability of anything appearing between you and the monitor is very low, so it's quite logical that you don't see much pop-out effects in this case.

I think this is because they don't know how to make 3d right in the first place and that there are window violation because they are still stuck on 2d renderings and only finishing with a 2 camera lead out. There don't seem to be any other perception for better 3d.

If you want to add pop-out in this context, then the S3D rendering will not be conform to reality, and indeed totally inaccurate from a technical point of view. Or you'll have gimmicky effects being added just for the sake of it, but that'll not be appropriate most of the time.

So 3d similar to a hologram with glasses is gimmicky? You could make it so that a when the camera is zoomed in a pan or steady shot has an effect of details coming out in popout. You could make the whole movie come out of the screen about 4 feet in a theater and have extrapop out and sugnificant pop-in with everything boxled. I think the reality is everyone is still thinking about the 2d aspect to 3d.

You can have pop-out effects with other types of games specifically designed for that though, but not for the most popular genres like FPS, RTS, racing games or flight simulations. In the two latter examples they may introduce flying bees in the cockpit though, that would be one of the only way to see some pop-out since the windshield should be at the same distance or farther than your monitor.

Yes but are you talking about some of the in screen effects having depth that are behind screen depth, cause thats all i am accustom to. This is still barely worthwhile to sit and watch or play.

In fact yes, heavy pop-in or pop-out (more than 7cm at a 50cm viewing distance, ie. 1/3 diopters) will give you headaches, as has been shown in the research paper referenced here (page 4) : Vergence-accommodation conflicts hinder visual performance and cause visual fatigue.

I don't think it will make you tired as long as its clear and not overshadowed by anomolies and color fading. When I say pop-in I mean that the objects are boxled and not talking about depth, by depth I mean sink in or a phony window. Also when viweing pop out at a closer range its just the 3d don't look and come out of the screen as good.

That's another of the reasons why you don't see much of these pop-out effects at the cinema or in 3D games, and I'm quite glad that they at least respect our eyes most of the time.

Yes, but you are agreeing to the same as the doctors that did the 3d headache experiment and they probably were relying on the same obsolete techniques that are used today in all the 3d content. I will get the same headaches and not even watch the bad 3d recordings as they are not currently done right. The fact is if you have a bunch of flat 2d scenes with sub par 3d depth on one object and alot of sink in like a window then people are trying the establish 4 things and it looks like, a dipping your head and seeing in foggy water.

Yeah, I would like to see greater 3D effects in movies. I think 3D games, for the most part, look pretty good. But movies seem really flat in comparison. A lot IMAX 3D films seem to have really nice depth and out-of-screen effects. But hollywood movies seem to be a lot tamer. Going crazy with pop-out effects might give people headaches, but I don't care. For $16.50 a ticket, they can afford to give out Asprin with the glasses. Come on, I want to be blown away!

Here are some cross-eye shots that I think look really good, and they don't have any pop-out or uncomfortable effects. Why can't movies look like this?

I know what you mean but if everyone is worshiping the 3d now then no one will ever make it right. Also I wish i could view cross-eyed content but I cannot anymore.

[Chiefwinston]

Well I hate to rain on the parade guys but my PS3 + VT25 produces better 3D than your reference photo's. Avatar the 3d blu ray is way better than your stills. Sounds like something may be giving you inferrior results somewere- were? I wouldn't have a clue as to what may be going wrong. good luck though.

cheers everyone

[Dom]

Well I hate to rain on the parade guys but my PS3 + VT25 produces better 3D than your reference photo's. Avatar the 3d blu ray is way better than your stills. Sounds like something may be giving you inferrior results somewere- were? I wouldn't have a clue as to what may be going wrong. good luck though.

Well then I wonder why the movies in the theaters are the same quality as the videos and games I see in 3d. Does a sony playstation produce a hologram like 3d image with glasses. It has some depth with pop-in hey? I would asume that I think i seen that truck driving game in 3d awhile back.
I'm not sure where the problem is but it seems likely coming from the software or movies.

[cybereality]

@Dom: Save the images and rename them to *.JPS and you can view with a real setup.

@Chiefwinston: I agree. I have seen some 3D HDTVs in the stores and the effect looks better than the movie theaters. I still don't understand why this is, maybe its just me, I don't know.

[Fredz]

I think this is because they don't know how to make 3d right in the first place and that there are window violation because they are still stuck on 2d renderings and only finishing with a 2 camera lead out. There don't seem to be any other perception for better 3d.

I think they perfectly know the maths to calculate an exact S3D scene, as can be seen in papers published by NVIDIA about stereoscopy which contain quite a solid mathematical and physiological background. And I think they are also perfectly able to avoid window violations, as can be seen in most modern 3D platformers where the position of the camera is automatically modified to account for this. I guess all this is at least true for 3D Vision ready games.

But as I said, pop-out effects only depend on the context. Imagine you are playing paintball in reality (the closest experience similar to a FPS game without having to kill people), you'll almost never have any object appearing between you and 50cm in front of you, apart for your gun, arms and useless things like dust, smoke, paint, rain, snow, etc. You most probably won't even have foliage or things like that in this zone because you would use your arms (which I hope are longer than 50cm) to get them out of the way. So pop-out in this case would make no sense most of the time.

So 3d similar to a hologram with glasses is gimmicky? You could make it so that a when the camera is zoomed in a pan or steady shot has an effect of details coming out in popout. You could make the whole movie come out of the screen about 4 feet in a theater and have extrapop out and sugnificant pop-in with everything boxled. I think the reality is everyone is still thinking about the 2d aspect to 3d.

Yes, you could do that, but that would be totally unrealistic and not conform to most experiences in real life, just like in the FPS case. You can create content that is specifically crafted to give a pop-out experience similar to what you would be experiencing in real life, but adding artificial pop-out that you shouldn't be seeing in the same real-life situation would make the content wrong, the opposite to what you said you really wanted in the first place.

With a different genre like the Nintendogs game for example, pop-out would make sense because the head of your dog could well be inside this 0-50cm range, but there are not many games that could feature this specific characteristic.

The question is, do you want to have an accurate representation of reality, or do you want exacerbated depth effects that no longer depict the reality ? Both positions are valid, and stereo and convergence parameters can help both camps to have what they want in most case. But you can't expect all people to prefer the second choice, and to force developers to privilege this parametrization instead of the more exact one.

I don't think it will make you tired as long as its clear and not overshadowed by anomolies and color fading.

Read the executive briefing I gave a link for or those more complete papers on the subject :
- Consequences of Incorrect Focus Cues in Stereo Displays ;
- Vergence–accommodation conflicts hinder visual performance and cause visual fatigue.

They specifically designed a volumetric 3D display for these experiments that can independently vary vergence and focal distances without any other changes in the stimulus, so they were able to directly test whether differences between vergence and focal distances contribute to fatigue and discomfort.

All subjects reported fatigue and/or discomfort at the end of every session. When vergence and focal distance were not always the same, subjects experienced more symptoms associated with the eyes and the head, but not with the neck and back. It was the first time an experiment showed that a difference between vergence and accommodation distances could alone cause visual fatigue and discomfort.

Yes, but you are agreeing to the same as the doctors that did the 3d headache experiment and they probably were relying on the same obsolete techniques that are used today in all the 3d content.

I'm not talking about some bozos here, but about several of the most respected scientists in the 3D field, people who have invented 3D techniques that are far exceeding what anyone (including 3D filmmakers, 3D developers or the general public) has ever seen. Have a look at the previous papers to evaluate the seriousness of their work, or have a look at these one that present the volumetric 3D display with near-correct focus cues that they have created :
- Fixed-Viewpoint Volumetric Display ;
- Achieving near-correct focus cues in a 3-D display using multiple image planes.

[tritosine5G]

Disagree with the sentence saying simulators can't work with pop out. One of the most important feature of such flight sim is the recording function.

Yeah: this is not your average derped down console bloatware ported to PC, you record multiplayer matches with 128 players and share it. Once you have that file ( source is irreleant) you load it up and enjoy your beatiful 3d scenery in third person view using the camera the way you want so pop out will be easy on your eyes and look awesome.

You don't have to fly at all, I won't for a while for sure.

[Fredz]

I don't understand what kind of pop-out you can see in a flight simulator, except for what is inside the cabin and which is of a quite limited interest (yoke and panels) and wouldn't probably even be in the 0-50cm zone for Boeing or Airbus planes.

[Dom]

I think they perfectly know the maths to calculate an exact S3D scene, as can be seen in papers published by NVIDIA about stereoscopy which contain quite a solid mathematical and physiological background. And I think they are also perfectly able to avoid window violations, as can be seen in most modern 3D platformers where the position of the camera is automatically modified to account for this. I guess all this is at least true for 3D Vision ready games.

Yes there might be some papers on how it can be done, but there really is nothing that is like that. The 3d Vision Ready games lock out the convergence and the depth slider only gives a fatter window violation along with the convergence if its working. This in turn does not meet the satasfactory viewing desire with pop out and pop in. It only adds a slight offset of the objects and scene in 3d and leaves pretty much the whole scene un watchable if at the setting you would desire.

But as I said, pop-out effects only depend on the context. Imagine you are playing paintball in reality (the closest experience similar to a FPS game without having to kill people), you'll almost never have any object appearing between you and 50cm in front of you, apart for your gun, arms and useless things like dust, smoke, paint, rain, snow, etc. You most probably won't even have foliage or things like that in this zone because you would use your arms (which I hope are longer than 50cm) to get them out of the way. So pop-out in this case would make no sense most of the time.

This is untrue because you could have the whole scene with pop out and have your hud come out even more, also you keep forgetting that zoomed or close objects look good with pop out so that is better just by itself. With this technique its possible to get a feeling of reality.

Yes, you could do that, but that would be totally unrealistic and not conform to most experiences in real life, just like in the FPS case. You can create content that is specifically crafted to give a pop-out experience similar to what you would be experiencing in real life, but adding artificial pop-out that you shouldn't be seeing in the same real-life situation would make the content wrong, the opposite to what you said you really wanted in the first place.

Doing a whole scene pop out will give the relative forground a more substantial 3d effect and won't seem as gimmicky because the whole movie will be seen with popout. Then by adding more popout out of the current set it will make a more rounded experience. For Example, An old west movie and theres a close up on a cowboy riding a horse and the horse need to turn around, seeing this with full scene pop out and extra pop out the horse will seem like its really there not just infront of a camera. The whole point is to add a sense of realness. Pop out is not just about scaring the audience.

The question is, do you want to have an accurate representation of reality, or do you want exacerbated depth effects that no longer depict the reality ? Both positions are valid, and stereo and convergence parameters can help both camps to have what they want in most case. But you can't expect all people to prefer the second choice, and to force developers to privilege this parametrization instead of the more exact one.

Yeah I am looking for the whole 3d effect where everything in the scene has looking volume. Adjusting the convergence and depth to this factor gives window violations and therefor the content is made wrong. When I use convergence to a high setting the scene changes its visual dynamics in that everything is more fluid and lifelike. When a flag is moving in convergence 3d, even though theres window violations the flag flaps more softly and feels like its whipping more.

They specifically designed a volumetric 3D display for these experiments that can independently vary vergence and focal distances without any other changes in the stimulus, so they were able to directly test whether differences between vergence and focal distances contribute to fatigue and discomfort.

All subjects reported fatigue and/or discomfort at the end of every session. When vergence and focal distance were not always the same, subjects experienced more symptoms associated with the eyes and the head, but not with the neck and back. It was the first time an experiment showed that a difference between vergence and accommodation distances could alone cause visual fatigue and discomfort.

Yes I read and skimmed through the papers, but were they leading to this discomfort because of the parameters they used or where they trying to experiment on a solution. I think i seen a solution in there but I don't think studios are smart enough to follow it. The fact is without a releviating effect the whole 3d scene is going to stay in a 2d similar method and keeping it this way is not good at all.

I'm not talking about some bozos here, but about several of the most respected scientists in the 3D field, people who have invented 3D techniques that are far exceeding what anyone (including 3D filmmakers, 3D developers or the general public) has ever seen. Have a look at the previous papers to evaluate the seriousness of their work, or have a look at these one that present the volumetric 3D display with near-correct focus cues that they have created :
- Fixed-Viewpoint Volumetric Display ;
- Achieving near-correct focus cues in a 3-D display using multiple image planes.

Yes I did view these and suggest that stereo pair with a monitor is failed for visual cues. Though I don't under stand how a monitors screen can cause a visual cue since the 3d scene is full color and transparent from the lights of a panel. I think they must mean this cue is from the actual rendition error that can occur from window violations without full scene pop out. Or even the frame of the display and suppose where the image goes when its hitting the edge. Seems it would just be like when a person walks around you and you can't see them anymore. I suppose theres not 180 degrees fov yet in with cameras and video games yet hey?

[tritosine5G]

I don't understand what kind of pop-out you can see in a flight simulator, except for what is inside the cabin and which is of a quite limited interest (yoke and panels) and wouldn't probably even be in the 0-50cm zone for Boeing or Airbus planes.

Im talking about '3rd person' eg. tail , bullets, or entire airplane as 'out of screen effect', when you are done playing , and you have your *.rec file.... The possibilites are immense. This is going to bring back some of the cool PC stuff "from back then when games were hard and you'd get shot down inside an x-wing fighter so easily you had to rewatch what happened and reconsider stuff".

Imagine this:
-You can't fly .

but. In this game, you'll still be able to play (dynamic) online multiplayer as a turret gunner. Or Anti Aircraft battery operator. Or . Radar operator. Or. Radio officer. Or later on , a tankist...

The 128 player online match can be recorded entirely, and you can watch every second of it later offline. Theres going to be heaps of 3d content because of this! And ofc flight sim guys going to love 3d.

[Fredz]

Seems my english level must be too low for this site, whatever I post nobody seem to understand what I'm talking about and give completely off the mark answers. Probably time to move on I guess.

[tritosine5G]

But you do get that Im not talking about recording 's3d videos' ... but a special container that uses the rendering engine ?

It's called 'tracks' in il-2 sturmovik slang.

[cybereality]

Seems my english level must be too low for this site, whatever I post nobody seem to understand what I'm talking about and give completely off the mark answers. Probably time to move on I guess.

Don't be so quick to give up. Things are just getting warmed up here.

[tritosine5G]

yup! especially once it looks 15x better than this x360 game:
[youtube-hd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF192t_RkPk[/youtube-hd]


the original sturmovik has the best sound engine after all these years, and they improved that tremendously too. Soo if you are handling your s3d camera thru those *tracks*, you'll experience all the doppler distortion and screaming.

Cliffs of Dover might be a s3d milestone.

[Chiefwinston]

Seems my english level must be too low for this site, whatever I post nobody seem to understand what I'm talking about and give completely off the mark answers. Probably time to move on I guess.

Well Fredz I do understand your points and agree with the conclusions completely. Some people are looking for something more than what 3D can deliver. I'm also, wondering if some one is not able to see the full 3D effect anymore if medically something might be happening in their bodies thats not good for their eyesight- and they just don't know it yet.
So I hope you stick around- your contributions are appreciated.

cheers everyone

[Fredz]

There is an irreconcilable problem here, I've been saying all along that adding artificial pop-out to a game will make the rendering incorrect compared to an identical real-life situation. And they keep on saying that doing this will be more realistic. Go figure...

And even more, one of these guys is very quick at dismissing research papers written by people who know a lot more about 3D than any of us here. So, without wanting to sound too much arrogant or pretentious, it seems my level of reasoning or knowledge should be best used on a more technically oriented web site.

I'll probably try the 3D section of the AVS forum, as I've read pretty interesting and argumented posts there.

[tritosine5G]

pop out IS fun

[cybereality]

@Fredz: Please don't be discouraged. You are very much a valuable member of this community. But you have to understand that people have their own opinions and desires, and just because you post some links to academic whitepapers, doesn't automatically make your opinion more valid than someone else's. I mean, I'm in a whole lot of threads here, sometimes people don't agree with me, sometimes I'm flat-out wrong or mistaken. But it doesn't matter. The point is that we can share our knowledge and learn from each other, we don't have to agree on every single point.

But really, the crux of the matter here is that in real-life THERE IS NO POP-OUT. EVERYTHING IS DEPTH. So any simulation that is modeled after the real world (first-person view, etc.) will not have any meaningful out-of-screen effects. However, it is possible, and maybe desirable *for some people* to have artificial out-of-screen effects in gaming or movies. This may be legitimately a gimmick, but its what some people want. And I have heard the same sentiments from a number of people at the AVS, so its not like its just some crackpots here on MTBS.

[Fredz]

I didn't dispute the fact that some people prefer artificial pop-out, if you had attentively read what I've posted you would have seen that I said this position was a perfectly valid one. I only disputed the fact that this won't give a true representation of reality, which they dismissed by saying it's due to incompetent content creators (developers or filmmakers) or that a full pop-out experience is more realistic than an orthoscopic one. What more can I say ?

And when I post links to research papers to argument my position, I expect people to actually read them and argue on the content instead of simply dismissing them as irrelevant, without even addressing their content. If you read these papers carefully, you'll see that the knowledge about physiology of 3D presented by these scientists is far exceeding what everyone here knows about 3D. If people can't read scientific papers or don't support scientific facts, how can an intelligent discussion happen ?

Here I really feel like explaining to religious creationists what the theory of evolution is all about. I've really better things to do with my time...

[tritosine5G]

Fredz, seriously I think the only one really interested in that paper (here) is the guy who was here last time during that stereopsis FUD. You remember him? He is my friend (he spammed like 5 other sites too if you remember), and he has stroong commercial interest ...........

We re just looking for the fun . Personally not heard about 'out of screen accidents' yet.

[Fredz]

Actually, if you had read the paper tiltled "Vergence–accommodation conflicts hinder visual performance and cause visual fatigue", you would have seen that research on this subject has started a long time before you were born and has been going very strong since then.

It started in 1957 with Campbell and his publication about depth of focus and it continued through the second half of past century till the beginning of this one with countless publications explaining how our vision does work and how 3D displays and content must be adapted to avoid the problems that have been identified.

The fact that you haven't ever heard about that sort of research doesn't surprise my at all, you seem to be a lot more interested in having fun with 3D than with understanding how it does really work.

[Dom]

Hi Fredz I am not really trying to discourage you at all and am hoping people that like 3d more than the rest of the crowd can see past the barriers that hold 3d back and cause unfounded 3d visual effect. Look at how many people are now getting into 3d just to be dissapointed by the lack of 3d effect and that these people have totally no control over it. You cannot go into the screen room at a theater and adjust the depth slider more and nor can you make the move studios add more separation to their camera when they film, nor can you do all the 3d profiles for the 3 main 3d driver companys. Its just a matter of getting word out so people will listen to make things better. I bought my 3d glasses and stuff so I could be enriched by stereo 3d not to come onto this 3d site and complain. I just don't see why I have to abide by scientists experiments that state we are buying a crappy solution and that no one is fixing it. Are we all gonna dust off our 3d setups in 15 years to have a perfect visual cue display or spend hefty on upgrades till theres a fixing?

I don't understand it, its like buying a color camera and it will only work in black and white with a crackling speaker on video record with the volume up to high.

[tritosine5G]

Thought we'd get green laser and eye tracking eventually, and that still looks better than that paper IMO?...

A simulated flight environment for pilot training may soon be made more
realistic through the use of eye-tracking technology developed by
researchers at the University of Toronto's Institute of Biomedical
Engineering (IMBE).

Yeah I admit I completely missed the "eye tracking-free camp",& I thought microsoft is garbage ( mind you it's a general opinion and I'm just not convinced otherwise ).

Besides, this stuff sounds like straight VR, not stereo.

[AntiCatalyst]

for really immersive 3d gaming, i'd think you need to match the game FOV to the FOV your screen takes up. This way, you could make all games look exactly like you're looking through a window(well apart from the fixed focus distance of the 2d screen).

you need a very high FOV screen to be able to do this though, or you'd get a very narrow "window"

[Dom]

Well I guess everyone who buys a 3dtv or monitor is buying the early stage sets that give wrong focus cues. I guess they need depth pixels still and the flat arrangement of the panels used today give to many visual cues. Seems like software could set objects at the different depth cues and having developers arrange them according to at least four right depth cues instead of just one. I also found this article suggesting in some time new panels will be able to give the right visual cues. Why would they not do this like last year though? http://spie.org/x41184.xml?ArticleID=x41184" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[AntiCatalyst]

But really, the crux of the matter here is that in real-life THERE IS NO POP-OUT. EVERYTHING IS DEPTH. So any simulation that is modeled after the real world (first-person view, etc.) will not have any meaningful out-of-screen effects.

This is very screen-dependent, but i'd say that there HAS to be pop-out in real-world simulations. Ill give you an example: i have a 90" screen at 3.5 meters. So, if i'd simulate a first-person real-world scenario with NO pop-out and "walk" up to a wall or a tree, it'd be right in front of my simulated character's face.. but still at screen depth, 3.5 meters away from myself(according to my eye separation).

You need to stop considering your screen as a 2d plane, and instead visualize a volumetric 3d space, starting from your eyes, making a cone-shape through your screen and extending infinitely behind it. That's your screen Your eye separation when looking at an in-game object at any given distance should(well, roughly) match the eye separation of a real-world object at the same distance, regardless of screen size, type or distance.

note that going all-out with this type of setup isn't really possible - it's hard to focus on very "popped" items due to the fixed focal distance of the(after all) flat screen. My games are set up so that objects very close to the camera pop maybe 1.5-2 meters out of the screen, objects roughly 3.5m away are at screen depth and background objects approaching infinity are separated by about 4-5 centimeters on-screen. No AF, since that ruins the whole point of this setup.


Dom: I didn't know anyone was researching varifocal screens - that's great!
We probably won't be there for a long time now, but just imagine a varifocal high-res stereo HMD.. It could use the existing Z-buffer data to alter the focus distance for every single pixel. Any eye strain would be a thing of the past, since it'd be just like looking at the real world.

[cybereality]

@AntiCatalyst: Well the thing is that most games are modeled so that the game's virtual camera is from the character's perspective, not *your* perspective. If it was done like that (and also used head-tracking ala Johnny Lee) then you would have a much more real experience. However that would also mean you probably wouldn't be able to see the gun in a FPS game. Or the wheel in the racing game. Or the cockpit in a flight sim. Unless you placed your face right on top of the screen, you would be losing key information. That would only work if you have an extremely high FOV setup, for example a 100" 3D projector and you sat really close. It would be pretty cool, though.

[Freke1]

a 3D movie from the theaters will look flat on a TV because "eyedistance separation" (~6.4cm) in the theaters will turn into something like 0.4cm on the TV. To get a good feeling of depth You can separate the 2 images until You have 6.4cm but then the popout vanishes. Having done that, the popout effect becomes "twice as good" if You move to twice the distance from the TV since popout is in % of the viewer distance (more or less).

I think there are plenty of high quality 3D out there f.x. from http://www.biohemmet.se" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, in pc games (adjust depth AND convergence) or You can just take 2 cameras and make Your own 3D.

[cybereality]

or You can just take 2 cameras and make Your own 3D.

It is a lot more difficult to do extreme 3D with real cameras (as opposed to game engines) since you are limited by the optics of the cameras and high convergence leads to distortions which may be difficult to fix in post. With game engines you have a lot more control to fix some things (and fake others) to get a much higher 3D effect.

[Freke1]

partly true, but still You can take 2 200$ cameras and make a hyperstereo 3D video easily. If You don't toe them in You have no distortion and 2*FullHD and all the depth/popout You will ever want. The ONLY thing that's not out there is 200+ BlueRay 3D titles. Everything else is exploding every day. HD Videoclips (100+), Youtubeclips (100+), pc games (200+). I don't even have time to watch all the 3D clips I download (from biohemmet.se or via YoutubeDownloaderHD). It's just great. So much bettar than a few years ago. I really enjoyed You clips from the Carrier ship a while back. It's like a virtual vacation to me watching clips like that

[Fredz]

partly true, but still You can take 2 200$ cameras and make a hyperstereo 3D video easily. If You don't toe them in You have no distortion and 2*FullHD and all the depth/popout You will ever want.

You'll get radial distortions (barrel and pincushion) even when using a parallel dual-rig with off-the-shelf cameras as is shown in this paper by Andrew Woods : Image Distortions in Stereoscopic Video Systems.

It should be evaluated from the 3D footage if it doesn't produce too much vertical parallax that would need to be corrected in post-production. You'll also probably get distorsions due to an imperfect alignement between the cameras that should be taken into account too.

This other paper shows that the vertical displacement produced by the optics of a Canon PowerShot A640 (3648x2736) can be of up to 10 pixels in the center and as much as 100 pixels in the corners, which is quite far from negligeable : Distortion impact on a stereo distance

They've shown that the vertical parallax when using two of these cameras in a dual-rig arrangement is of only 5 pixels at most, so it may not need correction in most filming conditions, but it may grow much higher when doing hyperstereo.

[AntiCatalyst]

@Fredz:
back in my days of photography(before my camera broke down) i remember there was a plug-in for Photoshop that could correct the distorsion based on EXIF info. Since the distortion varies with every lens model, the plugin pulled the lens name, focal length and focus distance from EXIF and then adjusted the distortion from an online table. Could anything like this be done for video?

All that said, who's to say that "real" stereoscopic video cameras don't suffer from these distortions? with all zoom lenses(and many fixed ones), distortion is a given fact unless there's some sort of software correction.

[Freke1]

If the camera is bad or one uses fisheye lenses one get distorsions - that has nothing to do with 3D. Any misalignment of cameras can/is allways corrected in StereoMovie Maker. Anyone with 2 decent cameras can make really greatlooking 3D videos. Main 2 problems in my opinion is the sync and the final editing: importing the 3D clips to Sony Vegas 10 introduced motion blur (WTF!!!) and just bad quality. I was very disappointed, allmost in disbelief. VirtualDub is far bettar (but no fadeins and titles then).

The distortions are not real life problems (to me), sync, choppiness and the lack of a 3D video editor is. (Magix 15... any good?).

[cybereality]

Magix is actually really good in this regard. It can't fix distortions (ie from toe-in), but its very easy to adjust mis-alignments on the horizontal/vertical or rotation, and also the sync. And you can preview the footage in real-time while you do this (works great if you have Zalman). Editing is also pretty simple, once you combine the tracks into 3D, then you can edit it just as you would any other 2D footage. Very nice workflow.

[Fredz]

back in my days of photography(before my camera broke down) i remember there was a plug-in for Photoshop that could correct the distorsion based on EXIF info. Since the distortion varies with every lens model, the plugin pulled the lens name, focal length and focus distance from EXIF and then adjusted the distortion from an online table. Could anything like this be done for video?

Sure it can be done, I only said that you should evaluate vertical parallax even with off-axis cameras, it's not limited to toe-in ones.

The PTLens plugin is very good in this regard btw, it can handle barrel, pincushion and complex distortions much better than the default Photoshop plugin. It should be quite easy to adapt it to video (although quite time consuming, one frame at a time), but probably more complex when using the zoom since it affects the way the distortions behave. Also you'll need to shoot for wider images because software correction will remove parts of the images (mainly corners).

All that said, who's to say that "real" stereoscopic video cameras don't suffer from these distortions? with all zoom lenses(and many fixed ones), distortion is a given fact unless there's some sort of software correction.

Yes, and that was probably also the case with the Fusion camera used for Avatar, but since it uses a toe-in arrangement they probably corrected the distortions due to the lenses at the same time as the ones from keystoning, without even knowing it. They did use Nuke and Ocula (in the $10,000 league each) in post-prod as shown in this video, where they also corrected sync and colors :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6PZMQV9Jb4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If the camera is bad or one uses fisheye lenses one get distorsions - that has nothing to do with 3D.

Yes, it has nothing to do with 3D, but distortions have an impact on 3D since they are radial and the optical centers are not aligned when using off-axis cameras. And you don't need a bad camera to have distortions, the Canon A640 is quite far from bad even if quite old now, and it still produces distortions of as much as 100 pixels, which is enormous. And even professional cameras produce distortions. As it's said in the first paper you can also use aspherical lenses if it's shown to be a problem.

The distortions are not real life problems (to me), sync, choppiness and the lack of a 3D video editor is. (Magix 15... any good?).

Yes, distortions are probably the least of your problems when using a DIY dual-rig...

[Freke1]

Thanks CyberReality! What about the quality (Magix 15)? Rerendering videos really hurts quality.

Yes, distortions are probably the least of your problems when using a DIY dual-rig...

spot on, that won't stop me since it is so much fun!

[Dom]

So do you need to be able to converge your eyes like being able to see crosseyed pictures to see stereo3d good at all with glasses using more separation and convergence settings? Maybe this is why I cannot see 3d to well cause I cannot converge my eyes at all. I used to be able to converge my eyes awhile ago but now I can only move them side to side looking.

[cybereality]

Thanks CyberReality! What about the quality (Magix 15)? Rerendering videos really hurts quality.

Quality on Magix is just as good as any other package I've used (Adobe Premiere, etc.). Check the sample here (make sure to choose 720P):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njuAzaPmG0c" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Also, I forgot the best feature. It properly handles text or other 2D objects on top of 3D footage. So there is no problem making titles, watermarks or overlays with this software. They even have 3D text which can be rendered in stereo 3d over 3d video (but it looks pretty cheesy, so I haven't used it).