Last week one of my students, Heather (you can read some of her work there) presented to the group an interesting view on the technologies we are using for 3D. Not sure I should admit this but, it really opened my eyes. Gone were the days of pretending you could see 3D when really it was more effort than it was worth.
She brought in a 3D webcam which is available for under £30 (shown below). This records the images twice and applies the filters to it. It worked really well and I wonder if this might be a way that people might start using the internet. If both people had the 3D cams then it really would be a lot more like the person was actually there. Of course you will both be wearing the dorky glasses which a lot of folks maybe don’t want to do. Headsets have become accepted even if they do still look pretty funny.
Channel 4 did a week of 3D and it was a success, so why can’t we have a channel dedicated to this stuff, they gave out so many pairs of 3D glasses that we need a use for them.
When she was doing her presentation and we were on the webcam I was truly amazed, and with big films like Avatar making 3D happen I wonder how many other films will take the leap. Is this a good thing? Do we want more 3D or are we already past that and not really bothered about 3D technology anymore?
I can’t wait to see what happens in this field.
Hmm where did I put those glasses…
For me I was really only making a comment on how amazing it was to see an actual webcam that worked in 3D. It came with the glasses though Heather had provided us all with pairs from when Sainsbury had given them away. I really was truly amazed, but I don’t think I would want to watch all my tv / films in 3d, it does seem to take “effort” over longer periods of time.
Thanks for the comments
Hey Christine, glad to see you got the blog going again.
Just written a post on this after seeing my first 3D film in the cinema, the tech in cinemas is much more convincing and less headache inducing than the style channel 4 went with, i had to keep taking the glasses off!
I think it will be a long time before the technology is cheap enough and realistic enough to be worthwhille.
One thing i did notice that was really odd, when we left the cinema, real things looked more 3d than before! WTF!
Like you I was always very speculative when it came to 3D. There have been a times where I’ve questioned why there’s an ever increasing number of films being offered in a 3D mode and to be honest they just didn’t appeal to me.
I suppose this is born out of the fact that the only content I’ve seen in 3D has either been 20 years ago, or at an IMAX theatre where it’s difficult to see everything that’s going on and basically made my eyes hurt.
On the back of people saying the technology has improved, my being that little bit older and others recommending giving it another shot I’m keen to experiment; however I don’t have access to any glasses nor do I want to splash out the extra cinema ticket price before I know I’m going to a) cope with it and b) stand a chance of enjoying the content.
Thanks for reinvigorating my interest.