Researchers have completed an eight-year study that looked at why 3D movies typically leave an audience feeling ill afterwards.
The research was led by Dmitry Vatolin, a senior research fellow in Graphics & Media Lab, the Lomonosov Moscow State University. To explain the study, Vatolin cited a 2011 poll by a French publication. The poll, which asked how people felt after watching 3D movies, found that only a third of viewers said they had no trouble watching. 27% felt ‘certain discomfort’, 22% reported a ‘worsening condition’, 7% stated they had a ‘terrible headache’, and the remaining 11% said they felt worse than when the movie started, but cited other reasons as to why.
The reason why viewers experience these symptoms when viewing a 3D movie is due to the brain reacting to “wrong” images coming to both eyes simultaneously; it’s not a natural visual that the brain is accustomed to processing. As such, the brain needs to combine them in order to produce a stereo effect, if you will.
Taking a closer look into the biological effect, Vatolin and his team were able to name 15 recurring reasons for this problem, all of which can be organized into one of two bigger flaws with the technology: either it’s due to an imperfection in the equipment, or it’s because of an error in the formatting of the movie itself. The former is explained as being the result of distributors looking to reduce expenses, which leads to a lower quality final product. It includes things like cheap glasses, faulty projectors, and other tools that often worsen the quality of the viewer’s experience.
The second reason is more complicated; as such, it’s not always detectable and preventable. To overcome this hurdle, Vatolin and his team created a collection of programs to allow for the tracking of formatting errors in 3D movies.
Using these programs, the team scanned 105 Blu-ray movies and compiled stats on some 10,000 errors. Among them, there were 65 scenes in 23 movies in which the left-right view were swapped; studies indicate that when a viewer sees this error on the screen, it causes the greatest amount of pain / discomfort.
Worth noting: these were not under-the-radar movie titles. They included the likes of Avatar, The Chronicles of Narnia, Stalingrad, and more.
“That means, that the probability of buying a Blu-ray 3D movie with at least one scene with swapped left and right views is about 21%, which is quite significant for sensitive people,” explains Dmitry Vatolin. He added that the type of movie with the greatest percentage of errors were horror movies, which can be explained by their smaller budgets.
“Stereo movies go through their transition period now,” Vatolin explains. “Cinema producers start preferring stereo format, it became particularly popular after a fantastic financial success of Avatar. Of course, the quality of the movies increases, and as well does the quality of cinema equipment. Now the quality is often higher, than Avatar had, but significant decrease in problems may take about 2-3 years more. Right now looking for a good 3D quality you need to choose high budget movies and properly equipped cinema halls. Wish you fewer headaches!”
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