I think it's a testament to mankind that we have come to this weird point where upon witnessing new and impressive technology's we are unimpressed by the impressive. The iPhone is a great example of this I believe. Here we are in the year 2010 and I essentially have the entire collective knowledge of mankind in my pocket, and people go "yeah", like it's a everyday sort of thing. We are cold to the amazing prowess of what we are capable of creating. I no longer use my desktop (or my non-existent laptop) to surf the web. With the next iPhone OS4 update i could theoretically connect a Bluetooth keyboard to my phone and comfortably type this blog post out without any need for a desktop or bulky laptop (forgetting that the screen would be a tad small (not really a problem for me...)).
My phone has become a organ of sorts, I use it to extend into the "collective whole" of mankind, or to look at cute pictures of kittys! Without this organ I feel naked, like a insect missing its Antenna. I am cut off from the world, forced to communicate in a prehistoric fashion; vibrating air molecules with my mouth like a cave man, waving my arms around to get peoples attention through photons like a jester rather than beaming electrons up to the sky to a satellite to do my bidding.
A new iPhone draws near and while the one I have is quite functional there is a matter of convenience that comes into play with these types of devices. The GPS app I have could benefit greatly from some extra power, the web browser could store a few extra tabs, and running background apps would spare a few seconds at least. There will be a certain point where it almost won't matter how much power you throw at these things; it will be a matter of software over hardware.
Being one of the few owners of a LCD 3D display I am interested in what the general population's opinion of stereoscopic imagery is. Its actually been pretty surprising to me how many people haven't seen the effect in action. As a kid I was often taken to the science center, be it by my family or school, where i first saw many anaglyph films. Avatar 3D has of course made the effect far more widespread with a bearable method, but even than it seems like people are confused by what it means for something to "pop" out of the screen, or for the screen to be more of a window.
Destructoid and Gizmodo's community reaction to this technology was a bit surprising to me. Many people seemed to see it as a fad, they felt that wearing glasses was too much of a burden (these people apparently don't have prescription glasses or use sun glasses), that it caused eye strain, or that it made them look dumb. Other issues brought up were that many people had just made the move to HD displays and would be reluctant to buy yet another new TV.
Has far as i'm concerned wearing glasses for this effect is a non-issue, i'm in the house, I can let my guard down. Are we really that self conscious of ourselves that we would rather deny display freedom before we were seen in these?
The issue of eye strain is an interesting one and it's something that retailers are going to have to struggle to over come. You have to train your eye for 3D, 3D vision allows you to adjust convergence and depth to your liking, however, other types of closed media do not allow for such freedom. Avatar 3D had a set depth that was very low because the audience had probably never seen this effect before, but even than many people complained of eye strain. Once you've trained your eyes for this effect it feels quite natural, but how do you convey this to someone who only walks into the store and looks at a television for 30 seconds and finds it uncomfortable?
The thing is when I spend a large amount of time gaming on my computer in stereoscopic 3D I find it somewhat odd to return to the old 2 dimensional display. You have to imagine depth you realize, and it suddenly becomes a chore of sorts. You notice you have been relying on visual cues to make sense of the picture. The 2D picture is clean and simple in your mind compared to the impressionist 3D counterpart which is screaming with intricate detail that would require a large amount of time to absorb.
3D is going to be a tough sell for a lot of people, I think we are quite a ways off before this technology becomes even remotely mainstream (however i'm betting it will boom in the handheld industry). I think it's going to continue revitalizing PC gaming for years to come and that is where it will remain for the time being. You won't see it that often on consoles because of the sheer amount of graphic power required to achieve this effect, and it's pretty obvious that this generation of consoles is going to stick around for awhile.
No comments:
Post a Comment