Captain Jack wrote:
> Gotta be careful, though... my girlfriend and I loved it, but her mom and 
> sister (who went with us to the I-MAX) are both subject to motion sickness, 

I'm told that much of that has to do with the fact that altho it's stereo, 
it's not actually 3D, so there's still only one plane that's in focus no 
matter how you try to focus your eyes. If it bothers you, you have to look 
at mostly the areas that are in focus and try not to watch the scenery.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:09:18 -0500, Captain Jack wrote:

> I don't know if the current spate of 3D in cinema is going to be a fad
> or not, but I think this movie did a really good job of showing how it
> can add to the performance without being an in-your-face gimmick (well,
> mostly...). I do wish there was some way to create a screen made up of
> semi-transparent layers (or something) so that 3D films could be done
> without the glasses, though.

One thing that I'm wondering about this film in 3D - do they get the 
focus right?  One of the problems I've read about current 3D technologies 
(well, most of them going back in cinemas to the point it was introduced) 
is that the focus is constant - things near and far are in focus, and 
that can induce eye strain because your eyes tend to want to focus on 
specific things, not everything (as I recall).

Jim

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"Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message 
news:4b4faf1a$1@news.povray.org...
> One thing that I'm wondering about this film in 3D - do they get the
> focus right?  One of the problems I've read about current 3D technologies
> (well, most of them going back in cinemas to the point it was introduced)
> is that the focus is constant - things near and far are in focus, and
> that can induce eye strain because your eyes tend to want to focus on
> specific things, not everything (as I recall).

IMO, if there was an award for getting DOF right in a CG film, Avatar would 
win it. You really need to see it, it's really so well done that it's hard 
to describe, because I can't think of another film to compare it to. The 
film looks like it was shot with real lenses (which it sort of was... the 
built a special "camera" that let the Cameron walk through the CG set, 
"seeing" the plants and setting up his shots using simulated lenses).

There's some great "making of" articles at www.cgsociety.org that show some 
of the work that went into it.

--
Jack

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
news:4b4fa1b4$1@news.povray.org...
>
> I'm told that much of that has to do with the fact that altho it's stereo, 
> it's not actually 3D, so there's still only one plane that's in focus no 
> matter how you try to focus your eyes. If it bothers you, you have to look 
> at mostly the areas that are in focus and try not to watch the scenery.

I was in Disney World about a year ago, and I went to an attraction called 
"Soarin'" at Epcot. It involves an I-MAX type of screen, but the seats are 
moved out into the air above the floor and close to the screen to make it a 
more immersive experience. Most of the film involves flying shots that seem 
quite real. I found myself a bit dizzy at times, and would occasionally look 
to my left or right at the other audience members to remind myself that I 
wasn't actually aloft. :-)

--
Jack

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I'm glad other people can enjoy it.

Personally, I didn't.  The writing was so offensively bad that I almost 
walked out in the middle.

I've long ago passed the point where I can enjoy a movie just because it 
looks good.  I think the Final Fantasy movie finished that off for me... 
that was the last time that I forgave a movie it's faults just because 
it looked cool.

In all, I shouldn't be surprised at the poor quality.  Cameron's two 
best movies came out more than 20 years ago, and it's been more than ten 
years since his last feature film.  I think he just fell out of practice.

...Chambers

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Captain Jack wrote:
> I don't know if the current spate of 3D in cinema is going to be a fad or 
> not, but I think this movie did a really good job of showing how it can add 
> to the performance without being an in-your-face gimmick (well, mostly...). 
> I do wish there was some way to create a screen made up of semi-transparent 
> layers (or something) so that 3D films could be done without the glasses, 
> though.

I predict that every movie will eventually be 3D, whether we want them 
to or not.

Personally, Avatar was the first 3D film I saw since Disneyland, and I 
wasn't impressed by the technology.  It wasn't any better for showing 
movies than watching them on a 2D screen.

Now, if you could walk around inside a 3D movie, /that/ would be cool - 
though it would defeat the point of /watching/ a movie :)

...Chambers

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Darren New wrote:
> There's also apparently work on a 3D TV using jitter-3D like
> (link has a naked butt in one of the images, so NSFW maybe)
> http://www.well.com/~jimg/stereo/stereo_list.html
> to make for 3D you can view from wide angles. Apparently if you do it at 
> just the right speed, you can't see the wiggle.

Hey, that's pretty cool - I wonder what would happen if they upped the 
jitter rate to something like 120fps?

...Chambers

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Chambers <Ben### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Personally, I didn't.  The writing was so offensively bad that I almost 
> walked out in the middle.

  Maybe it was not a masterpiece of scriptwriting, but I didn't find it
so absolutely horrendous.

> Cameron's two best movies came out more than 20 years ago

  It has only been 19 years since Terminator 2.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:27:03 -0500, Captain Jack wrote:

> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
> news:4b4faf1a$1@news.povray.org...
>> One thing that I'm wondering about this film in 3D - do they get the
>> focus right?  One of the problems I've read about current 3D
>> technologies (well, most of them going back in cinemas to the point it
>> was introduced) is that the focus is constant - things near and far are
>> in focus, and that can induce eye strain because your eyes tend to want
>> to focus on specific things, not everything (as I recall).
> 
> IMO, if there was an award for getting DOF right in a CG film, Avatar
> would win it. You really need to see it, it's really so well done that
> it's hard to describe, because I can't think of another film to compare
> it to. The film looks like it was shot with real lenses (which it sort
> of was... the built a special "camera" that let the Cameron walk through
> the CG set, "seeing" the plants and setting up his shots using simulated
> lenses).
> 
> There's some great "making of" articles at www.cgsociety.org that show
> some of the work that went into it.

Interesting, I may just have to go see it in 3D in the cinema if that's 
the case; I've heard rumour that projectors using DLP may be able to 
handle some 3D projection (and I've got one), but this is starting to 
intrigue me now.... :-)

Jim

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Chambers wrote:
> Hey, that's pretty cool - I wonder what would happen if they upped the 
> jitter rate to something like 120fps?

 From what I've read, there's a maximum speed you can jitter at, because 
your brain has to process the picture and break it down into objects (which 
happens about a third of the way along the visual path) before the scene 
changes, or the effect goes away.

I.e., your eyes pipeline processing tremendously, with whole lots of stuff 
being computed right in your retina (like outlines), and if you overwrite 
that before it gets to the infront/behind processing, the effect vanishes.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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