If you're at all like me, you're a mild-to-heavy digital media whore. The idea of having a library of tens of thousands of organized songs excites you. You may have a budding movie collection. Maybe you torrent old TV shows which haven't made it to DVD (or perhaps they have). The prospect of your favorite blockbuster movie in 1080p makes you giddy. You don't just see computers for their modern communication purposes, but also appreciate their ability to hold literally years of music and video files which they can pull up in a second and stream to a home theater, laptop, or even a cellphone when you're on the go.

I've been intending for some weeks to do a series of journals on a variety of digital media topics: informational journals, opinionated rants, and general discussions. Things that excite me and people like me. In the past I've done a number of them on assorted topics such as DRM in Vista, digital image formats, naming conventions for video resolutions, why Apple should make an HTPC, the benefits of movies in HD, people who think that HD is a rich person's placebo, color depth and contrast ratios, 120 fps and/or 3D in games, a great way to enjoy Blu-ray quality on your PC, and how to make a good server to dish out all your multimedia. Today, I'll be focusing on the 3D stuff again.

The reason that I'm starting with the 3D side of digital media is threefold. First, Avatar was recently released, amidst a perpetual trickle of 3D CGI movies, and it shows a mature look at how 3D can be used to improve immersiveness in movies. Second, the 3D spec for Blu-ray discs was finalized a few weeks ago, meaning that during 2010 you'll start to see home theater setups which allow you to have 3D just like in the theaters--no red/blue glasses bullshit. Third, I've recently been using my own 3D glasses more often for gaming, and gotten a nice feel for them in my 9 months of ownership.

First, the run-down on the whole 3D movie/game deal, for people who don't know--those who do, skip this paragraph. To put it simply, traditional single-lens cameras take a whole 3D scene and flatten it into a 2D image, removing some of the greath depth cues we have to determine distances and indirectly, speeds towards and away from the screen. To see what I mean, simply close one eye. Keep your head still while you do this, because any motion causes motion parallax--close objects move through your field of vision more than far objects, which helps you tell how far away they are. You won't always have this in games and movies. In case it isn't obvious now, the reason that images appear flat on computer screens is because both eyes are getting the same image, and you might as well just be using one. Why does this eliminate depth cues? Among other things, our brain uses the slight differences generated by our eyes being 2-3 inches apart to figure out how close something is. If both eyes see the same image on a screen, it appears flat. If each eye could see a different perspective taken by two cameras side-by-side, however, there would be a natural sense of depth. Which is exactly what is done in 3D movies and games.

Onwards. The recent release of Avatar in 3D and IMAX 3D was, to me, a landmark. It wasn't the first movie in 3D by any means, and it wasn't even the first live action movie in 3D... but it was the first movie since 120 Hz displays became widely available (I'll explain this later) to show that a live-action film can artfully and maturely use 3D to enhance the sense of immersion (gotta stop saying film, there's no film involved now). In a way it is to 3D what Jurassic Park was to CGI in movies, a proof of concept in a major release. Now, I said maturely here, and some people might wonder why. Anyone who has been to a 3D show at a theme park or seen a 3D film geared at children will probably view 3D as a distracting gimmick, because in those cases the focus is the 3D effect and OOOOH LOOK I CAN MAKE THINGS STICK OUT OF THE SCREEN AT YOU! It's in the same way that early animations weren't of two people talking, but rather of a horse running, and early color demonstrations probably had a lot of bright colors. 3D for 3D's sake is a bad thing. 3D to grant you a sense of depth, speed, and physicality of surfaces is a good thing. Avatar did the latter. Say what you will about the plot or budget, they shot the movie with two cameras and edited the effects so that everything could be shown in 3D. Very rarely did things stick out of the screen, and it was never intentional or distracting. Occasionally you'd get bits of fluff and sparks which you had to resist the urge to bat away, because they felt like they were drifting lazily through the theater. Why, then, make the movie in 3D? Because it's not about making protrusions, it's about DEPTH. Depth BEYOND the screen. Suddenly your display becomes less of a moving picture box and becomes, in a visual sense, the opening to a live theater production taking place just inside the screen (and sometimes sneaking out a bit). This is extremely apparent when playing a 3D game with 3D glasses--the screen almost literally melts away, and it's just stuff behind the black frame of your monitor. You reach towards it to try and touch things, and you're actually surprised when your finger is stopped by this invisible wall separating you from what looks like a real (if poorly detailed) gun replica. Proper 3D rarely invades your personal space, instead it turns moving images into objects you can all but touch, events which are unfolding before your very eyes, and camera shots which place you in an almost wholly believable world. Avatar did this. Other movies will do this in the future.

The second reason I'm writing this is, as I said, the finalization of the 3D Blu-ray spec. This was met with mixed reactions by members of the Blu-ray community from what I understand, with some people claiming it's a gimmick and is worthless, others excited, and still more saying that it was too early and it would fragment the Blu-ray market with new players and new discs. To address these things, 3D is no more of a gimmick than color, sound, motion, or images period. They show you exactly what the director wanted you to see, and immerse you in a world of increasing realism and artfully crafted beauty. Early on, the mass production and distribution of of photographs, "moving pictures", films with sound, and color films were expensive--but they all came through as the tech improved and people began to consider them to be important to the theatrical experience. So too will 3D. And for those who see merit but are afraid the Blu-ray market will be fragmented, there's really no need to worry--old discs will work on 3D-ready players, obviously, and 3D discs will work on older players, just without the 3D effect. You'll still be able to tap into one of the video streams and display it as a 2D image, you'll be able to buy a 3D movie and enjoy it on your 2D player, and then when you do feel like springing for the 3D equipment, you'll already have 3D movies in your library. How will the 3D Blu-ray stuff work in the home viewing environment? Well, that's up to the display manufacturers to decide, leaving space in the future for different implementations, but what you'll likely see the most of in 2010 is the 120 Hz display + active shutter glasses approach that Nvidia uses for its 3D glasses. Your TV or display will alternate between images for your left and right eyes, and you'll wear what look like sunglasses (~$65 a pair) which synchronize wirelessly with the TV and black out the left and right lenses at just the right time. The effect is that each eye sees the image it is supposed to, and only that image, making the scene look 3D. There are other possible approaches, of course--a display which shows two images on the same screen, each with a different polarity, can allow you to wear cheaper passive glasses, exactly what theaters do... and a display which uses a lenticular sheet (those postcards and advertisements on boxes which look different when you view them from different angles) can get a different image to each eye if you're in a particular location, with no glasses whatsoever. Hell, a dorky-looking head-mounted display with a screen in front of each eye could even work with it, but these systems are increasingly complex and awkward. But still, by the end of 2010, expect your PS3 to support 3D Blu-ray, expect 3D Blu-ray players and discs to be on shelves, and hell, you can already buy 3D-ready displays.


The final piece to this 3D journal puzzle is that lately I've been using my 3D glasses more often, for gaming purposes. As I said in the journal I wrote within a day of first trying it out, the effect isn't always perfect, but it can be damn good in certain games. Killing Floor, a "zombie" survival FPS of sorts, plays very well in 3D--it has no targeting reticles painted on the screen, like the real world, so it's just you and your real-feeling/sounding gun and zombie mutant monsters. When you pull up your Pipboy in Fallout 3, the knobs and buttons stick out of the screen an inch or two, and it feels so fucking real that it's almost confusing when your fingers go through where you can plainly see them to be. Just tonight I was playing Burnout Paradise and like what I've experienced in doing Audiosurf, the sense of speed and motion is incredible. With the ability to feel how far away something is comes the ability to feel how quickly it is moving towards you, and therefore anything where you're flying at objects (or them at you) suddenly becomes very real. And in racing games which have in-car views, you could swear that you were in a very nice arcade simulation, with a real wheel and gauges in front of you. Even with poor textures and lighting, it feels like there are physical objects just a foot or two inside the screen, if that. This is truly something you have to feel to properly understand (and if you're in the Orlando area I welcome you to come try it out), because ultimately it's all about feeling. Objects feel real. Motion feels real. Your presence looking into or down on the scene is almost flawless. You could swear there was a little person jumping from roof to roof of a dollhouse-scale city when you play Assassin's Creed, actual tracer rounds being fired past you in Fallout 3, animated miniature monsters smashing each other in Torchlight. And this is on a 22" screen--on a 60" TV or a 120" projector image, the handguns will be the size of cannons, Altair will be a midget performing acrobatic stunts on the other side of your wall, and zombies will run at you, really run at you at full bore... run AT you, not just get bigger on the screen. Do so fucking want.

That's part of the reason I'm so excited about Avatar and the 3D Blu-ray spec being finalized. With any luck it will help 3D become cheaper, better, and more widespread. I want a 1080p 3D projector, but they don't sell them. They don't make them. For 5 grand you can get a 720p projector, but you're better off getting a massive 1080p screen for half the price and 80% of the screen size. When companies have an actual market for 120 Hz input, 3D-ready 1080p projectors, which will happen in 2010, I'll be that much closer to having a gaming experience which doesn't shatter the fourth wall, but instead causes it to melt away. There's nothing artificial about this sort of 3D, it's as natural as looking around in the real world. And importantly, unlike today's implementations in the home theater market, there's not going to be any bloody red and blue glasses messing up the color of your favorite movie, or stupid characters waving their hands about outside of the screen. Not unless you're watching a G-rated live action Disney film, that is.

Panasonic has been pushing 3D-ready stuff all this year. Sony has promised products this coming year, as well as 3D capability for the PS3. Samsung, ACER and Viewsonic make 3D-ready computer displays. Mitsubishi makes 3D-ready TVs, and generic DLP HDTVs are already capable of displaying 3D content. 3D will finally be coming to the mass market for desktops, laptops, and home theaters. 2010.