The media (Blu-ray, dvd, whatever…) didn’t matter so much. Adding depth fields to existing media works, but it isn’t exactly perfect. The tech should be much better now, but it took a fuck ton of manual labor to convert films to be compatible with 3D. Back when 3D TVs were being pushed, studios had to film movies in 3D as well, which took more time and more equipment.
Here is an old pic I took during the conversion of Titanic into 3D since it wasn’t filmed in 3D from the start. Each frame needed to have depth fields mapped, by hand, in a room filled with jr level staff. This work was split across multiple studios.
Native stereoscopic capture has massive labour costs itself, and there were many issues where one eye had corrupted footage or imperfections, so the insurance paid for the footage to be post-converted from the one good eye anyway.
Even where it went right, it more than doubled the size and weight of the camera system, and changing a lens would be a complex process taking 30 minutes instead of the minute or two normally required which significantly reduced the material that could be captured in a day. Post-production labour is far far cheaper. So post-conversion very quickly became the norm.
There was not enough content for 3D TVs and people didn’t want to wear special glasses.
Also, consoles were too weak to display 3D content.
Weren’t there like Blu-Rays? I guess the first movie I watched was Avengers (2012) and it really didn’t blew me away
Nowadays I watch movies with my Quest 2 on the big screen app and think, holy shit
The media (Blu-ray, dvd, whatever…) didn’t matter so much. Adding depth fields to existing media works, but it isn’t exactly perfect. The tech should be much better now, but it took a fuck ton of manual labor to convert films to be compatible with 3D. Back when 3D TVs were being pushed, studios had to film movies in 3D as well, which took more time and more equipment.
Here is an old pic I took during the conversion of Titanic into 3D since it wasn’t filmed in 3D from the start. Each frame needed to have depth fields mapped, by hand, in a room filled with jr level staff. This work was split across multiple studios.
Native stereoscopic capture has massive labour costs itself, and there were many issues where one eye had corrupted footage or imperfections, so the insurance paid for the footage to be post-converted from the one good eye anyway.
Even where it went right, it more than doubled the size and weight of the camera system, and changing a lens would be a complex process taking 30 minutes instead of the minute or two normally required which significantly reduced the material that could be captured in a day. Post-production labour is far far cheaper. So post-conversion very quickly became the norm.
Yes, you needed a 3D disk player, 3D TV, 3D version of whatever you want to watch. That’s a lot of upfront costs.
Very few movies are filmed in 3D. Avatar did it right but almost nothing else did and it shows.
Video games should be doing it right now on PC but most folks would rather use all the extra horsepower to run their games at 200fps.
I mean we have VR, make the case for 3D while VR is a thing
VR seems a lot more isolating than 3D glasses in front of a TV. Even the powered active 3D glasses are a lot less cumbersome than any VR headset.
I absolutely wish that someone made a 3D TV with the New 3DS technology in 4K. Have the 3D effect turn off when more than one person is watching TV.
I think you might be one of the few guys, that prefer 3D over VR
Weirder things have happened.
3D TVs were pushed by movie studios trying to sell 3D Blu-rays at a time when streaming was killing the idea of physical media.
Video games didn’t go all-in. Which made it even more niche.
VR is having a lot of growing pains.