Been past a couple of times, without much of a chance to hang around and watch at length, but my sketchy conclusions:

Works vividly for anything artificially generated, as you’d expect. For live action the effect seems much more subtle, to an extent where it’s almost pointless. You spend more energy figuring out whether you can see the effect than you do actually appreciating it (or the content). Extremely narrow viewing angle too, so I’m not sure how it’d work for anything other than solo viewing (maybe multiple viewers would all have to sit on each others’ knees?)

The notion of television in people’s homes has many ‘use cases’. Often it’s on in the background. Certain formats may suit 3D well and some less so. So long we have glasses based 3D it may reach a large audience but an audience of relatively few hours per week consuming the content in 3D mode. This factor affects the nature 3DTV may be introduced as I suspect it will be reached by a call to action to go from 2DTV to the 3D mode. The 3DTV option of auto-stereo may take some years to get the technology to an acceptable quality point but it looks possible. We need a roadmap from where we are today to that method more suited to home consumption yet one that at least can start.

Many shots can be creatively improved in 3D to convey the subject. Take a classic shot of horses racing. Front on you can you figure out who is in the lead by the size of the horse (closest should be one that appears largest) yet in 3D it would be far more apparent.

3DTV with the glasses is complicated by many issues – such as when in 3D mode all the viewers would have to wear glasses to view content without it looking blurred. At Christmas time I think this will be a challenge for many of us in the UK!

kybernetikos said “there are significant differences in making good 3d cinema, and if we want people to accept 3d cinema and tv, we’re going to have to get over the whizz bang popping out of the screen thing.” – I think the panel in the room would have agreed with you (in fact, a couple of them made the same point).

skink74 asked whether there was anything to refute Ronald Bergan’s the claim in the Guardian that 3D is a shortlived gimmick doomed to failure. Well, I haven’t seen Coraline or Monsters vs Aliens yet, but Andrew Oliver from Blitz mentioned both as examples of innovative 3D films which had both introduced new techniques. Going beyond finding reasons to point-things-at-your-eyes (which all the 3D short films I have seen, such as Shrek and the Terminator thing at Universal Studios when I was in LA) have all been about, is clearly where the fun is to be had. Andrew mentioned a technique of encouraging the eye to focus on a certain part of the scene, such as the hero, by making it particularly comfortable (or the rest of the scene particularly uncomfortable I suppose) to settle on. This idea really stayed with me afterwards, and I’m looking forward to watching Coraline, and Avatar of course, to see what works and what’s new.

Colin Smith (who was on the panel! Hello, Colin) points out that “In order for 3DTV to work it needs to be introduced as optional” and I was going to say that the panel would have agreed with him too, but the fact he was on the panel making that very point means I’ll just say that he *did* make that point on the night, and I forgot to write it down. As you say, “so long we have glasses based 3DTV we will have to have it in 2D mode”. This makes a lot of sense, and completely resonates with kyb’s addition that “We watch TV in many different modes. It’s often social, or semi social … Someone coming into the room without eyewear and not being able to work out what’s going on on the screen would defeat a whole bunch of that.”

Thanks, to all of you, for your other additions and insights too.

Someone coming into the room without eyewear and not being able to work out what’s going on on the screen would defeat a whole bunch of that.

Films have got a big advantage, because when people watch films, they are intentionally setting aside a significant piece of time to watch the film as their main activity, so it doesn’t matter if there is a small initial barrier to enjoyment. Some (but by no means all) games on a PC are the same.

So TV in general (in so far as that has a future at all), will always have broadcasts that do not require extra viewer worn equipment to appreciate. Perhaps a channel might occasionally broadcast a 3d film, but until there is technology to provide multiple different people in different places in the room with a 3d view without extra viewer worn equipment (which no current technology can do with remotely reasonable cost), then by far the majority of TV broadcast will remain 2d.

Computer games and Films have a much better chance of achieving 3d in the near term.

As to Blitz being the first full colour per eye game, I played a full colour per eye game on a 3d parallax barrier screen in ’96. As skink says above, we’ve had a number of 3d displays for home computers that thanks to the magic of 3d accelerator cards can turn games intended for flat display into true 3d games, and yet even at the 250-300 quid price point they didn’t take off. And this is despite good reviews. Maybe if they get down below the 100 (additional if the tech is built into the screen) quid price point…

To be honest, I think the ‘colorization’ trap is a much less serious one than the ‘ooh, let’s use this new shiny technology regardless of its effect on the story’ trap.