Custard_Angel said:
Until 3D TV doesn't look like shit (and I don't have to wear fucking comedy glasses) I will not buy one.
There is a glasses-free method where you just cross your eyes so you don't have to look as stupid.
I, personally, hate 3D, or stereoscopy as it should properly be called. It's a gimmick that has been around for a number of decades and it has never really caught on because it does not work as advertised. It doesn't really add another dimension but provides the illusion of depth. An illusion that is easy to break. Just move your head from side to side. The perspective won't move with you. For that, you would need a completely different technology, like head/eye tracking, as in the DSiWare game
For me, stereoscope always looks fake, which is contrary to what some supporters claim and what you would expect considering that humans has binocular vision, so providing a different image to each eye should be more natural. but this is not the case and I have found two reasons.
One, in stereoscopy, the focal point and the point of convergence are in two different places. In real life, they are always in the same place but with stereoscopy, the focal point is on the surface of the screen but the depth illusion puts the point of convergence some distance beyond it. This discrepancy could be why many suffer headache or just plain discomfort when viewing stereoscopy. I suspect there is a similar problem with those Magic Eye things, but that may require some of the cross-eye technique as well. My eyes don't like to do that.
The other problem with stereoscopy has more to do with the way it's used. In most, if not all, stereoscopy presentations the illusion of depth is exaggerated. Human eyes are about six inches apart, give or take, and many stereoscopy cameras set the lenses 15 inches apart to increase the perception of depth. Some are even edited after the fact to increase the illusion. This throws the whole image off-kilter, making the elements look more like flat cardboard cutouts at varying distances than an actual three dimensional images. This may be because this exaggerated depth overshadows the more subtle depth in the contours of the elements, so it's difficult to notice and leave them looking flat by comparison.
The first one is an inherent limit to the technology that I do not think will be overcome and will probably lead to the technology inevitably being abandoned yet again at some point in the future.
The second is a bit more insidious. The illusion is exaggerated to make sure the viewer gets the appropriate "wow" reaction to the illusion. The reason why they want you to go wow and buy their products is because the paradigm is shifting.
If this episode of the Big Picture from Moviebob [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/2911-PC-Gaming-Is-Dead-Long-Live-PC-Gaming] or this installment of Extra Credits [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3050-Consoles-Are-the-New-Coin-Op] hold any water, then technology is changing. we are moving away from communal or otherwise fixed location devices like televisions, movie theaters and personal computers in favor of portable personal devices, such as smart phones, tablets, and notebook computers.
That is, in the old days, most families could only afford one television. To justify the expense, many purchase a console television which was a piece of furniture in itself, not unlike the radio from a few years before. But this meant that people had to share and to agree on what they all watched, usually with people fighting over it being "their turn." These days are going away. In many families, they are already gone. My nephew had a TV in his room since he was five years old. Think about that. When I was a kid, you had to be rich to have a television in your own room. In most families back then, there was the big TV in the living room, a more modest sized one in the parents' room, and maybe the kids got the old black and white job that used to be the main family TV when the parents first got married. Now little kids who can't even spell have their own television in their room and can watch whatever they want without fighting with their sister over the remote.
The personal portable device is just the next logical step in this since it can do more than watch television shows and you can take it with you wherever you go.
Because of this shift, movie theaters, television, and video games have been cramming stereoscopy down our throats in an attempt to hold onto some last shred of relevance and to slow the inevitable change. They will lose, of course. And stereoscopy won't save them even if I am wrong and does become a lasting technology. Because portable personal devices already have models that sport this same stereoscopy technology.
So the see if stereoscopy is going to have any staying power, you should watch to see is portable person devices with stereoscopy abilities sell well as these are the devices whose sales will matter in the long run.