It's a lot of work for our eyes to create the "visual illusion" of 3D. The side effects will wear off eventually. Sony recently issued health warnings.
“I would have said about an hour, an hour-and-a-half, to be about the maximum,” Sutton said about the maximum viewing time for a single sitting of 3D. It affects people differently as some aren't all that phased by the process.
"A lot of people do say when they come out of the cinema that they are aware they’ve done something different with their eyes, even if it’s not to the extent of a headache or sickness, but they’re aware that it was hard work to watch."
"I’d have said that was more than enough," he said. Videogames of course last for much longer than an hour-and-a-half like a movie, which is where the greater problem lies. "I’d would worry about people spending hours doing it, I must say.”
Sony recently updated their Terms of Service legal mumbo jumbo, warning about the side effects of 3D viewing and advising us to take "regular breaks while watching 3D video or playing stereoscopic 3D games,” and to ensure they're "long enough to allow any feelings of discomfort to subside.”
Sutton is worried about Ubisoft's prediction that 3D will be mainstream in 3 years. “If there isn’t a way when you’re watching something to say, ‘Actually, I don’t want to watch this in 3D,’ then I would say yes, it is worrying, because you’re not catering for a significant proportion of people who are going to struggle,” he warned. 3D is unlikely to ever replace 2D.
"When you create 3D, the two images have to be separated slightly, so your eyes are having to look at things slightly removed from each other; that’s what gives you the 3D depth. That’s an artificial situation, because you’re trying to look at something coming out at you that isn’t really coming out at you," explained Sutton.
"It’s quite a lot of work for you to do that for a sustained period… There’s a proportion of people that find that, for the prolonged period of time that they’re having to do it, it will cause eye-strain, as they’re working too hard to create what is, in effect, a visual illusion.”
That's right - the studios are shifting the buck of responsibility to us the gamer to fully 'power' their new 3D visual technologies. It's our brains and eyes that are actually required to do the real hard work when it comes to enjoying 3D.
Source: VG247
