Sony: 3D Is a New Creative Medium

[geizr]

Is it so difficult to believe that the market is saturated? HD TV's are no longer high end products, you might have paid a lot for your CRT, but 40" LCD's are pretty cheap now-a-days and as cost is no longer a barrier to entry most people that want one already have one. Sure there will be the slow trickle of people upgrading over time, but the kind of market expansion that companies like sony have come to rely on is over with the current technology.

I don't doubt that 3D will eventually be a big deal in gaming, but not like this. Parallax barrier or glasses aren't the solution - in a game you want to be able to peek round corners, not have your eyes fooled by what is no more than an optical illusion.

Without seeing some numbers or market statistics, yes, it is difficult to accept entirely. Even 40" LCDs are still expensive(being $1000+) to the average buyer. Only fairly affluent buyers will seek them. That leaves a rather large untapped market remaining(similar to the "casual"/"hardcore" market segmentation). Not to mention, there are going to be many that just don't yet see a need to upgrade, or others, such as myself, that can't replace their initial investment in earlier CRT technology(I've actually looked at new LCDs to replace my current one; it cost roughly $4000, the price I paid originally for my 65" CRT projection TV, and I'm not settling for less than a 65" screen). With such variables hang out there, that is why I'm still skeptical of LCDs reaching market saturation.

As far as wanting to peek around the corner in games, we can't really do that anyway without issues, if I'm understanding the sense in which you mean that. Current games provide a limited field of view compared to the full human visual system, and they provide limited environmental cues compared to reality. These limitations cause errors and inaccuracies in the brain's processing of the environment. So, you try to peek around the corner, and you get shot by something off-screen of which you had no awareness and was not given sufficient cues to have awareness of it.

The current 3D appearance of games is also an illusion and a bad one, one can argue. It uses perspective to create the illusion of depth, but really, it's not much better than the old 2D sprites. Further, this illusion, by itself, can be flawed for creating an accurate sense of distance(look at any Escher drawing to see how perspective can fool you). How many times has a jump, a throw, or any number of other actions been fouled up due to difficulty determining actual distance because the perspective is off. While parallax 3D is not entirely perfect in its current incarnations, it can give additional cues to allow better distance judgement than perspective alone does. Fixing the plane of focus issue in addition would make the distance perception nearly exact.

The only real solution to the desire to "peek around the corner" is the holo-deck, but, that technology, if it is even possible, is a long ways off. I have no knowledge of any significant attempts to create such technology. Maybe, some of the people here can be the first to collaborate in a serious effort toward such an effect. However, even it is likely to have some significant barriers to adoption that will make people scornfully dismiss it without giving real thought to the matter.

I will give you the 3D viewing technology needs further development, but one has to start somewhere. I personally don't feel the situation is as bad as some people make it out to be; I think they are just overreacting. Same as I feel some people are overreacting to a very typical marketing statement from a very typical CEO of a company trying to sell you something. Of course, there are distortions, inaccuracies, and misguided expectations in his statements; that's marketing. One can listen to the sales-pitch and weed out the bullshit without going into a childish tantrum of nerd-rage. One just simply adapts to the reality.