Eye see you …

Eye to Eye

What do you get when you put together a geek who fiddles around with computer vision in his day job, a movie with some cool 3D  SFX, a 15-odd hour bus travel and the in-travel movie? Well, if you’re me, you get this post! The first part of this post is going to be about the experience that was Avatar. Yes, Avatar is an experience more than a movie, and if you’ve gotta watch it, watch it in 3D or not at all. Mike Arrington called it the iPhone of movies. I’m not sure I quite agree, but the SFX are pretty compelling. But as with any technology, I think as technologists we’d do well to cast aside the technologist in us for a moment and think from the average Joe’s point of view. One of my friends that I was talking to after the movie said that the 3D experience helps us ‘focus’ more on the movie. I’m not quite sure what he meant, but he probably meant that the depth perception aids the overall experience. That set off two thoughts in my mind. First, was the question that I asked him: “You probably feel it because you’ve worked in the multimedia technology field for almost a decade now. But would your wife (who’s not a techie) feel the same?” I believe that the answer to that question would be the key to the mainstream adoption of 3D displays. I guess we’ve got so used to experiencing movies in 2D and the rest of the (real) world in 3D that we’ve probably conditioned ourselves to the difference in the two. That is, the consumer doesn’t quite realize that the 2D movie experience is different (and lacking) from the way s/he perceives the real world around! And I believe that that’s the key: giving the user something that she didn’t even know she wanted till she has it. In that sense, may be, the 3D experience can be the iPhone of the entertainment industry. Avatar is compelling, but the experience can be a lot better.

Avatar - 3D

How could the experience be better? The key factor is how the content is consumed. The 3D glasses (anaglyphic or polarized) are presently quite bulky. And if you’re gonna watch a full 180-minute movie, or a 90-minute football game in 3D, then that’s definitely going to be a factor. I also felt that the experience can be more immersive, in that the user should feel that she’s right in the thick of action. Somehow I couldn’t get that feeling while watching Avatar. Is it possible? Well, I don’t claim to be the expert here, but how about giving the user the choice of a viewpoint from which to watch the whole thing? It would be great to watch it from the viewpoint of Jake as he dives on Toruk, the giant flying bird. Now that would be something, isn’t it? If you can watch multiple camera angles during a football game, then I guess this should also be possible. I know for sure that there are patents in this space: rendering novel views from a few captured views. So may be companies are already working on it! The iPhone revolutionized the mobile phone space because in its design and UX it threw out of the window all past experiences on the mobile phone. I think that the 3D experience can do the same thing to the entertainment industry. But is Avatar the experience that we want? Well, not quite, but it’s getting there, for sure.

Update: Here’s the next post in this two-post series

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