3 ms·

I'm nearly blind in one eye. The 3DS XL was the first time I ever saw 3D. In my life. I don't just mean "the first time I saw a stereoscopic 3D effect in mov

I'm nearly blind in one eye. The 3DS XL was the first time I ever saw 3D. In my life. I don't just mean "the first time I saw a stereoscopic 3D effect in movies or a game console." It was the first time I ever saw in three dimensions ever. As a human being. It's a little bit hard to describe my typical experience with you, since I've never had "normal" version and I don't know what it's like. I would compare my life to playing a video game with a first-person perspective. You know how when you play one of those games, you're thinking in three dimensions, even though you're seeing the game on a flat two-dimensional television? Well, that's my life. I see the world in two dimensions, even though I'm thinking about it in three dimensions. But playing Zelda on a 3DS XL? Wow. I mean, it took my breath away. THAT'S HOW NORMAL PEOPLE SEE THE WORLD? You can just look at things and immediately know how far away they are? You don't have to move your head around to see a parallax effect to help your brain compute the distance? WOW. AMAZING. I'm not a brainologist, so I'm not sure why the 3D system on the 3DS worked for me when nothing else had ever worked for me before, such as 1950s-style red/blue glasses. I'm still nearly blind in one eye, and the 3DS relies upon a lenticular stereoscopic effect that requires two eyes. It seems to me that it shouldn't work. But it did. (Maybe modern VR headsets with stereo displays would work for me as well; I don't know -- I tried an early one in the 1990s and it didn't work for me, but obviously that was ancient tech) Regardless, I had never ever experienced three-dimensional vision until the 3DS XL showed it to me. Thanks, little dude.

messe 6y ago
> I'm not a brainologist, so I'm not sure why the 3D system on the 3DS works for me when nothing else does. I'm still nearly blind in one eye, and the 3DS relies upon a lenticular stereoscopic effect that requires two eyes. Maybe the newer VR headsets would work for me as well; I don't know. Not a brainologist either, just a guy with a maths/physics degree who works in IT. My first thought is that the 3DS was close enough to your face that the parallax might have been apparent just from your one good eye looking at different places on the screen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  For folks missing an eye, "manual" parallax is one of the primary ways we do depth perception in real life - you get it for free by having two eyes; we have to move our heads around sometimes. =) That's an interesting theory but I think that's not what's happening. For those unfamiliar, the 3DS uses a lenticular screen. It renders two separate images: the "right" and "left" image. The one you see depends on your viewing angle. If my good eye was seeing both images, I believe I'd experience a sort of double vision or as least discontinuities. Perhaps more to the point, the 3D effect disappears if I close my "bad" eye! So my "bad" eye is contributing... somehow.
BHSPitMonkey 6y ago
I've read many online claims from people who have said this about their first time in VR. Some even say the effect even carried over with them into the real world after leaving VR. You should give it a whirl!
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  I think perhaps I will check it out! It's absolutely fascinating that you say some folks reported the effect carrying over into real life - do you perhaps remember where you read/saw that? It's not easily Googlable!
SSLy 6y ago
>(Maybe modern VR headsets with stereo displays would work for me as well; I don't know -- I tried an early one in the 1990s and it didn't work for me, but obviously that was ancient tech) I have a similar condition, and in fact only VR headsets and IMAX screens work for me. 3DS doesn't :<
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  That sure makes a lot more sense than my experience. The 3DS' lenticular system is kind of flawed -- though I wonder if that's perhaps part of why it works for me, somehow. I've never heard anybody else say, "only the 3DS worked for me" I saw an IMAX 3D movie once but I forget how that system worked. Was it a shutter system, or was it like an updated version of the old red/blue system that relied on polarization somehow? I haven't tried a modern VR headset. Honestly, I'd always kind of assumed that they wouldn't work because ViewMasters never worked for me back in the day. As primitive as ViewMasters were, they actually did provide fully stereoscopic images with a separate photo for the right and left eye, no lenticular or polarized or shutter system trickery involved. May I ask what your eye condition is? In my case, I was born with a cataract on my lens and my lens was removed circa 1980, before transplants were common. So that eye has just been chillin' without a lens ever since. I can see light and shapes, but I can't read the big "E" on the eye chart at the optomotrist's office.
  - SSLy 6y ago
    The IMAX system, at least in my Cinema City venue, uses polarization. I've also tried Real 3D cinemas but that didn't work. >May I ask what your eye condition is? I don't know if it's neurological but I just don't register depth w/o forcing it. I have astigmatism and short-sightedness.
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      Interesting. (And more importantly, sorry to hear that) So, your brain gets a stereo signal, but because of the "fuzziness" of far-away objects, it doesn't "compute" the depth information? That makes sense to me, but - corrective lenses don't improve the issue? That's fascinating. Is that common with astigmatism? I don't know too much about depth perception issues outside of my own experience. (One might say I'm short-sighted in that regard... har har har)
bitwize 6y ago
My mom had the same reaction upon seeing a 3D movie with polarized lenses for the first time. For years she was like "I don't see 3D, I only see 2D." Then she actually tried it and... wow! My guess is your situation is similar to hers: you have a "lazy eye" and the artificial 3D stimulus somehow provides enough feedback to allow your brain to focus your lazy eye in a way the natural world does not. The eye and brain are fascinating things. One time I broke my eyeglasses and did without for a year. Then I got a new prescription and was a bit disoriented at how flat the world seemed, to my mind it was "like a PlayStation game". What had happened was, my brain had trained itself to use blurriness as a proxy for distance (I'm myopic), and the eyeglasses removed that.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  It's something like a lazy eye. It actually tracks along with my other eye, it's just that the vision in there is quite bad. There's no lens in there; I had a catarct removed in the early 1980s before lens transplants. Then I got a new prescription and was a bit disoriented at how flat the world seemed, to my mind it was "like a PlayStation game". What had happened was, my brain had trained itself to use blurriness as a proxy for distance (I'm myopic), and the eyeglasses removed that. That's amazing. It was a bit of an unhelpful adaptation in your case, but it's just absolutely wild how they can adapt!
  - bitwize 6y ago
    Yes, it's a bit like those people in an experiment who went around for weeks in glasses which inverted the image to their eyes. Eventually they adapted, and began to see things upright, but when the glasses came off, their vision was inverted!

messe 6y ago

> I'm not a brainologist, so I'm not sure why the 3D system on the 3DS works for me when nothing else does. I'm still nearly blind in one eye, and the 3DS relies upon a lenticular stereoscopic effect that requires two eyes. Maybe the newer VR headsets would work for me as well; I don't know. Not a brainologist either, just a guy with a maths/physics degree who works in IT. My first thought is that the 3DS was close enough to your face that the parallax might have been apparent just from your one good eye looking at different places on the screen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax

JohnBooty 6y ago
For folks missing an eye, "manual" parallax is one of the primary ways we do depth perception in real life - you get it for free by having two eyes; we have to move our heads around sometimes. =) That's an interesting theory but I think that's not what's happening. For those unfamiliar, the 3DS uses a lenticular screen. It renders two separate images: the "right" and "left" image. The one you see depends on your viewing angle. If my good eye was seeing both images, I believe I'd experience a sort of double vision or as least discontinuities. Perhaps more to the point, the 3D effect disappears if I close my "bad" eye! So my "bad" eye is contributing... somehow.

BHSPitMonkey 6y ago

I've read many online claims from people who have said this about their first time in VR. Some even say the effect even carried over with them into the real world after leaving VR. You should give it a whirl!

JohnBooty 6y ago
I think perhaps I will check it out! It's absolutely fascinating that you say some folks reported the effect carrying over into real life - do you perhaps remember where you read/saw that? It's not easily Googlable!

SSLy 6y ago

>(Maybe modern VR headsets with stereo displays would work for me as well; I don't know -- I tried an early one in the 1990s and it didn't work for me, but obviously that was ancient tech) I have a similar condition, and in fact only VR headsets and IMAX screens work for me. 3DS doesn't :<

JohnBooty 6y ago
That sure makes a lot more sense than my experience. The 3DS' lenticular system is kind of flawed -- though I wonder if that's perhaps part of why it works for me, somehow. I've never heard anybody else say, "only the 3DS worked for me" I saw an IMAX 3D movie once but I forget how that system worked. Was it a shutter system, or was it like an updated version of the old red/blue system that relied on polarization somehow? I haven't tried a modern VR headset. Honestly, I'd always kind of assumed that they wouldn't work because ViewMasters never worked for me back in the day. As primitive as ViewMasters were, they actually did provide fully stereoscopic images with a separate photo for the right and left eye, no lenticular or polarized or shutter system trickery involved. May I ask what your eye condition is? In my case, I was born with a cataract on my lens and my lens was removed circa 1980, before transplants were common. So that eye has just been chillin' without a lens ever since. I can see light and shapes, but I can't read the big "E" on the eye chart at the optomotrist's office.
- SSLy 6y ago
  The IMAX system, at least in my Cinema City venue, uses polarization. I've also tried Real 3D cinemas but that didn't work. >May I ask what your eye condition is? I don't know if it's neurological but I just don't register depth w/o forcing it. I have astigmatism and short-sightedness.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    Interesting. (And more importantly, sorry to hear that) So, your brain gets a stereo signal, but because of the "fuzziness" of far-away objects, it doesn't "compute" the depth information? That makes sense to me, but - corrective lenses don't improve the issue? That's fascinating. Is that common with astigmatism? I don't know too much about depth perception issues outside of my own experience. (One might say I'm short-sighted in that regard... har har har)

bitwize 6y ago

My mom had the same reaction upon seeing a 3D movie with polarized lenses for the first time. For years she was like "I don't see 3D, I only see 2D." Then she actually tried it and... wow! My guess is your situation is similar to hers: you have a "lazy eye" and the artificial 3D stimulus somehow provides enough feedback to allow your brain to focus your lazy eye in a way the natural world does not. The eye and brain are fascinating things. One time I broke my eyeglasses and did without for a year. Then I got a new prescription and was a bit disoriented at how flat the world seemed, to my mind it was "like a PlayStation game". What had happened was, my brain had trained itself to use blurriness as a proxy for distance (I'm myopic), and the eyeglasses removed that.

JohnBooty 6y ago
It's something like a lazy eye. It actually tracks along with my other eye, it's just that the vision in there is quite bad. There's no lens in there; I had a catarct removed in the early 1980s before lens transplants. Then I got a new prescription and was a bit disoriented at how flat the world seemed, to my mind it was "like a PlayStation game". What had happened was, my brain had trained itself to use blurriness as a proxy for distance (I'm myopic), and the eyeglasses removed that. That's amazing. It was a bit of an unhelpful adaptation in your case, but it's just absolutely wild how they can adapt!
- bitwize 6y ago
  Yes, it's a bit like those people in an experiment who went around for weeks in glasses which inverted the image to their eyes. Eventually they adapted, and began to see things upright, but when the glasses came off, their vision was inverted!