No, that’s not a smirk on the face of Bernard Mendiburu. It’s the look of a man who, in his book described in some detail below, has made a profound observation. In a section entitled “3D increases the visual system workload”, Mendiburu boldly predicts that going from flat movies to 3D will trigger an extension of the range of stimuli on a par with what sound added to cinema. Let that phrase resonate for a moment. It really is profound to think that 3D done well isn’t visual icing on the cake, but an entirely new sensory experience akin to the what the talkies did to silent movies.
While this can be a delightful experience for many, there are those for whom the increase in visual system workload while watching TV or movies is too much to sustain. In our discussion of the 3Ds of 3D viewing, dizziness and discomfort affects the greatest number of viewers who have negative experiences. But there is a special category, the third D, to which those who lack normal binocular depth belong. They are called stereoblind, though that seems a rather harsh term. In fact, it may turn out to be a convenient fiction. Patients with loss of sight exist on a continuum, from visual impairment to blindness. Similarly there is a continuum of stereoscopic impairment, from those who are mildly impaired to those who are truly stereoblind.
Mendiburu writes that there is at least one documented case of a person who achieved seeing in 3D after years of stereoblindness by undergoing vision therapy. Her name is Sue Barry and she was featured in an article in the New Yorker and on “Morning Edition” on NPR. Although he missteps in writing that Sue was born with amblyopia (she had infantile strabismus), he brings awareness of this issue about which Sue has now taken to another dimension through publication of her magnum 3D opus, Fixing My Gaze. I encourage you to buy her book, and supplement it with listening to her presentations. The paperback version of Fixing My Gaze is due out shortly.
What you’ll learn from Sue, a PhD who is a neurobiologist at Mt. Holyoke College, is that while she may now be the most widely known formerly stereoblind individual, optometric vision therapy has helped a considerable number of patients develop higher levels binocular vision.
The 3D industry is in a unique position. The burgeoning interest in 3D media viewing will unwittingly serve as a screening process for a sizable number of viewers who will realize, some for the first time, that their visual function is substandard. By the same token, the eyecare field is in a unique position to help. Symptomatic viewers can avail themselves of optometric treatment that addresses the perceptual distortions and visual mismatches that occur in viewing screens at various distances.
An example is the computerized 3D system, Computer Orthoptics, used as an in-office as well as home therapy tool, and the office projection systems for longer binocular stereoscopice viewing distances, the VTS-3. http://www.visiontherapysolutions.net/index.html
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