[kevinmchugh]

"They are doing something that 600 million years of evolution never prepared them for. This is a deep problem, which no amount of technical tweaking can fix. Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images."

I've no knowledge of the field, but I am reminded of Clarke's first law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Is it totally off-base here?

[coldtea]

Well, it was never that true to begin with.

Quotes like that are the perennial mottos of cracks and kooks, like the people claiming they invented a "perpetual motion machine" or "cold fusion engine".

It's based on a story-fied version of science (the young rebellious upstart, the established elderly opponent, etc). Science seldom works that way and seldom involved "breakthrou changes". Most of it is incremental work.

[dnautics]

He's not saying it's impossible. He says true holograms would do the trick.

[DrStalker]

You're pretty much spot on.

Roger Ebert is the sort of person who believes any technology older than him is normal and anything newer is inherently wrong because it's not what he's used to. We didn't evolve to blend a series of 30 static images per second into seamless motion, but we cope with that so well that no-one actually thinks about it.

Eventually 3D will become consistently well done instead of a gimmick, and it will be just another thing to use when crafting a movie like colour, moving cameras and depth of field.

[MBCook]

> Roger Ebert is the sort of person who believes any technology older than him is normal and anything newer is inherently wrong because it's not what he's used to.

I think you're being far too hard on him. He had seen the 3D fad come and go before. He had a set of standards and I think he was right to stand by them. As it is 3D adds almost nothing to film making at the moment: there are technological limitations and we don't have a good idea of how to use it. Right now it increases ticket prices, is usually 'shoveled-on' to a movie, and reduces the light hitting the viewer's eyes (a long-standing pet peeve of Ebert).

> We didn't evolve to blend a series of 30 static images per second into seamless motion, but we cope with that so well that no-one actually thinks about it.

There is a reason we don't see many fast pans in movies. 24fps forces some compromises. I have no doubt that 48 (or something higher) will eventually become the standard, but just like color/sound/3D we'll need to develop the techniques around it to use it properly.

[dagw]

As much as respect and often agree with Ebert, he has an annoying tendency towards absolutes, just like the video games and art thing. I'm in full agreement with him on this at the current level of technology, but "never" is a long time and I'm certainly not willing to bet on what's going to happen 50-75 years down the road.

[gizmo686]

> We didn't evolve to blend a series of 30 static images per second into seamless motion, but we cope with that so well that no-one actually thinks about it.

While this is mostly true, 30fps is not good enough to the point that no one notices. For example, even with the relatively little gaming I do, I notice when the fps falls to 30. In movies, the Hobbit was shot at 48 fps, and viewers complained that it felt to life like (this is likely just a way of saying 'more lifelike than I am used to').

[alok-g]

Here is what I would not call a solution but something that should be better than the current state of the art.

Note: Behind paywall

http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?ar...