3D Film - Health Effects

Health Effects

Some viewers have complained of headaches and eyestrain after watching 3D films. Motion sickness, in addition to other health concerns, are more easily induced by 3D presentations.

There are primarily two effects of 3D film that are unnatural for the human vision: crosstalk between the eyes, caused by imperfect image separation, and the mismatch between convergence and accommodation, caused by the difference between an object's perceived position in front of or behind the screen and the real origin of that light on the screen.

It is believed that approximately 12% of people are unable to properly see 3D images, due to a variety of medical conditions. According to another experiment up to 30% of people have very weak stereoscopic vision preventing them from depth perception based on stereo disparity. This nullifies or greatly decreases immersion effects of digital stereo to them.

The concerns affected such a large portion of audiences that, in 2010, online entrepreneur Hank Green created "2D Glasses", a product designed to combat adverse effects by reversing three-dimensional cinema images into ordinary two-dimensional ones, selling his creation through online retailers.