Can 3-D Television or Movies Make You Sick?

Three-D technology capitalizes on taking advantage of the brain's ability to fuse two images together. The glasses that you wear when watching 3-D are helping your brain interpret two flat images as one object with depth. A bunch of 3-D movies are making their mark in Hollywood.

1. Martin Scorsese plans to direct a 3-D movie
2. Nintendo - 3-D game console, the 3DS
3. 3-D television models
4. ESPN - 3-D sports network

There are some dangers, doctors say, for eyes unaccustomed to watching 3-D for hours. there are mild symptoms like disorientation and seizures.

Samsung 3D LED TV comes with health warnings cautioning that certain flashing images/lights could induce seizure or stroke and that motion sickness, disorientating, eye strain and decreased postural stability may result.

The percentage of people to worry about effects is small. Commonly, people may become dizzy after watching 3-D TV or films.

3-D causes the eyes to move in unnatural ways. 3-D presents two slightly different perspectives of the same scene. Three-D glasses have a polarized filter that separates the two images, each to be seen by a different eye. In the brain the images are fused creating the illusion of depth, says Steven Nusinowtz, associate professor of ophthalmology at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Your eyes slightly cross toward each other when you see something come toward you in the real world. The lenses change in order to keep the object in focus as it moves, process called accommodation. With the images on the screen, your eyes try to align the two, but not accommodate because the image is moving toward you. The disconnect will make you feel sick.

Some people can not see in 3-D, like people whose eyes aren't perfectly aligned, or have a weak eye muscle a condition where the eyes point in different directions. People with a lazy eye may also miss out on the depth perception.

Nusinowitz says that 80% of people won't have problems.

No one knows for sure the long-term effects of 3-D television.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/23/3d.vision.brain/index.html?hpt=Sbin

I do think that people can get sick from watching three-D movies. I know that after I watch something in 3-D I am a little dizzy once the movie is over and I stand up. I think that 3-D is a cool effect and it is interesting to know that our eyes help us perceive depth in the real world and the glass help us in the movies, but seeing something in 3-D, I think, is a really treat. If it becomes a common house hold thing then not many people will go out to see movies in 3-D. I think that if someone watches a lot of 3-D their eyes will get too used to the polarized glasses and have troubles seeing in the real world. They don't know the long-term effects so I think that going out and buying all this 3-D technology people should just wait to see what the long-term effects could be. We don't know if it could be something that changes your life drastically or something that is very small and minor. I do think that we need to do more research on 3-D before we all get carried away and someone comes up with 3-D computers.