Gran Turismo 5

[Eight Rooks]

Not to mention

There's really no need for it in film, a skilled director can create a sense of depth just like a good photographer can.

...well, no. You can't replicate a 3D effect with a 2D medium. Not sure what's giving you that impression. I mean, I've still only seen one 3D screening... (and no, it wasn't Avatar or Alice ) but regardless of how necessary you feel it is - and I agree a great many films are throwing it in just for the hell of it - it's completely removed from anything you could possibly do with just a regular camera.

[Profit]

That's not how it works in the cinema - the film decides where the focal point is still by the angle of the 2 cameras. I can' see how it would be any different in games. You can look at different parts of the screen, but it still won't be in focus.

I think you're confusing how the camera capture ( or in this case how the frame is generated) with how the eyes accommodates. When a camera captures an image obviously only one plane will be in focus. But when the image is generated as in a game all planes are in focus.

e.g. in current racing games your car and the car in front is generated in focus (an impossible optic illusion) and your eyes can choose to focus on your or front car. In a TV/film of cars, the camera can only focus on one car dictated by the source; which your brain is naturally drawn to. (Games try and emulate this by introducing artificial depth blur as in Uncharted 2).

This is the main reason why 3D films are mainly CGI. If you looked at a single frame for a specific eye; it contains no focus plane; which is impossible for a normal camera to capture.

[JP]

...well, no. You can't replicate a 3D effect with a 2D medium. Not sure what's giving you that impression. I mean, I've still only seen one 3D screening... (and no, it wasn't Avatar or Alice ) but regardless of how necessary you feel it is - and I agree a great many films are throwing it in just for the hell of it - it's completely removed from anything you could possibly do with just a regular camera.

According to your quote you've seen a 2D medium which does give the impression of a 3D effect.

We don't yet have an effective 2D technology which creates anything but an illusion of depth behind the viewable plane. This is not new to film or photography but things like Avatar do use a relatively new technology to achieve the illusion.

People have been creating an illusion of 3D space on a 2D plane since the Renaissance in the 14th century and earlier. At that time people, in much the same way as they are now were amazed by the illusions that were created.

It is very definitely not needed in film, the only thing that is needed is the means or faking the means to capturing light, whether it's digital or chemical, anything else including this sort of 3D illusion is merely extras and can take many forms. Adding extras when they are appropriate does not necessarily lessen the experience but even ones that add to the experience aren't needed.

I've seen Avatar and with or without this it's a pretty bland film. I was encouraged to watch it in the fake 3D in a cinema but I've seen the standard version on blu-ray. The version I saw in the cinema seemed to consist merely of the extras and we both got bored of it, the blu-ray version is still an empty film but I found that once the fake 3D was removed from the experience that it was a much more intimate, personal and enjoyable experience.

It's never going to be a great film irrelevant of what medium it's viewed on but it feels far too much like a victim of the awful colorization affect that started being used used at the turn of the 20th century.

There wasn't one scene in Avatar that I saw in 3D which gave the film any sense of space that was even close to what exists in several scenes in a film like Lawrence of Arabia.

I have no doubt that there will be people who have the skill to create something new and hopefully something fantastic with this young medium but it's probably not going to be people like James Cameron who do this.

I can see the advantage to this sort of illusion in gaming as very often gaming involves navigating a 3D space. At the recent Killzone 3 it was mentioned by more than one journalist (Can't find either now) that there was concern that in multiplayer people could have an advantage due to them playing the game in 3D, it appeared to be far easier to track objects moving around in the environment as they knew exactly where those objects existed in 3D space.

For me at least, than can add something to this medium but at the moment it still seems to lose something else when it's added.

[Eight Rooks]

All I meant was the 3D of todays' 3D films is a completely different technology to the process of... capturing light, or however you want to put it. You may feel the regular way of doing things provides a more convincing depiction of depth, but it's still not the same as the 3D effect currently gracing multiplexes, fake or otherwise. That's a statement of fact. You can argue the merits of that 3D effect - I don't like it too much myself - but the method by which it attempts to convince you various parts of the image are actually separate entities which are really located at different points along the... Y axis, would it be? Anyway, you cannot do that same thing by just pointing a camera at something and shooting, no matter how artistic you're being. That's not a matter for opinion. Cameron may well overstate its importance, and people may not enjoy watching films rendered in this way, but that's not the same thing.

I saw How To Train Your Dragon in 3D, to clarify. Greatly enjoyed the film, didn't think the 3D added much to it or was particularly well done. I'm not a huge fan of throwing it at anything and everything, I'm just taking you up on semantics.

[Matt]

I think you're confusing how the camera capture ( or in this case how the frame is generated) with how the eyes accommodates. When a camera captures an image obviously only one plane will be in focus. But when the image is generated as in a game all planes are in focus.

e.g. in current racing games your car and the car in front is generated in focus (an impossible optic illusion) and your eyes can choose to focus on your or front car. In a TV/film of cars, the camera can only focus on one car dictated by the source; which your brain is naturally drawn to. (Games try and emulate this by introducing artificial depth blur as in Uncharted 2).

This is the main reason why 3D films are mainly CGI. If you looked at a single frame for a specific eye; it contains no focus plane; which is impossible for a normal camera to capture.

Actually in TV/film you can have as much in focus as you want, depending on the lense, aperture, light, and with digital camcorders, the CCD/CMOS size (which ties in with the lense).

However, that's not how you shoot a film. You want to draw the viewer's attention to something, which you focus. You want to throw the rest out. [Unless you're M. Mann in some of his latest films, lol]

It's this clash of traditional filmmaking techniques and 3D that causes me issues. I keep hoping 3D will just go away

As you say, in games it's not issue, you run the whole thing in focus and let the eye go where it wants.

[JP]

I spent some time trying to think of a better way to word this but I just can't think of any so please excuse me but I'm not really sure that your responses bear any relation to my posts Eight Rooks.

I initially made two very simple claims:

1. 3D isn't needed in film and I've italicised that word to emphasise it's importance.
2. A skilled director can give me exactly the same information irrelevant of which medium they chose to use.

The only things that are needed in film are things who's absence would mean it was impossible to produce films, anything else is just...stuff. Directors can add all sorts of things on top of what is required, some of it will add to the film and some of it won't.

If you look at a photo do you not understand that objects in that photo are on different planes and does it not make perfect sense that some are in front of others and closer to you? Do 3D films, or if we're being accurate, stereoscopic films allow you to understand something that you weren't able to understand before?


I've not chosen that still for any particular reason, it can be replaced with another to the same effect. EDIT: Added The Godfather & Lawrence of Arabia stills.

When I look at that film still, it gives me every piece of information I need to understand the 3D space that's been filmed. Seeing a stereoscopic version of exactly the same thing will not improve my understanding of the scene or my experience with Paris, Texas in any way at all.

...but regardless of how necessary you feel it is - and I agree a great many films are throwing it in just for the hell of it - it's completely removed from anything you could possibly do with just a regular camera.

Here and in a few other places you seem to be making a point that expressing depth using stereoscopic images is different to expressing depth in single images? Of course it is, one uses stereoscopic images and the other doesn't and that's why I've said it's different.

I appreciate that you may not agree with me concerning stereoscopic film in some ways. That's nice but I do hope that we can both agree that the Gran Tursimo 5 news thread is not the sort of place to be discussing basic film theory?

[Profit]

In practice, no one who played Wipeout 3D or any of the other PS3 3D games complained about any focusing issues re: it's not an issue.

[randombs]

Kazunori better not see your post, John, lest he turn around and say "Boys, we've been going about it all wrong!" and GT5 gets pushed back further while they digitally restore it, frame by frame, to stunning 2D, just as the director intended.

[dvdmike]

Out November 2nd this year

[englishbob]

Out November 2nd this year

Its really not worth them ever issuing a release date for this game anymore, does anyone actually believe it this time?

[dvdmike]

Yeppers

[Neon Ignition]

Sony: `We need to release this now. We announced back at Forza and Forza 4 is out soon'

Kaz: `It's not ready, you can have GT5 Concept 2 at E3 2011, I need to animate the bugs on the windscreens!`

Sony: `Okay...` *slips dev disc into pocket*

[dvdmike]

Sony: `We need to release this now. We announced back at Forza and Forza 4 is out soon'

Kaz: `It's not ready, you can have GT5 Concept 2 at E3 2011, I need to animate the bugs on the windscreens!`

Sony: `Okay...` *slips dev disc into pocket*

Forza 4 was not anounced and PD made 3 games not including 5 since Forza 1




Top Gear and Stig!

[Sam The Man]

So it finally has a release date of November the 2nd and i really do think this one will stick. I watched the video of it online from the E3 conference and it looked amazing and its the game that will finally force me to get a ps3.

As for the 3d i still think its a bit of a gimmick and Polyphony could have released GT5 earlier and then just released a 3d version for the people that like it later on.

[Neon Ignition]

Well, 2. GT PSP and Tourist Trophy weren't big departures and the numorous GT5 samplers don't count