The use of 3D is becoming more common across the entertainment industry. From cinemas and theme parks to televisions and home video games, 3D is drawing huge crowds and generating tens of billions of dollars in sales worldwide. Here, Kevin Williams assesses its importance in the future amusement industry

Although US sales of 3D televisions have been disappointing to manufacturers, the product is enjoying higher-than-expected sales in other markets such as Germany and China.

In the amusements industry, pay-to-play video games and attractions are also beginning to find solid success with 3D presentation. Popular 3D formats include large simulators from companies like Triotech and Simuline. There are also a handful of promising 3D sit down drivers and sports novelty games from leading manufacturers such as Sega, Konami and others. So far, these have largely been confined to Asian distribution. Even pinball is getting into the 3D act with Stern’s Avatar.

If the amusement industry is a tad sceptical about 3D, it’s understandable. During the past 25 years amusement operators, distributors and manufacturers have seen many promising new technologies that were touted as the ‘next big thing,’ then watched them fade even faster than they had arrived.

The industry was excited and hopeful about the laserdisc games of the early 80s and the virtual reality video games of the early 90s. There was even a brief flirtation with holographic video games… Unfortunately all three technologies quickly became expensive flops.

Today, then, it’s perfectly reasonable and prudent for amusement professionals to ask: “Is this return of 3D just another flash in the pan. Is 3D one more sad case of here today - gone tomorrow?”

THIS TIME IT’S DIFFERENT

Looking at the evidence, so far the answer appears to be that this time it will be different… For the same basic reason that digital jukeboxes have become standard in the music business. As Rock-Ola president Glenn Streeter used to say, the jukebox sector follows the larger music industry in its technology. More than a decade ago he confidently forecast that if the music industry shifted from CDs to downloading, so would jukeboxes.

Streeter was right about jukeboxes and the same principle applies to video games. As the broader economy goes, so goes the amusements industry.
As of 2011, it appears that 3D is moving gradually, but steadily, towards becoming a new standard for films, television, home video and eventually for any medium that uses a monitor to present digital images; for example, 3D Android smartphones debuted at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona in February this year.

What we are seeing is a fundamental transformation in how digital images are presented. Soon a flat, 2D digital image will seem as outdated as a rotary dial telephone in a world where stereoscopic 3D representation is the norm. Almost certainly, that means 3D will eventually become the standard for amusement video as well.

To fully understand just how inevitable the dominance of 3D really is it helps to recap briefly the history of this technology. The better we understand where 3D came from and where it has been so far, the better we can forecast where it is going tomorrow.

VIEW MASTER AND BWANA DEVIL

Like most overnight successes, the current 3D technology boom was a long time coming. Believe it or not, stereoscopic photography dates back to at least the American Civil War.

By the early 1900s, stereoscopic viewers for still photos were upscale popular novelties. Public fascination with 3D viewers led to a mass-market hit product called View Master in 1939 and Fisher-Price is still making it today.

3D cinema in major theatres dates back to one-shot presentations in New York City in the 20s, however the first real effort to standardise the format came in the early 50s with major Hollywood features like Bwana Devil and Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder. These novelties required patrons to wear polarised red and green glasses, usually with cheap cardboard frames. 3D comic books also enjoyed a brief fad at this time.

However, 1950s 3D film technology was primitive and expensive, requiring not just those cardboard glasses, but also two cameras, two projectors and twice as much film. After seeing a few spears and monsters coming at them in 3D, audiences quickly lost interest and Hollywood scrapped the technology.

Fast-forward five decades and the high-resolution, large-format film stock of the IMAX system, combined with mobile cameras and 3D computer graphics, was able to reignite the imaginative possibilities of 3D as a medium to experience motion pictures. IMAX 3D theatres gained public popularity using the IMAX company’s LCD shutter glasses.

Around the same time, the theme park industry was embracing what are now called 4D attractions - a way to show large audiences attraction films that incorporate both 3D imagery and on-site physical effects such as moving seats, leg ticklers, smoke and lighting effects synchronised with the action on screen.

IMAX and 4D were basically exhibition novelties, but 3D began sneaking back into the mainstream cinematic arsenal with children’s CGi movies. A landmark early success was the 2003 feature Spy Kids 3D. The next major milestone came in 2009 with James Cameron’s Avatar, a film that has defined the big spectacular experience for record numbers of grown-up moviegoers.

The 2010 releases of Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans, both of which did most of their box office in 3D, confirmed that the new 3D technology was here to stay.

3D USE IN PUBLIC SPACES

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Building on the success of 4D for theme parks, the amusement industry has embraced 3D for some of its leading simulators. Canada’s Triotech Amusement has led the charge, building a compact and effective platform that can be placed in a multitude of locations. Its XD Theatre offers what the company calls a 6D experience to hungry audiences, blending 3D visuals with a motion seat and physical effects in a compact, standalone package. This is a passive ride system. So is Simuline’s four-seat or eight-seat enclosure X-Rider, which combines a motion system and 4D effects.

Passive rides are fine for theme parks, but the amusement sector knows its customers really like to play, not just ride. This means interactive game play in 3D is the real test. Triotech met that test at IAAPA 2010 with its brand-new XD dark ride, announced as the “world’s first 7D attraction,” which offers an immersive experience through 3D visuals, 4D motion, 5D wind effect and 6D lighting effect. The 7D combination of curved screen and real-time 3D technology allows players to blast opponents on the screen. The player’s score is recorded and presented.

3D game play is also on tap from Russian developer Trans-Force, which has created a unique interactive platform to suit the widest possible variety of venues. Its 5D interactive attraction offers a five-seat motion cabin in which the glasses-wearing audience uses special controls to take an active part in game experiences that also have an educational aspect. It is designed for museum as well as mall applications.

Taking its 4D passive experience into the game scene, Korea’s Simuline showed its new Power Boat: Extreme 3D at IAAPA 2010. This motion-based, two-player futuristic motorboat racing game has been ‘souped up’ with the inclusion of 3D glasses as well as 4D spritzer water effects.

3D PAY-FOR-PLAY VIDEOS AND PINS

Applying a 3D specification to a conventional amusement game is not as easy as it might seem, however developers are experimenting with the concept. Universal Space is selling Forest Guardian, a unique 3D shooting game with 46ins display and two-player alien blasting action. Golden Dragon Amusement has developed a two-player theatre cabinet enclosure with 3D glasses called Star Predator; the players use large, vibrating machine guns to hold back hordes of enemy targets.

Leading Japanese amusement manufacturers experimented with 3D technology in the early 90s, but at present, they are proving more cautious about joining the 3D revolution. Today’s Japanese R&D teams believe that 3D technology should be “unencumbered” (glasses-free). The reasons behind this belief are obvious: not just concerns about viewer comfort, but also hygiene, expense and vulnerability to theft or damage whenever the public has access to any small device attached to a video game cabinet.

As a compromise, some contemporary Japanese manufacturers favour the viewing visor solution: a mechanical arm that holds a single set of 3D goggles, rather than independent, free-floating glasses. In theory, it’s a bit like a common, fixed periscope viewer for a submarine game (interestingly, some of the virtual reality game manufacturers came to the same conclusion over a decade ago).

Though only seen in Japan to date, one of the first products to demonstrate this application was the 2010 street racer Road Fighters from Konami. Another game using the same basic visor concept was Maximum Heat 3D by Bandai Namco Games; these driving cockpits are available in Japan in a special 3D deluxe version.

Adding 3D as a variant to existing amusement releases has gained momentum this year. Sega Japan plans to launch Let’s Go Island: 3D for Japan only; here again the favoured solution is not independent 3D glasses but the fixed visor-type 3D system. Sega has reverted to a theatre cabinet treatment for this game, similar to the cabinet enclosure used with the first in the series.

Beyond Japan, the Chinese developer 3D Gaming became one of the first amusement manufacturers to present a non-glasses pay-for-play video game system to the modern market with its Disney 3D Ping Pong. The platform uses a barrier screen display to produce the 3D representation.

For amusement operators, the largest representation of 3D from an American manufacturer has - perhaps surprisingly - come from Stern Pinball. The company’s Avatar pinball game uses a radical non-glasses lenticular 3D backglass.

OUT-OF-HOME 3D’S FUTURE

It’s one thing to create the illusion of 3D on a flat monitor in front of the viewer’s face. It’s another to appear to surround the viewer with a 3D image, no matter where they turn their head. The next step beyond 3D is, of course, virtual reality. The very words virtual reality leave a bad taste in the mouth of many operators, due to their getting burned by it some 20 years ago.

But the simple facts are that perfecting 3D also paves the way for the return of virtual reality to the amusements scene, or at least in public spaces as an attraction. The same high-speed computing power that makes it possible to create the 3D world that appears on a flat monitor can also take the viewer into that world simply by using a different presentation technology.

Products that are proposed for the future of the public-space experience will offer computer augmented virtual environments - multiple screens surrounding users, occupying their complete field of vision and drawing them into the action like never before. Although not exactly like the Holodeck from the sci-fi TV programme Star Trek Next Generation, this technology could become an important part of public-space entertainment by creating an experience that is unachievable at home. If nothing else, 21st-century virtual reality may be applied to attention-grabbing advertising, theme park exhibitions and other promotions.

One of the biggest lessons that the industry learned from the failure of virtual reality back in the 90s is still applicable today. Hi-tech is wonderful,
but it cannot make up for weak game play. As industry pros like to say:
“The name of the game is the game” - not the presentation.

The next generation of 3D technology has become viable, affordable, practical and durable enough for pay-for-play video games. Will it be an economic success? As always, that’s up to the game creators… And the players, who are the ultimate judges.

Eventually, however, 3D appears poised to become the standard technology of our time. That means both the hits and the flops of the movies, TV and the amusement video game world will all be presented in three dimensions.