The future of entertainment is 3-D, wrote Discovery News June 8. Their article included comments from Professor Robert Allison, a researcher with the Centre for Vision Research and part of the York-led 3D FLIC project:

But while moviegoers have flocked to recent 3-D offerings, film fans also have had mixed reviews about their experiences, with some reporting headaches, nausea, vision problems and motion sickness. With 3-D leaping to the small screen, clinical researchers and tech experts want to know whether the special effect might damage eyes in the process.

“The problem with 3-D displays is that unlike the real world, only a subset of the information that normally informs us about the 3-D structure of the world is present,” said Robert Allison, a computer science professor in York University’s Faculty of Science & Engineering who specializes in 3-D vision and technology.

And processing that incomplete visual information does, in fact, impact our eyes.

Better technology is alleviating the problem.

Allison also noted that recent 3-D movies have gotten better at reducing eye strain by mimicking our natural stereoscopic vision. “People are becoming less gimmick-oriented in terms of 3-D content,” Allison explained. “There’s more emphasis on a comfortable viewing experience where stereopsis enriches the experience rather than defining it, and recent movies like Avatar or Up have been very easy on the eyes.”

The complete article is available on Discovery.com. For more information about 3D FLIC, visit the project's website.