The question always comes up and rarely gets answered properly, so to hear such a measured dismantling of glasses-less 3D was illuminating. But then, Buzz Hays has been pioneering and improving the art of creating 3D for five years, so when he says we’ll be sticking with the glasses for a while yet, you tend to listen.

The main reason 3D glasses will be around for the foreseeable future is that autostereoscopic displays – those which work without the need for glasses – face problems that simply can’t be surmounted with current technology. I’ll let Buzz explain.

“The big issue is with the resolution of the source material itself. In order for it to be an image that even approximates something like high-def we have to be at least four times the resolution we have right now. So it’s impractical at this point.”

He’s talking about the way current 3D works, in that the left and right eyes’ images both need to be projected and polarised in opposite directions to be combined in your brain – so the picture you see in the cinema is half the resolution it could be. Taking away the glasses means that effect just gets worse. Buzz continues:

“Most of the [autostereoscopic] systems out there require – instead of just the left and right eye view – multiple views, odd numbers such as nine or 13 or, in some cases I’ve seen, up to 27 views. Firstly, somebody has to create all the views, but secondly, if you take a high-def image and you divide the width of the screen by nine then you’ve already cut your resolution by nine, so the image is roughly a tenth of the original resolution.”

“That’s tiny. That’s like a QuickTime movie you’d put in an email. Most self-respecting film makers won’t let their work be so degraded.”

Of course, as Buzz pointed out at the start of his presentation, at CES 2009 the pronouncements were that 3D TV would hit homes within three to five years, yet they’re already beginning to appear within a single year. The pace of progress just can’t be predicted, so who knows when we’ll be able to ditch the specs? “Eventually we’ll get there,” he assured us, “but the glasses really shouldn’t be an impediment.”

I agree with him on that one: if you’re stubborn enough to avoid 3D because the glasses make you look silly, or because you think it’s an effort you shouldn’t have to endure, you’re missing out on what can be a tremendous experience. Kids see the glasses as part of the experience, part of the fun; is it really so hard to buy into that?

“Grown-ups seem to have a problem with the glasses thing,” said Buzz. “When people are adamant, ‘I’d never watch a movie wearing glasses,’ I’m always like [points to his own glasses] ‘Why not? I do it all the time.’”

If that kind of argument doesn’t sway you, sitting in a 3D film without glasses just might. “With most of the early autostereoscopic displays, you can’t move your head. It’s perfect for a date movie, right? Imagine it: you sit here, she sits here, now neither of you move for two hours!”

Sounds almost as romantic as a back-row fumble with the glasses on…

The Blair Witch Project used the web to build word-of-mouth hype with incredible success before its release back in 1999, and since then it’s become a bit of a cliche for film studios to do the same. The usual process is to create cryptic teaser websites to whip the fans into a frenzy of chattering excitement before releasing an ultimately disappointing, prosaic film to a near-universal ‘meh’. (I’m looking at you, Cloverfield.)

But Lost Zombies is taking a much more ambitious approach to using the online community, by actually getting the community itself to make the movie.

“In 2007 the flu pandemic began. The flu strain spread quickly, mutating out of control and causing a global zombie apocalypse. Today 75% of the population has been wiped out. We want to hear your story.”

At its heart the site is an online community, with members posting messages and writing articles, but it has the potential to be much more than that – which is why it’s just picked up the Community and People’s Choice Awards at the South by Southwest Web Awards in Austin, Texas.

The key component is The Grid, a 14 x 14 mesh of ‘objectives’ which the creators will be revealing one by one over time. Each consists of a short set of instructions for a segment of footage which users can film with their friends – the 15 currently active include requests for footage of protests, shots of mocked up newspapers with specific headlines, video testimonies of witnessed events and personal video journals recounting the horrors of the zombie apocalypse. One even asks for footage of a riot, which may be a tad unwise.

At the moment the user base is quite small, but as it grows the plan is to eventually compile the best user-submitted videos into a Lost Zombies documentary, which will profile the aftermath of an undead-led collapse of society. It’s a fantastic idea and one which could harness the creativity of so many horror fans across the globe – fans who’d love to be a part of the filmmaking process but couldn’t possibly devote the time or budget to making a film themselves. This way they don’t have to – with a bit of effort and ingenuity, a quick 30-second clip could be enough to get them on to the big screen.

It’s also a fine example of using the web community in creative ways, a community that happily spends all day on Twitter but is crying out for something more useful to do. Its documentary format means every user can work independently to produce something that fits the overall scene, which does away with the organisational problems that have blighted previous community movie attempts. And by harnessing the fans, the long-term result will be a full-length movie that essentially films itself.

Check out Lost Zombies for yourself, round up some horror-loving friends and get filming!

While researching an upcoming feature, I found a link from the BBC. Entitled “Why 3D is about to break through“, it explains the exciting world of 3D movies and projection, before concluding that it “looks like the future of 3D is firming up.”

Only trouble is, the article was from over a year ago. Since then I’ve been to see Beowulf at the IMAX, and toyed with an old game on one of Zalman’s monitors, but I can hardly say 3D leapt out at me through 2008.

This year, though, is different – one look at the barrage of 3D TVs launched at CES is enough to realise that. But while the industry hypes it, I’m intrigued to know whether you, the consumers, are actually interested in 3D at all. Going to a movie once in a while is one thing, spending your own money on kit is another entirely.

So, is it something you’d consider investing in? And, gaming and movies aside, are there any applications for which you see 3D being genuinely useful?

Like Napster and every other file sharing service since, BitTorrent has altered (some would say scarred) the digital landscape immensely. I’m not going to go into the legalities here – we all know people who use it, a noble few for genuine legal file sharing, vastly more for getting the latest Coldplay album without having to shell out for it (I’ve heard it, I can sympathise).

It’s part cause and part by-product of the fact that the Internet has hugely magnified the hype and speculation around new albums, movies and games, to the extent where we often know far more than we need to about something before we experience it.

Simon over at fanboy site Den Of Geek makes the point well here, with even seemingly innocent Facebook walls proving a minefield before a much anticipated film release. I can understand this to a certain extent – I read previews and speculate about films more than is really healthy. But I stop there.

The people I simply won’t ever understand are those seemingly intent on deliberately ruining their own enjoyment of the thing they’re so desperate to get hold of. I’m talking about the pre-release hounds, feeding on dodgy leaked movies and unfinalised games. Why? Just, why?

There’s an interesting interview here with SCEE President David Reeves, in which he drops his guard for a moment and comments honestly about the scourge of BitTorrent, particularly with regard to a company like Sony which often staggers releases across different regions. I quote:

“We are a PAL market and we are going to do it in PAL and we are going to do it properly, you can wait for it and you can have it in good quality, you know you can get the stuff from Bittorrent if you want to and download PSP games, it’s up to you.”

Aside from the fact that it’s so refreshing to hear a high-level Sony executive acknowledging that people are going to use BitTorrent and there ain’t much anyone can do about it, it’s the tone of his quote that really hit home.

In essence he’s saying, yes you can download the dodgy leaked version before it’s ready, but why on Earth would you want to? If you’ve waited so expectantly for a game or movie that’s going to knock your socks off, why don’t you want to savour it in all its glory, rather than seeing it as filmed by a bloke in the back row with a handycam?

A quick check of one popular torrent portal gives a depressing chart of the current top searches, with cracked copies of Wanted, the new Mummy film, Hancock, and even PSP games – the subject of Reeves’ resigned comments. But the worst is at number three.

Why why why oh why would anyone in their right mind wait three long and tense years for The Dark Knight to finally arrive – a film so mindblowingly perfect that scenes are still hurtling round my head days after witnessing it – only to download a dodgy copy to watch on a laptop? Whether it has the back of someone’s head in view for the duration is irrelevant – I doubt its $180 million budget was spent to be watched at 1,280 x 800 while you’re on the lav.

I can just about begin to understand some of the reasons behind it. Yes, the cinema is increasingly expensive, and bafflingly few people seem capable of holding their bladder for two and a half hours these days. And games that arrive across the pond months before they do so here can be infuriating when reviews are gushing with praise.

But the popular argument that these people then go on to buy a ticket or a copy of the DVD upon release just doesn’t cut it for me. You only get one first time. Rewatching a film when it then arrives in the cinema won’t let you unlearn the plot twists, and you’ll never get the same exhileration as the first time you sat in a crowded cinema and saw Batman turn his [SPOILER REMOVED] into a [SPOILER REMOVED] before [SPOILER REMOVED] into [SPOILER REMOVED] all in glorious HD. (See, I’m better than that.)

It’s like watching Match of the Day when you already know the results – you may as well just fast-forward to the goals.

But it’s human nature that some people would rather be the one to spoil the plot twists for others than to actually enjoy them for themselves, and the great shame is that innovations like BitTorrent have, unfortunately, given any spotty oik the means to do it.