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Winnipeg Free Press - Professor researching 3D surprised how many Canadians can't see

Published: 20 October 2010

CBC's recent 3-D broadcast of a documentary about the Queen may help provide clues about how many Canadians can't actually see programming in the third dimension.

Manufacturers and content producers are eager to push everything in 3-D nowadays— including movies, TV shows, sporting events, video games and even commercials —and hope consumers will embrace a slow march toward experiencing virtually all their entertainment with glasses on (or at least until glasses-free 3-D is fully commercialized).

But what if the 3-D revolution arrives in full force and Canadians can't see it?

McGill University researchers launched a study connected to the CBC's 3-D documentary and got about 1,000 people to test their stereopsis, or 3-D vision. While the numbers are still being crunched, one of the leads on the project says he's taken aback by how many people can't see 3-D.

"We're just analysing that data at the moment but we were surprised at the extent to which there's so many people out there who have very poor stereo (vision) and we don't know the reason for that," said Prof. Robert Hess of McGill's Department of Ophthalmology.

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