How Will the Movie Avatar Effect the Internet

Less than ten days after its release, and already I don’t really need to tell you what this movie is all about. I am willing to be most of you reading this post have seen it, or at least seen the trailer. If not, you can watch the trailer on my short post on Most-Amazing.com: Most Amazing Movie Ever.

As a Mom, I am well aware of the 3D cinematique revolution. Monsters Vs. Aliens, Up, and many other children’s movies were released in 3D over the past couple of years, and we’ve seen them all. Not to mention half a dozen amusement parks 4D movies (yes, I too wondered what the fourth dimension was. It means special effects in the theater: wind, “snow”, moving chairs, bubbles, smells, and so on).

Nothing prepared us to the visual effect of Avatar though. Director James Cameron brought on a technological masterpiece, where human actors and computer effects came together to create a perfectly believable world in three dimensions.

To quote my husband, we were given a look into the future. And to add another quote: this movie will be to 2D movies like the first full-length color movie was to the black and white movies. Nothing short of a revolution. Financially too, theaters now have a clear advantage. This is definitely a movie you want to see on a large screen with the full effects. And I’ll end with one more quote from my personal oracle: “I’m not going to any movie ever again, unless it’s in 3D.”

It’s not just my hubby saying that, mind! This article predicts that the market for 3D movies will go from $5.5 billion this year to $25 billion by 2012! And the British Telegraph is saying about 2010 that

Tt’s set to be a bumper year for 3D television, with both Sky and Panasonic confirming that they will release 3D TVs, and Sky announcing that it is launching a dedicated 3D channel.

The film and TV industries will be the first to have to adjust in order to compete for viewers’ attention, but online media isn’t far behind. Even if the change in standards will take a few years, the Internet can be one of the first arenas to be effected. So what can the effects be? No time like the end of December to be making predictions, so here are my random thoughts about this:

1. 3D output – the first thing would have to be a glasses (or maybe goggles?) that can create good quality 3D output. Sony has very recently announced a prototype to be used with its 3D TV programs – to be released in 2010. Next, some sort of a unified web standard or plug-ins for our browsers to be able to interpret 3D content.
2. The Revival of Flash? – Flash was all the rage when it was launched. Those dynamic flashing graphics were just too pretty to resist. Overtime, mostly due to SEO and loading speed considerations, Flash became less common and limited to site intros. And the one thing every designer must have when adding a flash into is the skip button. Will that change once people get used to 3d visuals? Will Flash, or similar graphic design tools for the web become more common?
3. 3D Site Navigation Systems – the problem of tackling complex navigation systems has always bothered web designers. It gave rise to various forms of dynamic menus, drop-downs, tag clouds, you name it. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about 3-dimensional navigation systems?
4. The Return of Virtual Reality Gaming? - this isn’t online per se, but certainly influences the internet. Imagine playing World of Warcraft in real 3D. It won’t take long for online gaming to catch up.

So, what do you think? How will the 3D revolution effect the online world and how soon?

Tagged as: 3D, Avatar, flash, futurism, gaming