Naked Eye 3D Movies Coming to Theaters

It turns out 3D glasses aren't just a scam cooked up by optics nerds to make us all look like dorks; glasses-free 3D projection is just really difficult (read: pricey).

But that could change relatively soon. A recent article by a joint research team from four South Korean universities details a projection method that would send all those uncomfortable plastic glasses to the dump where they belong. The new technology, which involves stuff called parallax barriers and quarter-wave retarding film, is still plenty confusing; but unlike pre-existing possibilities for naked-eye 3D (e.g. Nintendo's 3DS) it could be cheap.

3D projection works by sending slightly different images to each of the viewer's eyes, essentially tricking us into depth-perception. This is easy enough with polarized glasses, though current 3D movies require two projectors to operate in perfect sync - hardly a perfect system. And while it would theoretically be possible to emulate the glasses-free light filtering method used by handhelds like the 3DS or HTC's Evo 3D, that would require rear-projection. Given than basically every theater in the country is set up for front-projection, and that most don't have thousands of unoccupied square feet back behind their movie screens, rear-projection is out.

And so the boring fact that it's "both space saving and cost effective" is what makes this new technique so exciting: theaters could realistically use it.

Auto-stereoscopic frontal-projection wouldn't be cheap, per se, and it would require modifying a theater's screen with a light-diffusing shutter array (the experimental prototype of which supports only extremely low-resolution images). But in an economy of scale like the entire US movie business, that kind of cost hurdle gets considerably smaller.

This is an infant technology now, but don't be surprised to find glasses-free 3D at a theater near you in the next few years. Now if technology could just fill some of those 3D blockbusters' plot holes…

Source: Wired Science

Jon Fox is a Seattle hipster who loves polar bears and climbing trees. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN. 

Source : ign[dot]com