[X] My Assistant

[elakdawalla]

Some discussion started in the "Curiosity Image Retrieval Tools" thread about technology for viewing 3D images that goes beyond crossed-eye stereo and red-blue glasses. I'm interested in taking the plunge into an actual 3D display. Any of you guys have experience/advice to offer? If I can collect some comments and reviews I'll write up a blog post about it. If you mention a product please also provide a link to it within your post. List price would be very helpful too.

I have no experience with 3D displays but I LOVE my Fujifilm 3D camera. While its image quality and speed are not as good as my Canon Sureshot, having 3D photos and movies of my children is awesome. List price is $600 but Amazon is currently offering it for about $250.

[dvandorn]

At a base level, viewing something in 3D must involve making each eye see slightly different versions of each image. The red/blue glasses do this with a base color set, the 3D Imax movies do it by applying polarized gradients on each image so that each eye's polarized film on their 3D glasses only lets in that eye's image. Unfortunately, I don't believe they've figured out how to polarize different images differently on a computer or TV display, at least not yet.

The 3D televisions work by aligning separate images in tune with a set of glasses that blocks one eye for the fraction of a second the image that's displayed is for the other eye.

So, unless you can build a 3D tank with pixels that set in three dimensions, I think we're stuck with some kind of glasses for 3D effects for the foreseeable future. The option where the monitor image is displayed twice, once each in the lenspieces of a pair of goggles, will give you the best overall image but as has been mentioned can cause headaches from both the goggle arrangement and from the weight of those goggle setups at present.

That's the best rundown I can give on the options at present for 3D viewing.

-the other Doug