Caren Explains: 3D Glasses

I got a direct mail marketing solicitation today. To view it, I was asked to put on 3D glasses that were included in the envelope. It was weird and trippy.



My earliest memory of 3D glasses comes from "Muppets Take Manhattan"... Scooter finds a job managing a movie theater, where "The Attack of the Killer Fish" is playing in 3D. The Swedish Chef is throwing popcorn in the air, offering a 3D expereince of his own. Boomerang fish-thrower starts throwing fish at the screen and they fly back around and hit the audience members who are wearing 3D glasses.

Today I wondered: How do 3D glasses work?



An answer from 3dGlassesOnline.com:

"In order to see things in 3D each eye must see a slightly different picture. This is done in the real world by your eyes being spaced apart so each eye has its own slightly different view. The brain then puts the two pictures together to form one 3D image that has depth to it.

Anaglyphic [ana·glyph·ic /"a-n&-'gli-fik/] adjective: a stereoscopic motion or still picture in which the right component of a composite image usually red in color is superposed on the left component in a contrasting color to produce a three-dimensional effect when viewed through correspondingly colored filters in the form of spectacles.

The mode of 3D presentation you are most familiar with are the paper glasses with red and blue lenses. The technology behind 3D, or stereoscopic, movies is actually pretty simple. They simply recreate the way humans see normally.

Since your eyes are about two inches apart, they see the same picture from slightly different angles. Your brain then correlates these two images in order to gauge distance."

I wonder if I could make 3D glasses into this month's fashion trend...