How Does 3D Work With And Without Glasses.

Stereoscopy was invented in 1838 and one of the first 3D films, "L'arrivée du train" by the Lumière brothers was filmed in 1903. The Lumière brothers are credited as the inventors of cinema and their film L'arrivée du train is often referred to as the first stereoscopic movie ever made.  

How Does 3D Work

 Our brain creates depth perception for us by combining the 2D image produced by each eye. Our eyes are separated by a few inches, so each 2D image is slightly offset to the left or right. These two slightly different views are then combined by the brain. It comprehends the spatial difference and uses it to calculate distance. This is how we sense depth and see the world in 3D.
 

Because the brain does this automatically it is easy enough to fool it into doing so with similarly constructed 2D images, the hard part is making sure that each eye only sees the correct offset image. (left eye sees an image slightly offset to the left and right eye to the right)

3D Using Glasses

  3D movies project a left and right image simultaneously onto the same screen. The 3D glasses that you wear while watching these movies filter out the incorrect portion of the displayed image and allow the correct image to be targeted to the correct eye. The early 3D movies used the traditional red and blue glasses. The film had each frame composed by combining the left and right views, each shown as either red or blue/cyan, the glasses would filter out the appropriate colour. This is called anaglyph and is very cheap in both cost and performance. On the net you can view Youtube videos in this manner. If you have a set of these glasses lying around find out services Youtube offers for this and see some examples here

Modern 3D Movies

Two HD cameras are used in a special camera apparatus and film simultaneously the left and right images of the scene. What you see is almost exactly what the camera operator views.

Unlike the old style 3d movies the new ones are full, untainted colour. This is achieved by using polarized images and glasses. Two differently polarized images play on screen together. Viewers wear special glasses, each lense if the glasses allow opposite polarizations through, so each polarized lense only lets through one image.

Active 3D and Passive 3D refers to the type of glasses you have to wear while watching 3D movies.
Active glasses contain LCD lenses that alternately 'black-out' each eye depending on whether the right or left image is being displayed on the screen. They are referred to as active because they require a battery to operate the LCD lenses. Active shutter glasses, switch between one eye and then the other, blocking the view of each eye alternatively in sync with the TV. This alternating of left and right images on the screen is at a very high rate (50 frames per eye per second). It is fast enough that the brain sees no gaps, and again, takes the two different views from left and right eyes to merge them into an image with depth.

3D Without Glasses

3D screens that don't require glasses are already available. There are different ways that this 3D screen technology is built. It is very new and still expensive to manufacture but soon products using this technology will be available for purchase. Nintendo recently announced the Nintendo 3DS. Nintendo said the device would allow users to enjoy 3D games without the need for glasses.
Screens being developed by Sharp may also be finding there way into other hand held touch screen devices such as smart phones and media players.

How does it work?

Most companies are pursuing the use of a parallax barriers.

Sharp started looking into developing a 3D display in 1992. Sharp seems to be leading the way with the development of its switchable 2D/3D screens. A 'switching LCD' allows both 2D and 3D imaging without the need for special glasses or goggles. The TFT-LCD displays 2D images as normal, but when the parallax barrier is switched on it controls the way light leaves the display, meaning different patterns of light reach the left and right eye.

A "parallax barrier" is a very fine grating placed in front of the LCD screen. It does the job of the polarising glasses used in earlier 3D attempts, directing light from each image slightly differently so that a "sweet spot" in front of the screen is created where the two images can be merged by the brain and viewed as 3D. 

This page at the Sharp website has more details on the 3D LCDs

From the Sharp Tech page
The distance between the human eyes is about 65 mm, and the images seen by the right and left eyes are always slightly different (binocular parallax).The human brain processes the slightly different images from the two eyes to create a sense of depth.

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