Stereoscopic 3D has been an abject failure when it comes to impressing audiences, with the supposed revolution of 3D TV being met with an ambivalent response from consumers and movie-goers rejecting the inflated ticket prices of 3D film showings. However, a new prototype developed by the MIT Computers Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) highlights a new avenue for the 3D film industry to go down, and it’s one which doesn’t require the use of those dumb glasses.
One of the major turn-offs when it came to 3D movies was being forced to sit in a theater and don a pair of over-sized Ray-Bans, which has been a requirement since the technology burst onto the scene for the release of James Cameron’s Avatar. MIT have recognized this and have therefore developed Cinema 3D, a glasses-free 3D display system for movie theaters.
According to MIT, Cinema 3D bests the current available 3D viewing option by “delivering a narrow range of angular images to each individual seat,” meaning that the screen effectively accommodates the angle of each seat within a theater. Unlike the current method, which adopts a “one size suits all” approach by only offering a small range of images projected to segments of a theater, thus ensuring that some movie-goers will experience blurry resolutions and other such viewing issues, Cinema 3D will cater to every seat in the house.
Glasses-less 3D has made its way to market before, with the Nintendo 3DS utilizing parallax barrier autostereoscopy to display 3D images on its display. The New Nintendo 3DS later implemented an eye tracking system to ensure high quality 3D from differing angles, but it was still only intended to be viewed by an individual viewer, whereas Cinema 3D is intended to be viewed by large audiences.
MIT have said that they need to consider whether it is “financially feasible” to scale up the technology to the size of a theater, but if this does eventually become a standard of 3D viewing, it would certainly be a much more attractive option to film fans than having to wear flimsy, plastic sunglasses for two or so hours.
