Types of 3D Glasses

You have probably heard of 3d glasses for years now, possibly your entire life. For the past 50 to 60 years, they’ve been used to make the films you like to see in theatres jump out of the screen and appear to be right in front of you. There are several different technologies that are used nowadays to achieve this effect, one more advanced and effective than the next, allowing you to experience movies like never before. In this article, we’ll examine the most prevalent types of 3d glasses that you see in theaters today, and how they work to show you those realistic 3d images.

Ever since the 1950s, 3d has been used as a gimmick for many different kinds of films. While the craze tended to fall off around the mid to late 60s, staying in a small niche market for that amount of time, recent advances in 3d technology have made theme park rides and movies more entertaining, the past couple of years seeing a resurgence in 3d moviewatching. With the advent of streaming media and instant entertainment, 3d is being used as an added incentive to get people to the theaters once again.

In order to understand the various types of 3d glasses, you have to keep in mind the basic principles that allow you to see three-dimensionally in the first place. This is a phenomenon known as binocular vision, which relies on the fact that you’re using your two eyes (which are seeing from two slightly different angles) to view a single object. The signals that each eye sends to your brain are interpreted into a single image, which you then interpret, factoring in distance. This has the effect of showing various objects at different distances from you, creating that three-dimensional effect.

The first popular types of 3d glasses are red/blue, the kind that most popular culture associates with 3d viewing. This is due to the fact that, for the early fad of 3d in monster movies and the like in the 1950s, this was the prevalent way of using 3d. Basically, two projectors would put an image up on the screen, one red and one blue. You put on these 3d glasses, and one lens would filter out the red, the other filtering the blue, using your binocular vision to create the effect of 3d images that pop out of the movie screen at you.

The other, more modern types of 3d glasses, are polarized, and are implemented in most current theme park rides and films. They have a much greater image quality to them, and they also permit color movies to undergo the process (red/blue only works for black and white films). These have the same principle behind them – two projectors put an image on the screen, but this time, each of them have a different polarization. The 3d glasses that you put on filter one polarization at a time, like the red and the blue of the other glasses, letting your natural binocular vision to fill in the blanks and allow you to see the 3d picture.

With this innovative and fascinating technology, filmmakers and theme park designers can allow you to have a more visceral, lifelike experience when you see a movie or go on a ride. The concept of binocular vision helps you see three-dimensionally in real life, and these types of 3d glasses permit that same effect to take place for what is otherwise a two-dimensional medium. No matter which type of technology you use for your next 3d film experience, you’ll be wowed by the eye-popping journey it takes you on.