You may be wondering what exactly 3D really is. Most people still think of cheesy movies viewed with cardboard glasses and blue and red lenses when they hear of 3D. Thanks to modern technology 3D images are so much more than this.
When we look at the world around us, each eye receives a separate image. Our brain processes those two images together which allows us to sense depth and to see the world as more than just a flat image. 3D television creates two images as well, causing our brain to process these images as it would any other non flat image.
For starters, each image is slightly different, just as our eyes would perceive it as if it was actually there. 3D films are shot with a camera with two lenses, the same distance apart as our eyes are. These two images are then played back to us. If it were possible to have our right eye only see the right image and our left eye to only see the left image, these two images could be played simultaneously. Because two screens – either full tv’s or a screen in each glass lens – would be rather expensive, there is another way to achieve the same effect which causes the brain to see things in 3D. For more on this, see “How Does 3D TV work?”
