It’s a blog, not bollocks

Went to Time Square with colleagues yesterday. Of course, since we have time and no one objects, we watched the long-anticipated IMAX 3D movie. Well, some of them may have watch before, but not me. The movie was Nascar3D, sounds interesting but ended up it’s some sorta documentary. Dun reli wanna further elaborate it.

Talk ’bout 3D, what impression does it give you? Wear green and red specs! Yes, this technology has been around long long ago. It’s based on a technology called anaglyph, where an image is transmitted into left and right eye with a slight variation (John Wattie, 2006). Sounds complex? No it’s quite straight forward. Scrutinize a 3D image, you’ll see it’ll have a "shadow", green and red border. So after wearing a "green-red" specs, only green color can goes thru an eye, and same with red color for another eye. Therefore our brain interpret it as three dimension.

Ok, now we know how 3D works. Different eye see different image by using some filter (the specs). However, there’s a drawback. If seeing thru "green-red" specs, then we can only see monochrome color. So despite we are able to enjoy the 3D feel but we juz can’t see the rich color of an image.

No it’s not true. Technology’s evolving every second. Juz when I entered the IMAX theater, I was given a "3D" specs and surprisingly, IT’S NOT RED AND GREEN COLOR~~~!!! Ok maybe I’m a bit outdated, but how does a pair of tinted glasses makes us view image in 3D? I was so curious. Have you ever think ’bout that before?

I used the specs to view different light, from the bulb on the wall to the LED on my handphone, nothing different. Suddenly some idea flashes over my mind. I juz dug up my form 5 physic knowledge (actually it has been long forgetten). You see, if the point is "Different see different image", so other than color filtering, why not use polarized light.

Allow me to explain few lines ’bout polarized light. It’s a technique playing with the wave direction of a light. A polarizer film has very thin line arranged in linear order, continuosly. Each line are so thin and it can’t be seen with bare eyes, but it’s enuff to filter off omni direction of the light wave, making the wave to travel in single direction after passin’ thru. For a better understandin’, I’ll illustrate it below: -

So if the film is put vertically, then the light pass thru will be travellin’ in a vertical manner. What if i put a polarized film vertically in front, then another one horizontally at the back? You’re right, no light is able to pass thru. Well this is somewhat general knowledge though.

Back to the point of anaglyph, I got a feelin’ that it’s applyin’ this technique. Pretty simple, the movie render on the screen is double imaged right? One image is actually emittin’ a horizontal direction of wave, and the other is emittin’ vertically. So does the spectacles. One side is horizontal polarizer film while another is vertical. So after wearin’ it, one side of the eye can see only an image, while another eye see the other image. Sounds cool huh? Different technique to achieve same effect. Now we no longer need to view 3D in monochrome.

Alright this’s juz my personal opinion, so to speak, I guess only. Pls correct me if you found that I’m wrong. Anyway, I’m juz amazed with the technology they’re playin’ with. If this technique has been around for long long time and it’s very very common, I apologize that I’m being too outdate.