Saturday, June 21, 2008

It's like I'm really there!!



There is a stupid and boring story behind those 3D glasses, so keep reading to hear it or go here for something way more interesting.

As I'm sure all of you know the internet is pretty boring which why I usually find myself on eBay looking at cool and useless crap to buy. One night I was looking around and came across a Power Rangers VHS, but this Power Rangers tape was special, it was in 3D! There aren't many movies available in 3D and the gimmick is pretty strong especially when you can sit in the comfort of your own home and watch 3D movies. The Power Rangers tape came with two pairs of 3D glasses and a poster and was pretty cheap and I had to have it. About a week after I had paid for it I got an e-mail from the seller saying the USPS had damaged it in transit and he gave me full refund.

I was bummed about not getting my Power Rangers 3D tape, but got back on eBay and found another copy, this one was cheaper, but didn't come with the poster. Fast forward a couple weeks and my VHS comes in the mail. I immediately open it and take the tape out of the sleeve and dump out the glasses. The tape wasn't even rewound by whoever watched it last (not cool) and the 3D glasses looked like crap. They weren't even the original 3D glasses, but some beat up old glasses from the Spy Kids 3D movie. They were so small they couldn't even fit on my fat face, but I may have had that problem with the original Power Rangers ones too. Okay, now I was getting a little frustrated.

Back to eBay! I bought a set of four pairs of brand new 3D glasses for 88 cents. A week and a half later my new glasses showed up in the mail box. After dinner I popped in the Power Rangers and put on my new 3D glasses. As you saw in the picture the glasses are the red/blue anaglyph style 3D glasses which produce a stereoscopic 3D effect by using images are made up of two color layers, superimposed, but offset with respect to each other to produce a depth effect. Get it? So the tape rolls and we see a title card for "Circlescan 4D" then a clip on how to wear the glasses and they look nothing like the red/blue glasses, the 3D process it something different, so the glasses are useless.

The 3D method on the Power Rangers video is known at the Pulfrich effect which is a "psycho-optical phenomenon wherein lateral motion by an object in the field of view is interpreted the brain as having a depth component, due to differences in processing speed between images from the two eyes. The effect is generally induced by placing a dark filter over one eye." I stole that bit right off the Wikipedia Pulfrich effect entry. Guess what's next? Back to eBay! Back on eBay I bought four more pairs of Pulfrich glasses with the dark lens on the right eye. I haven't gotten it yet, but hopefully next week or something.

So now I have four pairs of anaglyph glasses and will have four more pairs of Pulfrich glasses, just to watch a crappy 3D Power Rangers video. I feel like I should go out and try to buy more 3D videos or books just so I can get some use out of my all my glasses. The anaglyph glasses weren't a total loss as Cody watched some 3D videos on YouTube...for about five minutes.

On another 3D related note I remember way back when my parents took us on vacation and we went to Disneyland and we watched Captain EO. That was some 3D movie shown only at Disneyland and was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, produced by George Lucas and starring Michael Jackson. It was a long a time ago and I can't remember if it was any good or not, but I remember having lasers and crap coming right at me. I also remember that Star Tours was better.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

cool glasses,
I was at a GIS convention here in kamloops last month and part of the presentation was in 3D, the red/blue kind though. it didn't work (of course) but it was funny to see 200 people all put their glasses on and stare at the huge monitors.. I was going to wear mine the rest of the day but they started giving me a headache..

Sean Gleeson said...

Keef, after you're quite through with your Power Rangers video, swing by "Swell 3D" for more stuff to look at. www.swell3D.com. It's a blog about anaglyph art and stuff.