Happy First National Stereoscopic 3D Day!!! 🎢😎🔥⚡🌋💥 💉

We experience the world in three dimensions because we have two eyes which see from slightly different perspectives. These two points of view are combined in our brains, and the differences between what our eyes see are perceived as depth. This is called stereoscopic vision.

Stereo technology spans many industries and applications, not just filmmaking. It is an important tool in the oil and gas industry, the medical field, industrial design, and so much more. It encompasses cameras and projectors, screens, and displays, glasses and head-mounted displays, and even sound.

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The first stereo 3-D drawings were made by a scientist, Sir Charles Wheatstone, in 1838. During the second half of the 19th century, viewing 3-D photographs became a very popular form of home entertainment. The 20th century saw the invention of 3-D movies, comic books, holography and more ways to view representations of the world in 3-D.

Recent developments in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality offer new opportunities to create and interact with 3-D media. Advancements in 3-D technologies bring digital images to three-dimensional life, assisting surgeons, projecting art around the world, and educating students.

What does the future of 3-D hold? New developments in stereoscopic capture and display methods will prove to inspire young scientists and storytellers to create the next generation of immersive stereoscopic content. 3-D technology may change the world.

Everyone in the 3-D community at large is invited to participate in National 3-D Day and reach out to entertain, illuminate, and educate on the wide world of stereoscopic 3-D. From stereoview cards to 3-D comic books, lenticulars and holograms, 3-D movies to VR - share what you love with others. Stereo enthusiasts, clubs, and organizations around the world are encouraged to join in with their own events (done safely), online presentations, and pictures and videos shared on social media to make the day special.

Living life in stereo 3D

One person whose work has had a lasting impact on various aspects of stereo 3D is filmmaker/inventor/author-lyricist Lenny Lipton, starting in the early 1980s with the founding of StereoGraphics Corp. In 1989, StereoGraphics introduced CrystalEyes for stereo visualization, which was used for medical imaging, aerial mapping, molecular modeling, and so forth; NASA even used it to remotely drive the Mars Rover.

Lipton also was the lead developer of the ZScreen polarization modulator, which enabled a projector to display both the left and right halves of a stereo pair. Introduced in 1988, this technology was used for molecular modeling and aerial mapping visualization. StereoGraphics was later acquired by RealD, and in mid-2000, as CTO, he worked to adapt the ZScreen for use in theatrical projection.

A graduate of Cornell with a degree in physics, Lipton has always loved the cinema, and has recently written a book called “The Cinema in Flux,” chronicling the history of cinema technology. At an early age, he developed an appreciation for stereoscopic images, comic books, and movies.

Thanks to royalties from the song lyrics Lipton wrote to Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” during his early years in college, and later the book “Independent Filmmaking,” Lipton had the freedom to experiment with stereo displays and founded StereoGraphics, whose inventions were geared to engineers and scientists. His system doubled the display rate, allowing the viewer to see all the imagery, not just half of what was available to see. “Our major customers were Lockheed and Pfizer, but we couldn’t find a market beyond [these areas],” he said. This led to the deal with RealD to improve the system to work in theaters. “It was a slick system that combined itself with digital projection and used very inexpensive polarized glasses. The [projected] colors were good, and it was comfortable [for viewing].”

According to Statista, box office revenue generated by 3D films in the US and Canada from 2005 to 2021 totaled more than $20 billion (USD). “And yet, people laugh at it, they call it a catastrophe, a failure, but that’s not true,” he says.

Fun and games

Most people automatically think of films when they hear “stereo 3D.” In fact, many would say movies helped popularize stereo 3D and drive awareness of the genre. “However, from the point of view of interesting content that would make people say, ‘Wow, that’s cool!’ it was 3D gaming,” says Neil Schneider, who has been following S3D in games for many years as executive director of The International Future Computer Association (TIFCA) and founder/CEO of the website Meant to be Seen (MTBS3D.com) since 2008.

Schneider became passionate about the technology after setting up an elaborate stereo 3D gaming system at home many years ago. “Stereo 3D just added a lot more to the whole experience. You put the glasses on in those days and a relatively simple graphics scene suddenly looked visually interesting,” he says. “It added a lot more to the experience. It still adds a lot more to it.”

The rise of 3D in gaming began before the turn of the last century, but in the late 2000s, it was really gaining steam. Schneider says that back in 2008 or so, 3D, at least for gamers, tended to be more technical, and the people were sharing their home brew solutions.

Does anyone remember Nintendo’s Famicon 3D System (1987) for its Family Computer game console, which comprised a pair of LCD shutter glasses and an interface box? Few do. What about Nintendo’s Virtual Boy console in 1995? You very well may have missed it; it was pulled from the market a year after release due to lack of sales. Its high price tag, ho-hum 3D effects, and lack of 3D games undoubtedly led to its downfall, as was concern that products like this could interfere with stereopsis development in young children.

Nintendo tried to redeem itself in 2011 with the Nintendo 3DS handheld console, which offered stereo effects without the use of glasses, but the road to success was slow going—at least initially. Pricing was slashed by about a third after only six months due to low sales, but to appease those who purchased the device at the original price, Nintendo threw in a bunch of free games to those buyers. This appeared to satisfy the retail gods well into the future, as the Nintendo 3DS family of systems purportedly have sold nearly 76 million units, and 387 million games as of September 2021.

On the PC side, however, it was a different story. GPU maker Nvidia came to play early in this realm and began offering 3D drivers that made it possible to play existing 2D games in 3D. Then, in 2008, Nvidia offered the now-discontinued (after 11 years) Nvidia 3D Vision stereoscopic gaming kit, which comprised shutter glasses and GeForce driver software that enabled stereo for any Direct3D game. Offering users a choice of Dynamic Digital Depth’s Tridef drivers and iZ3D’s software solution, AMD also entered the field a few years after 3D Vision’s hold on the market with the open-platform HD3D supporting its Radeon series cards. As a result of these two giants’ efforts, along with LCD monitors that could refresh at the rate of 120 Hz and support stereo viewing, the number of 3D-supported games rose significantly.

“There’s a group of people who, once they experience 3D, love it from the get-go and can’t let it go. They’ll come up with all kinds of hacks and try to get software that’s not designed for [S3D] to work with it—they’ll do anything and everything to get some kind of 3D experience,” says Schneider.

Where is 3D headed when it comes to displays? Raikes admits initially he was skeptical about the adoption of S3D because of its impracticalities. “I’ve been in this space for close to 40 years, and about three years in, I came up with Bob’s law, which says that everything that increases visual bandwidth wins in the end. And 3D will increase the visual bandwidth, so it will happen. “Everyone always thinks whatever we have at that time—high frame rate, HDR, wide color gamma—is good enough.” But then, it isn’t. “In the end, 3D is going to be there because if we throw away depth information, we are throwing away information, and the human visual system is a communication [mechanism] that gives us information, and if we don’t capture all the information that’s possible, we are not having the maximum experience. On that basis, everything must go through in the end.”

Frayne sees a bright future for stereo 3D displays. Nothing, he says, is standing in the way. Costs are no longer prohibitive, glasses are no longer needed, and quality has passed the critical threshold.

As Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, points out in his book “The History of Visual Magic in Computers,” for applications such as CAD and medical analysis, S3D is an important and necessary capability. For commercial applications such as signage, it can be helpful. In entertainment systems—cinema, TV, PCs, and mobile devices—it can enhance the user experience.

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HOW TO OBSERVE #National3DDay
Learn about the history of 3-D technology. Explore the science behind 3-D. Invite friends and family to watch a 3-D movie. Share your favorite 3-D experiences, whether they are movies, books, or art.

Share your own 3-D photos on social media, and when you do, be sure to use the tag #National3DDay

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ABOUT NATIONAL 3-D DAY

Founded by stereoscopic artist and researcher Ilicia Benoit, in collaboration with the501(c)3 nonprofit 3-D SPACE, National 3-D Day was registered with the National Day Calendar Registry in 2019, and the first celebration took place on March 17th, 2020.“Stereoscopy is indelibly marked into our physiology, as we not only sense the world around us visually, we are designed with a duality of two visual inputs- we are made to see this way. And we are able to imitate it in a multitude of ways and that is amazing. And the history of this language is only 180 years young! Every Invention, every discovery, every exploration matters, and 3-D Day was created to celebrate our devotions to it, and how it unites us all, and what we can learn from our collected histories.”