3-D TVs, Cameras, and Camcorders Galore

3-D and augmented reality made it big in 2010—with a few pitfalls. 

3-D TVs, Cameras, and Camcorders Galore
3-D was a hot topic at the start of the year, partly because of the 3-D blockbuster movie Avatar, which came out last December. Many predicted that 3-D technology would move quickly from the movie theater into the home, and major electronics companies including Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Sony, Philips, and Toshiba announced plans to release 3-D televisions and Blu-ray players (Home 3-D: Here, or Hype? and Here Come the High-Definition 3-D TVs). But obstacles—particularly the need to wear 3-D glasses costing upwards of $100 per pair and the limited amount of 3-D content available to watch (a handful of DVDs and few TV transmissions)—have prevented 3-D TVs from becoming wildly popular, at least for now (Will 3-D Make the Jump from Theater to Living Room?).
In an effort to make the technology more enticing, some companies are developing glasses-free 3-D displays. Each lens in a pair of 3-D glasses filters a different image, which fools the brain into responding as if to a three-dimensional image. To ditch the glasses, the display has to produce alternating images very rapidly, and the user has to sit in just the right place relative to the screen. While most people would prefer not to have to wear 3-D glasses, few will be happy with this constraint. Fortunately, Microsoft has figured out a way around the problem—a screen that detects the viewer's position and shows different images to each eye. Although it's still in the research stages, the technology will allow one or two people to see a 3-D image on a screen, regardless of where in the room they are sitting