So you want to go see the latest blockbuster with in-your-face 3D effects...but your significant other doesn't share your enthusiasm. In fact, many people find that 3D movies causes nausea and headaches. What to do? Leave them at home? See 2D instead? Nonsense! Those aren't solutions. Instead, build a pair of Anti-3D glasses for them!
Step 1: Materials
2 pairs of Polarized 3D glasses.
(Mine were "Master Image" by far the easiest ones to work with)
Small flathead screwdriver
Razor blade/Scissors
(Mine were "Master Image" by far the easiest ones to work with)
Small flathead screwdriver
Razor blade/Scissors
Step 2: How passive 3D works
Most of the theaters these day are using "Passive 3D" technology. The glasses have radially polarized lens, one clockwise, one counter-clockwise. The image on the screen is projected through two polarized lenses, again, one clockwise, one counter-clockwise. The glasses allow the light from only one projector to reach each eye, therefore each eye sees a slightly different picture creating the 3D effect.
To see this in action, put a pair of 3D glasses on and hold another pair facing you. Close one eye and slowly turn the pair of glasses you are holding. You'll see one lens turn almost completely dark. Switch eyes and the other lens will be dark. Our Anti-3D glasses will be modified so that each eye receives the same image.
To see this in action, put a pair of 3D glasses on and hold another pair facing you. Close one eye and slowly turn the pair of glasses you are holding. You'll see one lens turn almost completely dark. Switch eyes and the other lens will be dark. Our Anti-3D glasses will be modified so that each eye receives the same image.
Step 3: Disassemble the Glasses
- Insert the screwdriver and carefully pop off the arms.
- Using the screwdriver carefully pop off the lens retainer piece.
- Be sure to leave the lenses where they are. You don't want to mix them up!
- Repeat on second pair.
Step 4: Swap and Trim Lenses
Exchange the two lenses as shown in the photo. Due to how the lenses are made, we have to keep them facing the same direction as they originally were in the glasses. Using the retainer piece as a template, trim the edge of the lens off so it will fit into the frame.
Step 5: Reassemble
Snap the retainer piece and arms back on, and you're done! There will be a small gap at the inside corner of the lens that was trimmed. It's far enough in the corner that it shouldn't effect your viewing, but if it does you can cover it with a small piece of electrical tape.
Now hit the theater and enjoy the glorious flatness of 2D!
Now hit the theater and enjoy the glorious flatness of 2D!
Step 6: RealD Brand Glasses
The Real D brand of glasses are becoming much more popular these days so you might not be able to find the Master Image ones that I used. You can still follow the same procedure on Real D glasses, but it will be a bit more complicated as you will have to carefully snap apart a glued seam, and then re-glue it upon assembly.
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However, if Hollywood knew how to budget time properly, the nausea wouldn't even be a factor. What causes the nausea is when the depth of field (at least, I think it's depth of field) gets screwed up momentarily, the left eye sees a completely different image than the right eye, and the brain goes "WTF?!" leaving the viewer with headaches and nausea.
The technology is still too new to get this right, though, so I guess I can't be too hard on Hollywood.
Experiments with this 'technology' date back even 'till 1838.. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy) just to put things into perspective :)
My guess is that '3d' viewing will never become a nausea- and headache-less experience because of a simple reason: The two separate images that are offered to your eyes are taken by two camera's, placed on a rig. The distance between the focal point tries to mimick the distance between the two eyes of the AVERAGE viewer.
In daily life your eyes percieve two different images too, but your brain knows the EXACT distance between your eyes, so it's programmed to combine the two images in a painless an nausia-free manner. However, when you look at a '3d' film, the images that are fed to your eyes aren't aligned as your brain expects them to be, so combining them will take a lot of effort from your brain (causing headache) and even your synchronisation between perception of balance (via your inner-ear) and visual reference can be disturbed by it (causing nausea).
So; force-feeding images like this to your eyes leaves your brain thinking your eyes are misplaced temporarily. It can cope with this, keeping the illusion of depth intact, but the brain compensating for this anomaly just isn't painless..
3D movies trick the eye into seeing a three dimensional image by taking advantage of our binocular vision. However, the binocular effect is only half of the equation. In a natural 3D environment (a.k.a the real world) our eyes are constantly adjusting their focal length in order to create as sharp of an image as possible. This adjustment is read by the brain, and combined with the binocular data, helps the mind to create fully 3D image. This is why people, like my uncle, who have lost an eye still have some depth of field, although severely limited by the loss of the binocular data.
Another interesting feature in this is the way our mind records data. From the first moment we learn to focus our eyes our brain starts recording the information it's given. Call it muscle memory, or just subconscious control, our mind knows that an object with a binocular coefficient of X requires a focal length of Y. This is why people in REM sleep still adjust both their binocular focus as well as the focal length of their eyes. The two bits of data are inherently interrelated.
In an artificial 3D environment however there is only one focal length available: the distance between you and the screen. While the image may fool your binocular vision, it can't fool your depth of field. The eye tries to adjust it's focal length to the appropriate setting only to realize that, "oops. That's wrong.." So it overrides the known program and tries to find a solution, by refocussing on the image. This is happening thousands (if not millions) of times a second. The result is an eye strain headache. Also the conflicting binocular and focal data may be what induces the nausea.
This, of course, is only my theory. Yours has merit too. Perhaps, it's even a combination of the two. There may be other theories that apply as well.
For me personally, the solution to all of this is to just stop going to 3D movies. It saves me a lot of unnecessary pain and discomfort, and also sends a message to Hollywood that I'm not going to spend money on something that I simply can't enjoy. Perhaps more people should adopt this approach.
All I want is good movies WITH ESHIs, (English Subtitles for the Hearing Impaireds), and I'm happy reading what the story is all about. No worries!
You must get really frustrated when there aren't any ESHI's for some production films while they are in the theater... . My cousin is deaf, and while he's probably the most awesome person I know, he won't come to the movie theater with me cuz its no fun sitting there trying to read the actors lips. For a while I have been trying to figure out how to solve that problem for him. I'll let you know if I come up with anything that actually works. (So far, 4 prototypes, all a bit bulky, and all unable to keep up with the movie itself. I might try to incorporate the SIRI software that they have on phones, but right now, I have been stuck dealing with "Dragon Naturally Speaking" and "Nuance". ) I am still waiting for the guys up in Hollywood to stop being lazy and fix the problem for me, but its a faint hope at best.
My prediction is that yes, we will not get it so that the nausea ends completely, but it will improve to the point that a trip to the theater is not a painful, dread-filled experience (meaning that you could sit through Avatar (as an example) and not get sick), but I wouldn't suggest watching the extended versions of The Lord of the Rings back to back in 3D.
I have done some research before on 3D (not to mention I'm a film/video major), and nothing that I have read said anything that was said in these comment responses. I have learned something!
So....anti 3D....what a concept!!!!
ps have you ever tried taking those 3D goggles off in the movie...its nasty. lol
Thank you sooo much.
Amberella
Along lines of previous comments about changing from Stereo into Mono Sound, perhaps you could add a slow moving fan in front too so you could watch the film at a slower frame rate as well as mono (from finger in ear) and black and white?
-AS
glorious mono music
hey folks get rid of all those extra speakers and play it louder!
New Improved Louder MONO SOUND!!!!
serioously I like this one
The anti-3D glasses are a good solution for the few people who can't see 3D films 'correctly'. I'm one of these people - no great problems in real life but cinema or TV 3D glasses just don't work well. My particular solution for 3D is to use the standard glasses but with a pirate's patch over my bad eye, these anti-3D glasses would be better (and they provide a solution for a wider range of problems).
I went to see some movie in 3 d and almost lost my cookies. Some 3 d is ok for me the other kind makes me barf.
And I am not a Luddite but sometimes I think we over do technology and make it harder for people to be in a real world. I love my Ipod I really do, but some enhancements are really bad for society. This is a minor one.
My kids were amazed that, SCI FI Dad, would not go see Avatar (the blue peopled one, I did see the one with the kid with the blue arrow on his head and loved it), simply because it WAS 3D.
relax, levity is good, our times are tough and a good belly laugh is hard to come by so small chuckles are sometimes all we get. Better a small bottle of water, than a bucket of wee wee to a man in the desert.
Heh, loved the mono comment, after all there is the Stereo Vinyl movement.
I'm one of those unfortunates that has "fast vision". Just love the new fluorescent electronic ballasts, the old mags always leave me with a flicker in my peripheral vision. 3D leaves me with a spewfest as do certain video games. It isn't the frame rate, if the motion jerks in a certain way, I'm quickly looking for a waste basket.
So anything that makes it go away is fine by me.
Thanks for the dry humor, even though it goes over most peoples heads, I like it.
Sadly, no polishing of the tech you're talking about is going to help that. :(
Until then, people like me [and Johnny Depp, apparently? :] are going to wince at the new passion for everything 3D and either sit through with one eye closed (leaving everything slightly out-of-focus and usually giving some eyestrain headache by the end of a full-length movie), feel guilty for trying to drag out 3D-enabled friends to 2D showings (where even available), or make do with glasses like this.
It's not a luddite rejection or fear of tech, nor is it (entirely) a technical issue. Some people's eyes are different. We just tend to not see (hah :) what the big deal is about, and worry that we'll have fewer and fewer 2D options in the future.
So of course we hope it's just a trend *shrug*: What everyone else keeps crowing about is just one big useless PITA for us:
---*cool looking movie trailer plays*
---...ooooh!... ;)
---"...In Amazing 3D!!!!"
---...oh, d*mn! That means I can't go see it.. :(
Naturally it's annoying: But tricks like these glasses (the minute I saw the equivalent ones on Thinkgeek I ordered them!) mean we can at least go along with the group of friends that (naturally) want to see the fancy version--without putting ourselves through h*ll.
(For those who have no problem with seeing 3D, think of this the equivalent of little wheelchair access ramps for our eyes. Most people don't need them, but when you do, it can make all the difference in being able to hang out with your friends and do simple things.)
tl;dr: Which is all a long way of saying "Thank you!" to kaptaink_cg for your instructable--it's a much appreciated acknowledgement of a very real problem some of us have and a nice, helpful step towards making 3D-blind folk like myself are able to enjoy going out to see a lot of the newer films.
Normally the double image projected onto the screen is split, one for each eye by the glasses.
This modification filters one image out completely and allows the other image through to both eyes thus making it 2D.
If you're blind in one eye, the regular 3D glasses will filter out one of the two images, your good eye will receive one and the other will fall on your blind eye and be lost (if you're not totally blind in that eye, duck tape over that lens or an eye patch would have the same effect).
Personally I'm in the "3D is a huge con which detracts from films and needs to go away" camp. The thought that these glasses could get people who don't want 3D to buy the 3D TV sets because now they have a way of making it 2D when you can just buy a 2D TV for much less... is kinda crazy though. :o)
Just to clarify a bit more: These will work on some 3DTVs, not only the theater. Some 3DTVs employ the polarization method. They do not use expensive "active 3D glasses". I have seen a demo at a trade show. The infamous "Walmart" also has a demo on display in some stores. Go see it dudez!!!! :)
(Look up the famous kitten experiments if you want to know more about why not being able to see properly as an infant affects people later even if they get their eyes fixed.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Hubel#Research)