Gadgetory

3d movies in virtual reality seemingly have nothing to do with each other but they followed surprisingly similar paths both have been mostly confined to novelty users like the snake that jumps out of the screen at you at Honey I Shrunk the Kids it does in the world and virtual reality has basically just been for video games and sex scenes and sci-fi movies more recently though both made a move toward the mainstream and they've been tapped to do roughly the same thing even make our movies games and the whole digital world much more immersive both aren't even designed to replicate how it is we see the world take 3d for instance when you look at the world through your actual eyes they see two slightly different pictures because your eyes are set apart your brain meshes them into one which is how you perceive depth accurate that's also why catching a ball with only one eye open is really hard 3d cameras do the same thing they shoot with two lenses and essentially capture two images that they then project into your separate eyes you use either anaglyph glasses where one eye sees a red image in the other sees blue or polarized glasses which pick up light being projected in two different directions and piped them into each eye there's also active shutter three beam auto stereoscopic 3d which is just a fancy way for saying the screen does all the work and you don't need glasses and plenty of other options they all rely on your brain to take two distinct images and turn them into one 3d hasn't really caught on though at least not among consumers and everyday people it's difficult and expensive to do right it still requires that you sit with your head very still and at a very particular angle and there are a huge number of people for whom it either doesn't work at all or actually makes them sick the technology is still changing and it's going to continue to improve but here's the thing virtual reality might eat 3ds lunch before it ever gets a chance virtual reality's also been around forever it's also been gimmicky for most of that time and is only recently threatening to become something we use in our day to day lives on one hand it has a lot of the same limitations as 3d you have to wear a thing connected to another thing and it can be really disorienting for some people but when done right Virtual Reality brings the immersion to an entirely new level it's all about exploration good Virtual Reality creates a three-dimensional world that doesn't just appear to have death it has dead an object will look different depending on how you look at it and you can even see it from the back you can't do that with a 3d camera basically virtual reality works by tricking what are called placed cells in our brain these cells are what orient us in a new and there how we figure out where we parked or even get around our house and surprisingly once we're in a new environment these cells make it really easy to figure out where we are even if we found our just a short time but virtual reality has its own complications and challenges for this reality to feel real there has to be zero latency when you turn your head you need to be looking to the side exactly as fast as you expect any lag takes you out of the experience and the effect as it catches up can be so disorienting that you can actually get sick and these place cells you need information like smells and temperature to really give you a full sense of where you are both 3d and virtual reality are still maturing but they're both moving towards the same goal we want our movies to feel like video games and our video games to feel like real life convertible reality bring the change 3d promise and just how far into the matrix can we really go