How 3D Without Glasses Works

[Anenome]

3D works because your eyes, being separated by a few inches, each see a slightly different image. This allows your brain to automatically triangulate the image and meld it together. You see it as a single image even though your eyes are actually seeing two different images!

What your brain does with the differences between the two images given to it is turn that difference into binocular depth perception.

Your eyes also use lens-focus to intuit distance, but that cannot give you the depth-perception effect, only help confirm it.

The 3DS works on the principle of parallax, meaning it gives a different image to each eye, tricking your brain into perceiving depth where there is none. It does this by using a special lens over the image which tightly controls the angle at which the image can be seen.

As an example, here are some gifs that create an apparent illusion of depth. Even viewing it with only one eye open maintains the illusion.

What's happening is your brain is using the illusion of movement to perform a depth calculation. You could actually extract the dual-image from each of these images, put it into a viewfinder setup to provide each image to the correct eye, and you'd see the image in true 3D.

(If your computer is slow you might want to view these images individually.)

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/4222/images3dsanslunettessteh.gif

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/4310/images3dsanslunettesste.gif

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/9712/stereoview201.gif

http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/2264/stereoview81.gif

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/5431/nancyandlandonshearth2.gif

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/9280/mrcxpq0mr6gyf690gfydfem.gif

More info \ original article here (http://tasteoftomorrow.com/amazing-3d-pictures-without-glasses/).

[lost]

It's just a flickering picture? It sort of works but you really notice the alternation.

[Anenome]

It's just a flickering picture? It sort of works but you really notice the alternation.
Not quite. A lenticular lens is able to deliver different pictures to each eye, resulting in a static (non-moving) image that allows you to perceive 3D. The images above are just designed to show you how slightly different angles of the same scene allow your brain to infer depth.

I'm not saying the 3D will flicker like this! It's just for demonstration purposes. But it is interesting that even with these flickering images that the illusion of depth is present.