3D imaging is a technology enhancing or creating the illusion of depth, or 3rd dimension, in an image. It is also called stereoscopy.
There are three different systems to achieve 3D viewing.
- combining separate images from two offset sources while the viewer is wearing eyeglasses,
- offset images are filtered from a single source and separated to each eye, while wearing eyeglasses
- images are split directionally into the viewer’s eyes by the lightsource without wearing eyeglasses
3D imaging is not a new technology, it has been used since the early 19th century, however it has been greatly improved since then. Common use of 3D technology requiring to wear 3D eyeglasses can be found in cinemas showing 3D movies and at home watching 3D movies on 3D enabled LCD and LED televisions.
We should also mention head-mounted display (HMD) glasses or helmet, incorporating 2 small LCD screens with magnifying lenses. This is used for virtual reality, watching images in a virtual world or in augmented reality by superimposing see-through images in the real world settings.
Following type of 3D glasses are currently available on the market:
- paper 3D glasses
- plastic 3D glasses
- printed 3D glasses
- anaglyph 3D Glasses
- 3D decoder glasses
- linear polarised 3D glasses
- circular polarized 3D glasses
- 3D viewers
- hand held 3D viewers