Why am I suddenly buying every 3D Blu-ray I can find after 3D became one of the biggest technological failures of all time?
The technology is finally ready for 3D movies to shine, more than 15 years since James Cameron’s Avatar It captivated me on the big screen and became the highest-grossing film in the world. The video glasses are giving me the experience I have always wanted.
I’ve always liked 3D movies, but watching them was uncomfortable. Walking into a movie theater with a pair of polarized glasses, I would only get half the resolution and about half the brightness, since those glasses had to split a reflected image between my two eyes. Almost all 3D technologies cut something you care about in half, whether it’s resolution (see also: Nintendo 3DS) or the refresh rate and flicker you get with active shutter glasses.
But what if you had a full screen for each eye? That’s what video glasses can offer.
Last year, I started testing a pair of Xreal One Pro glasses, which mainly give you a gigantic flat screen, like a private cinema, for whatever you plug in. But that screen is not technically I need to stay flat. If you hold down the right button, Xreal can give you separate left and right views for side-by-side (SBS 3D) content. With the right content, you get a full 1080p view for each eye.
There are also SBS 3D switches in popular VR headset video streaming apps like Meta Quest and Steam Frame, and the Apple Vision Pro and upcoming Meta VR Glasses let you stream 3D movies natively.
the water in moanaa clock covered in glass Zootopia 2the helmets in Gravitydressing giant robots in Pacific Rimlight cycles in Tron: Legacycomic panels that come to life in In the Spider-Verse – there is much more depth to see.
When the ocean parts to let Moana pass, you no longer feel like you’re looking at a flat wall of water. It is a living piece of ocean with life swimming inside it. The Lego Movie went from “wow, those are some realistic looking CG Lego bricks on a flat screen” to “I just got teleported into a full Lego diorama.” In AvatarThe holographic screens in the operating room are amazing. Even rectangular flat monitors have 3D layers inside.
Cabins and hulls and Tron: Legacy light cycles and Mad Max: Fury RoadThe combat vehicle convoy – anything with clear glass is a treat. There are distinctive details on the faces inside the glass, the exterior structures, water droplets or scratches on the glass itself, even reflections of the outside world, depending on the film.
The new Billie Eilish concert film, shot by James Cameron at the age of 16 twin The cameras, including four remote-controlled AGITO camera rigs, looked incredible on the Meta VR headset during a short demo. He got up close and personal with the concert like few VR concert recordings do. In a demo with Google/Xreal Aura, I watched a bit of the interactive nature documentary. Galapagos: The Last Eden and I was fascinated by the beautiful baby seals, the grains of sand in their shiny fur, the diffuse depth of the hair on their skin.
Regardless of the hardware, I almost feel like I can reach out and touch a 3D character’s face, feeling their emotions, wrinkles and scars more vividly, once they have depth.
Or, in the case of Werner Herzog’s cult classic 3D documentary Cave of forgotten dreamsI was able to appreciate how the oldest art in the world is not flat: the 32,000-year-old cave paintings took shape thanks to their three-dimensional canvas. “A bulging rock is now the bulging neck of a bison attacking you,” Herzog explained to us earlier this year.
When I turned on Gravity For what I thought would be a short test, late at night in bed, I ended up watching the entire movie. It’s all a bit like when I bought my first decent headphones: I never knew what I was missing, but now I want to revisit all my favorites to experience them more deeply.
Not all 3D content is the same. Few live-action films have been truly filmed with twin cameras in recent years. In fake or poorly converted 3D movies, you’ll often see a “billboard” effect where it looks like there are flat layers of people or objects in the background instead of any real depth.
But the biggest problem is that 3D movies are not easy to buy and play. Although 3D movies are still coming to theaters, you can’t necessarily stream them or buy a high-quality copy. The 4K Blu-ray does not support 3D at all. 3D Blu-rays were the last discs to offer 3D and, as Flat panelsHD As he pointed out last year, that means most physical 3D movies are stuck in the past at 1080p, 24fps, without HDR.
Even 3D Blu-rays aren’t necessarily easy to find: I had to get a copy of Cave of forgotten dreams from eBay and paid a pretty penny to ship a rare copy of In the Spider-Verse from Thailand.
Here’s the good news: Major headphone makers are starting to convince Hollywood that it’s time to stream their collections in 3D.
In 2024, Apple Vision Pro launches with by far the best 3D movie experience yet, now with 4K, HDR, spatial audio, and some (Avatar) movies at 48fps, HEVC encoding, free 3D upgrades for many movies you’ve already purchased in 2D, and exclusive access to the largest catalog of 3D movies available on Disney Plus. (Modern Disney animated films play natively in digital 3D, and most Disney-owned Marvel films got a 3D conversion to enhance their theatrical appeal.)
Soon, you’ll no longer need a $3,500 Apple headset to watch those movies or convert them from old discs: you’ll be able to stream them with a $350 Meta Quest 3S or a $600 Quest 3, as well as the new $1,300 Meta VR headset, confirms Meta entertainment director Sarah Malkin. The edge.
Meta’s headsets will offer 3D movies to subscribers of the Disney Plus, HBO, Paramount Plus and Peacock apps, it says, with some of them starting later this fall.
And by the time the Meta VR headset launches in the spring, there will be “hundreds of 3D movies available” to rent or buy through the Meta TV app, as well as free 3D content. They also shouldn’t cost more than traditional movies, he says: “Our 3D movies will also be in line with the usual prices for ultra high definition (UHD) 2D movies.”
(In case you’re wondering, it also says the Meta VR Glasses’ three-hour battery life should cover an entire 3D movie “viewed in Cinema mode if you start with the device fully charged.”)
In the meantime, I’m experiencing 3D in a hacky way: ripping discs. Every time I go into a thrift store, I look for a 3D Blu-ray or two. I pop them into an old external USB Blu-ray drive and then let MakeMKV spend half an hour on each movie to produce a 30-40GB multiview (MVC) file. I feed it into BD3D2MK3D for another 50 minutes per movie to generate a high quality 3840 x 1080 “Full-SBS” file that is half the size of the MVC.
I drop it on an SD card, pop it into the Steam Deck, plug in the Xreal glasses, fire up VLC Media Player, and then put the glasses in 3D mode. It’s a lot of friction, but for me the reward is worth it.
Although I mainly watch old movies, it seems like a taste of the future to me. But you know what they say: everything old is eventually new. again.
