Many of you watched Super Bowl commercials in 3D, and maybe a recent episode of Chuck. And I’m sure everyone has been to a theme park 3D experience or to a 3D theater. What you may not realize is that 3D is preparing to make a big push into your homes over the next couple of years. Several major HDTV manufacturers have said that many if not most of the TVs they produce will be 3D enabled. Disney has said that all of their animated features will be done in 3D from now on. There are 3D Blu-Ray discs available. And hard-core gamers have options for 3D displays or headsets that allow them to experience the latest games in 3D.

All this sounds new and fresh, but 3D is impressively old. 3D techniques date back into the late 1800’s, near the dawn of photography itself. But for most of us, 3D really made its mark when we were teens, sitting at midnight showings of Vincent Price’s House of Wax, looking all cool in our blue and red glasses.

Lately, I’ve had the opportunity to experiment with some of the new 3D display technologies. These include anaglyphic (colored glasses), polarized (special sun glasses), page-flip (LCD shutter glasses), and lenticular (naked eye) displays. I’ve shown them to a lot of people to see what their reactions are. I’ve been showing a few stock stereo still photos as well as a couple of short videos produced with a stereo movie camera.

Because each technology has its strengths and weaknesses, it’s not surprising that personal preferences are all over the map. But one theme keeps coming to light over and over. Virtually everyone comments that nothing jumps off of the screen at them. They are expecting an experience like in the cinema where a bird or a yo-yo or a sword comes lurching out of the screen and makes them jump.

I was grumbling about this the other morning at breakfast when my 8th grader observed, “The real world is 3D, and nothing jumps out at you there.” And I think that simple observation is the crux of the proverbial biscuit.

Commercially produced content for theaters and theme parks uses imaging tricks to get your brain to perceive content floating in front of your nose. This is done to be sensational. It’s a special effect, not what is actually filmed from a stereo camera. After all, a stereo camera is just two synchronized cameras placed an interocular distance apart (the distance between your eyes). In effect, the cameras take the place of your eyes if you were there in person.

The screen that you watch a 3D movie on is effectively a window you are looking through. Your eyes perceive depth out the window when there is movement (either you or what you’re looking at). But what’s outside the window doesn’t leap into the room… pretty much ever. And this is what watching a normal stereo movie on a 3D display is like. It’s like looking out a window with your eyes. You get a decidedly normal image with depth perception.

All of which leads me to think this is a conspiracy to make my brain hurt. When I started looking at this technology, I was proceeding from the assumption that 3D was appealing because it’s more real. More like watching something interesting out the window. But people’s reaction is that while it’s nice, it’s not compelling because it lacks that decidedly unreal pop-off-the-screen-and-make-me-jump thing they learned to expect while holding hands and munching popcorn in 1974. Their expectations are an artifact of the historical culture of 3D.

Go figure. Vincent Price is still having a spooky effect 15 years after his death.