5000 3D Cinemas in U.S. by 2009
 

Interesting article, but it didn't describe what it would take for a movie theater to become 3D-ready. When I was a projectionist back in the '80's, there was quite a surge in 3D with a variety of technologies but all of them required a silver screen (and I worked at the only house in town that had one). Just wondering if silver screens are still a requirement for 3D projection today.

Yes. Silver screens are still required for polarization systems.

I suspect that the large majority of these theatres will be RealD because it is a simple 2D/3D switchable digital system that doesn't require too much extra care from a projectionist.

Makes perfect sense... these days, seems like "extra care" and "projectionist" are mutually exclusive terms.

I would be interested in what technologies they have. There is an cheap projection company that has an very promising 3D projection technology that does not require glasses I remember.

An good question is, would people really appreciate the difference, in a film that wasn't trying to shove things in your face? There has been major advances in 3D perception over the decades, requiring no 3D screen. There was one in the early 80's (I think it was on "that's Incredible") that made 2D footage look 3D, I believe I have an video image converter for it in my cupboard that I bought 2nd hand, but never got around to trying it. There was an number of advancements in the 90's as well.

The problem with systems that don't require left/right filtering of any kind (polarized glasses, anaglyph glasses, shutter glasses) is that the viewing position is very specific and very limited. This wouldn't work well in most theatre setups now.


There are LCD screens that work similar to lenticular technology (the 'animated' or 3D stickers that you always see on kids' cereal.) I think this technology basically uses an aligned lenticular screen that can display the separate left/right images at slightly different angles. Obviously you would need to be in a specific position in relation to the small (17" to 23") screen for it to work, and it would only work for one person.

It is amazing how many systems have been 'invented' and patented but there hasn't been that breakthrough technology that would make it work like the holographic style technology shown in Back to the Future II and many other sci-fi films.
However, you may want to check out http://www.holografika.com/ This system has applications is science, but probably wouldn't be ideal for entertainment since your position in the room determines your perspective of the scene.

I screened some dailies yesterday at a local theatre. They have a Christie projector. It was amazing how simple it was to just plug-in and screen from any format.
A simple push of a button "2.4:1" and the lens automatically zoomed and calibrated itself (we just had to push the other switch to open the curtains all the way.)
I love projection booths, especially old ones. This theatre was built in the 20's and the current owner who recently restored it is a real lover of the classics. You can just sort of sense the ghosts of the golden era of Hollywood in the old projection booths. These guys still have their 35mm setup because that's just how they still show most of their films.
It is interesting that the large platters are designed for super long epic films. When I was there he had Even Almighty and Surf's Up on platters and they barely took up half of the area.

Thanks for the link, I am curious what the theatres plan to sue though. I know of the sweet spot positioning problem with 3D without filters, I believe the one I was referring to actually got around that, but it was a few years back.

As far as starwars like floating images, it has been done for an number of years. There was an group that started doing floating 2D air images a few years back (after an weekend of apartment inventing with little expertise), and that is not far away from the full thing. There was an bunch that came through Australia, and disappeared in southern sanfransisco, just before the armed forces announced their plans for battlefield holographics.

I actually have experience in designing volumetric displays, pretty difficult unless you have an underlying technology that had enough performance. I could achieve everything including hidden features and transparency to behind the display. I used an scanning volumetric display but it gets some what complex the more functionality and performance you get (meaning it no longer can be manufactured simply in house, or even production designed simply in house). It was for an design of an ultra cool handheld video game system which also featured the Mother of all Control Systems (which name was adopted after Sadems "Mother of all Battles" comment of the day). Which still has more functionality than any design I have seen. I have given away the volumetric display thing, but am still working on an niche video game console technologies that can level with current generation at an fraction of the cost, maybe open-source.

The information on the holografika technology is an bit scant, from the way they portray, it might be an special lens system, like I came up with in the 80's/90's, or it might actually have volumetric pixels with much more performance than what I currently have. An display capable of displaying actual Volumetric pixels are the best, but it normally has the problem of the volume of the block not being perfectly transparent, and/or limiting the ability to restrict the angle of emitted light and transparency of pixels. But one of those technologies I mentioned probably achieves that already.

Though, for 3D cinema, people are normally seated, so stereo vision or limited angle displays are not an problem.