So How Do You Fill The Seats In Movie Theaters Once Again?

MIT has developed a glasses-less 3D display for movie theaters. 

 With attendance numbers going down in theaters because of the Internet and all of those great high definition big screen monitors and such, how can theaters owners get all of us back in to their seats?

For Hollywood, the 1950’s era presented a plethora of obstacles to success.

McCarthy’s communist witchhunt battered the growing movie industry as actors, writers and directors came under scrutiny whilst McCarthy turned every stone looking for his communist demons.

In addition, a weather-beaten Hollywood had to contend with new competition from the highly successful television market.

 To counter TV, Hollywood looked for gimmicks to attract moviegoers.

 Once such device was a newly improved medium for projecting movies in theaters ““ the three dimensional or 3D movie.

The introduction of the first color 3D movie set off a chain reaction of 3D movies that served Hollywood’s purpose well.

 Movie goers came back to the theaters in droves to see the new technology which itself triggered several new inventions in film making, many of which are still in use today.

The Nintendo 3DS is one of a handful of devices to feature glasses-less 3D, but it is designed for a single users where the user is looking at the display head-on at a relatively specific angle. 

 It's not something made for a movie theater with hundreds of seats, each of which would have a different viewing angle. 

What's neat about MIT's 3D display is that it doesn't require glasses and it lets anyone see the 3D effect in a movie theater, no matter where they are sitting. 

The MIT Computers Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) created the prototype display called 'Cinema 3D' that uses a complex arrangement of lenses and mirrors to create a set number of parallax barriers that can address every viewing angle in the theater based on seat locations. 

 It works in a movie theater because the seats are in fixed locations, and people don't tend to move around, change seats or alter their viewing angle too much. 

What's also neat about the Cinema 3D is that is preserves resolution, whereas other glasses-less 3D displays carry cots in terms of image resolution.

 The prototype is about the size of a letter-sized notepad, and it needs 50 sets of mirrors and lenses.

 It should be ready for market once researchers scale it up to a commercially viable product.