I enjoyed attending Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference on mobile technology this week. Even the two presentations that involved having to wear funny glasses as stuff in 3D was projected for us–mostly because in both cases the source for the 3D video was a smartphone, which was kind of cool.

As usual, though, my instinctive response was to bristle at the 3D for being blurry and gimmicky. I had a random thought, which I tweeted:

If all we had was 3D TV/movies/games, and someone invented 2D, it would be hailed as a breakthrough. "No glasses–and it's sharp!"

— Harry McCracken (@harrymccracken) June 2, 2011

That sentiment apparently resonated: sixty people retweeted it. And one Twitterpal alerted me to a brilliant product that had somehow escaped my attention:

@harrymccracken Already here: 2D glasses. "Allow any RealD 3D movie to be viewed as if it is a normal 2D movie". http://t.co/mHMtGR2

— M Strong (@strongria) June 4, 2011

Yup! Glasses that convert 3D movies back into 2D movies–ones that use RealD’s passive 3D technology, at least–by letting only one of the two projected images through to your eyeballs.

Why not just go to a 2D screening of the same movie in the first place, and save a few bucks in the process? These are meant for people like the wife of the glasses’ creator, who get headaches at 3D movies. (I don’t, or at least I don’t think I do–it’s just that I find them fuzzy and the 3D effect usually looks like paperdolls to me. I’m not sure if that means I have some sort of problem with my vision, or am just immune to the appeal of the whole idea.)

Genius. For only $7.99. And as the site points out, nobody will even notice they’re not 3D specs!

 
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