I would copy a car in a heartbeat, though, as long as I could copy the gas to run it and trees to offset its carbon emissions without triggering a global oil shortage...
From what I learned in art school (so take with a grain of salt) your brain will compensate for the 3d effect for a period of time (so that you think that you're still seeing in 3-d) but it can't compensate fully for 3d, which means if someone throws a ball to you, it's really difficult to catch it.
Apparently there was an artist who wore an eyepatch for a few months, after which his brain stopped the 3d effect, and he essentially was seeing in 2d.
This of course was all stuff told to me in an art class on perspective, so take with a grain of salt.
Two eyes are required for ordinary depth perception without workarounds, but depth perception is not required for 3D vision.
Speaking as someone who naturally has little to no depth perception (amblyopia affecting my right eye), I still see 3D just fine, catch flying objects (balls, frisbees, etc.) just fine, and am not disabled in any significant way except an inability to see into those magic eye puzzles.
Two eyes give you the ability to detect parallax without moving your head; those of us without binocular vision detect parallax by slight (imperceptible) movements of our head. There are many other useful visual artifacts of our 3D world: closer things are larger than farther things, closer things obscure farther things, and so on. Our brains just construct 3D worlds based on those data rather than the simpler, more reliable stationary parallax detection that you two-eyed folks use.
People also use depth of field / focal blur to aid depth perception. This is a major reason why the brain has issues with fake 3d using separate images, you want to focus on a part of the image, but things get blurry if you don't focus on the screen.
Motion parallax is the name for that effect. It is definitely a clue in perceiving 3 dimensions. Relative size is another clue: if you know roughly how big something is and it looks smaller, you can assume it's far away. Level of detail, interfering haze, etc all are other cues.
But the difference between what each eye sees is also an important factor in 3D vision. Movies just make it the only factor, which is probably why they can be disorienting. My guess would be that it's more important for things that are close than things that are far away; something 3 inches from your face appears to be in drastically different positions if you cover alternate eyes, but distant mountains look about the same.
One very surprising example of someone playing with single eye vision. Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansoor_Ali_Khan_Pataudi) played in the Indian cricket team as a batter for many years. He lost one eye at the age of 20, but surprisingly still managed to bat.
This is particularly striking since batting involves judging the ball that comes at you with some speed. His previous judgement and muscle memory might be useful of course. But I'd love to read about any research on this, if anyone is aware...
Apparently one of the guys involved in early Air Force space suit research had lost an eye in an accident (no, not Yeager, can't remember the name right off). It created a bit of a stir when they tested him post-accident and discovered that his depth perception had actually /improved/ now that he only had one eye.
Unfortunately, despite this, they weren't willing to let him go back to flying fighter planes, which is why he got into space suit research...
Uninformed guess: the speed of a top-level cricket delivery (~100mph) is such that stereoscopic vision doesn't really play a role. It's all in the timing.
Squirrels have their eyes on the sides of their heads (herbivore norm). They live in trees, jumping from branch to branch.
They do it by moving their head - watch for a while, they almost always run a little bit along the branch before jumping. Sort of like synthetic aperture radar.
Your submission that an eye patch would cause the wearer to see in only 2 dimensions is false. I myself wear such an eye patch full time (here is a self portrait for illustration: http://www.petermichaud.com/about/ ).
I have not seen from 2 eyes since I was 7 years old, and I am perfectly capable of seeing in 3 dimensions. To prove my claim, I can also perform tasks traditionally associated exclusively with 3 dimensional vision; for example, I excel at ping pong.
For a tldr; see my much shorter and more entertaining parent comment, which was downvoted into oblivion.
You can hack these up yourself from the "Real 3D" glasses given out at most 3D theaters.
1. Obtain one pair of glasses
2. Pry apart at the seam with a putty knife or small flathead
3. Remove one of the gel lenses
4. Flip it over and put it back in, note the areas that need to be trimmed
5. Trim with scissors
6. Reinsert gel, stick the plastic back together
There will be a slight bit of ugliness where the gel filter doesn't quite take up the entire cutout area in the plastic frame, but they work well.
Actually, it's probably easier to get two pair of 3D glasses and then swap the left eye of one with the right eye of the other. No trimming needed.
(Edit: come to think of it, there may be some trimming needed if the left and right glasses aren't the same shape but in that case flipping them over would probably work unless they are curved)
I really hate when designers use flash for basic text elements without some sort of backup text behind it. My proxy blocks flash, and this results in a very broken website.
It's sIFR[1]. It was one of the more popular techniques for embedding custom fonts into pages, before CSS-based web fonts. It should degrade gracefully without Flash; it does for me, using ClickToFlash with Safari.
Curious, why? I've looked at Flash perf on my machine (Thinkpad, Core2Duo, Win7) and streamed 1080p video at 35% CPU utilization. I've never noticed any perf degredation using Flash and never had a crash as a result of it. I know people generally dislike it on mobile devices, but for a laptop/desktop class machine it seems pretty lightweight at even the biggest tasks.
Note that if the slit is narrow enough, it will still focus light thought the pinhole effect (also giving you polarized light (if the material is electrically conductive)).
Their FAQ says "Do 2D Glasses work at IMAX theaters?
Alas, no. IMAX uses a different technology than normal movie theaters so 2D-Glasses will not work at an IMAX theater."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAX#IMAX_3D
Wikipedia suggests that IMAX 3D uses either linear polarization or LCD shutter glasses. Obviously 2-D shutter glasses wouldn't be very practical, but the polarization glasses (which I think is the standard?) should be just as feasible as the circularly polarized glasses used by RealD.
Come to think of it, normal polarized sunglasses should work as linear polarization filters assuming they line up the right way.
Every pair of polarised glasses I've tried has been polarised at a 45 degree angle; this helps with more consistent glare reduction and also means that LCD screens don't appear completely black half the time.
I've actually marked the edge of the circular polariser filter I have for my camera so I can tilt my head (wearing polarised glasses) and then quickly move the filter to match.
I thought the the point of having polarized sunglasses was that they should be polarized vertically in order to block glare (which tends to be polarized horizontally; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewsters_angle). Mine are, anwyay. Usually it is the LCD screens that are polarized at a 45 degree angle - for compatibility with sunglasses.
I had Lens Crafters make me a custom pair of polarized sunglasses with the polarization at 45 degrees to match up with my laptop's polarizer. Used with the laptop, they dim everything I see BUT the laptops screen. Not all laptops have the same 45 degree tilt, some are 180 from mine.
More than a decade ago I was an IMAX projectionist and I believe that linearly polarized glasses would work. Unfortunately these are circularly polarized.
In this Ohio theater they used a belt and suspenders approach where both polarization and timing were used to create the 3D effect. Left and right eye frames were projected through polarized filters and the projector itself was constructed so that one of the shutters would always be closed while the other was being displayed. The headsets handed out to the audience were active; they had LCD lenses and an IR receiver which would align the timing to the projector's.
This was purportedly done to increase decrease the "crosstalk" between the two eye views and worked quite well.
* Edited to reflect Cushman's observation on circular vs linear polarization.
I did when I say it on April 1st. I have a family member that hates them and we almost always have to go to 2D movies because of it. Now I can drag him to a 3D movie!
This is great. I have amblyopia (= lazy eye) and I'm practically blind in one eye and when I have 3D glasses on I only see red stuff but now with these glasses from what I understand I will be able to watch 3D movies (even though I won't get the 3D experience) when there's no 2D version for it
If by "red stuff" you're talking about the old red/blue 3D then 3D technology has come a long way since then; both eyes get a full colour image. If you only see out of one eye then the regular glasses will be all you need, you'dd get just the image for that eye in full colour.
