Watch Everything in 3-D? Here’s How One Inventor Is Making it Possible (opens in new tab)

Okay, I give up. HOW? What does his 2d-to-3d converter actually DO in order to produce 3D? I read the whole linked article and watched the video on his fundable page and it seems like it's all just handwaving. What is being done, and what are the tradeoffs?

On the output end of things, it looks like his glasses are the old red-green color filters. Yes, you can use color filters to generate 3d "on any device", but only at the expense of losing color info in the source image. (Will people really want essentially black-and-white 3D over either full-color 2D or the full-color 3D you can get using polarized lenses (with a special screen) or active (powered with a smart shutter) glasses?)

On the input end of things, suppose your input is, say, a bugs-bunny cartoon. How does his software give us useful 3D info where none was present in the source signal?

glenra - Good questions! On the display end of our technology we use two different 3-D glasses technologies to provide full-color 3-D video to viewers. When using a 3-D TV or projector, you simply wear the 3-D glasses that came with the 3-D TV or projector. When watching a 2-D TV or projector, whether it's CRT, LCD, plasma, DLP, or laser, we supply a special pair of RF shutter glasses. When watching a computer monitor or handheld device such as a smart phone, we supply our FullColor 3D glasses. These are not anaglyph glasses. We spent several years on research and development to develop complex notch filters that would work with every kind of display to provide full-color with no eyestrain or headaches. These glasses have been tested successfully by millions of people and, while not providing quite as good color as shutter glasses, the longer you wear them, the more the brain adjusts to provide a more natural looking color image. In addition, the output of your computer (VGA or HDMI) can be input to our converter, making it viewable on any 3-D TV or projector with our shutter glasses (or on a 3-D TV or projector using its 3-D glasses). Our patented 2-D to 3-D conversion technology works in a unique way that is different from all other attempts to convert 2-D to 3-D. Our algorithm compares two frames at a time and presents stereo pair data that is designed to work hand-in-hand with the algorithms the human brain uses to create the 3-D experience. Our software makes use of the facts that objects further from the camera in a scene exhibit less brightness, sharpness, contrast, and color saturation, are located higher up in the frame, get smaller, and objects that occlude other objects generally move faster than the objects they occlude (telephone poles move by faster than buildings as seen from a moving car, for instance). I hope this is helpful in clarifying your excellent question.

The converter layers frames to determine depth information. The reviews by people who have seen the converter say it's fantastic.

im looking forward to 8-bit NES in 3D!