Video Glasses Make 3D Movies Worth Watching Again, The Verge Reports

The Verge said it began testing Xreal One Pro glasses last year. The glasses primarily provide a gigantic flat screen, like a private theater, for whatever is plugged in. If the user presses and holds the right button, Xreal can provide independent left and right views for side-by-side 3D content. With proper content, each eye gets a full 1080p view. The Verge said similar side-by-side 3D toggles exist in popular video player apps for VR headsets such as Meta Quest and Steam Frame, and that Apple Vision Pro and upcoming Meta VR Glasses let users natively stream 3D films.

According to The Verge, the results are breathtaking. It cited water in Moana, a glass-covered clock in Zootopia 2, helmets in Gravity, suiting up in giant robots in Pacific Rim, lightcycles in Tron: Legacy and comic book panels coming to life in Into the Spider-Verse as examples with more depth. When the ocean parts to let Moana through, The Verge said, it no longer feels like a flat wall of water but a living chunk of ocean with life swimming inside. The Lego Movie went from realistic-looking CG bricks on a flat screen to a teleported Lego diorama. In Avatar, the holographic displays in the ops room are mind-blowing, with even flat rectangular monitors having 3D layers within. The Verge said anything with transparent glass is a treat, including cockpits, helmets, Tron: Legacy lightcycles and Mad Max: Fury Road's convoy of battling vehicles, because faces, structures, water beads, scratches and reflections gain distinct detail.

Billie Eilish's new concert film, shot by James Cameron with 16 twin cameras including four remote-controlled AGITO camera rigs, looked incredible in Meta VR Glasses during a brief demo, The Verge said. The publication said Cameron got up close and personal with the concert in a way few VR concert recordings do. In a demo with the Google/Xreal Aura, The Verge watched a small part of the interactive nature documentary Galapagos: The Last Eden and was entranced by baby seals, grains of sand in their shiny fur and the fuzzy depth of hair on their skin. The Verge added that once characters have depth, it almost feels possible to reach out and touch a face and feel emotions, wrinkles and scars more vividly. It also cited Werner Herzog's cult-classic 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, in which Herzog told The Verge earlier this year that the world's oldest surviving art is not flat because the 32,000-year-old cave paintings took form thanks to their three-dimensional canvas. "A bulging rock is now a bulging neck of a bison that attacks you," Herzog said.

The Verge said it wound up watching all of Gravity late at night in bed after intending only a brief test. It compared the experience to buying a first decent set of headphones: it never knew what it was missing, but now wants to revisit all its favorites to experience them more deeply.

Not all 3D content is equal, The Verge said. Few live-action movies were truly filmed with twin cameras in recent years. In fake or poorly converted 3D movies, viewers often see a "billboard" effect in which flat layers of people or objects appear in the background instead of true depth. The biggest catch is that 3D movies are not easy to buy and play. Even though 3D films are still coming to theaters, consumers cannot necessarily stream them or buy a high-quality copy. 4K Blu-ray does not support 3D at all. 3D Blu-rays were the last discs to offer 3D, and as FlatPanelsHD pointed out last year, most physical 3D movies are stuck at 1080p, 24fps and without HDR. Even 3D Blu-rays are not necessarily easy to find: The Verge had to buy a copy of Cave of Forgotten Dreams off eBay and paid to ship a rare-ish copy of Into the Spider-Verse from Thailand.

Editor's Summary The Verge reports that video glasses with independent left and right views have made 3D movies more compelling than traditional theater 3D by preserving full resolution and brightness for each eye. The experience remains limited by the scarcity of high-quality 3D content and the lack of streaming and 4K Blu-ray support, leaving 3D Blu-rays as the main physical option. The report says the technology is finally ready, but convenience still lags.