This website now in 3D!
Last night I took my zombie consultant to Fright Nights at the PNE. We had a bit of a detour, as it turns out, because the PNE is telling everyone that people can purchase tickets at Shoppers Drug Mart; however, they neglected to tell Shoppers Drug Mart that people can purchase tickets at Shoppers Drug Mart, so we had to make a second stop by Safeway instead.
Ticket issues aside, the spookiness commenced pretty soon.
Fright Nights this year includes five haunted houses, a new haunted maze, and several of the more popular Playland rides and roller coasters.
Initially the haunted house names didn't give much indication as to what was in store:
Bates Motel Asylum of Terror Reapers and Grimm Funeral Home Terror Under the Big Top What Lurks in the Dark
The first three places we visited were pretty typical haunted house type things — narrow hallways, men in masks with plastic knives or the occasional chainsaw, loud noises, sudden bright lights, rubber bodies, and so on (though it's worth noting that the Reapers and Grimm house was particularly creative in their scenes).
One of the attractions, however, was special — at the Terror Under the Big Top building, we were given the option of purchasing special 3D glasses for $1 a pair, and the effect was mesmerizing: brightly colored painted wall illustrations and props scattering themselves throughout our entire field of view as we stumbled through the rooms, strange lighting effects, and costumed spooks inexplicably walking through solid objects or occupying multiple areas of space at the same time. Very unsettling, but also very fascinating.
What it turns out we had acquired for our $2 were two pairs of Chromadepth glasses, which utilize a pair of opposite diffraction gratings to offset the parallax of light of various colors based on the light's wavelength — so red objects appear much closer and violet objects very far away, with everything else somewhere in between. A clever effect, and a fun one since practically any multicolored view is altered in some kind of interesting way.
Surprised at this new experience, and wondering just how many types of 3D glasses technologies there are, I did a web search, and was startled by two different findings:
1. There are quite a few different kinds of 3D glasses out there:
anaglyphic — the traditional red / blue 3D glasses of cheesy movie and comic book fame. linear polarized — I first experienced these at the 3D movie at Epcot Center and was impressed, even as a pre-teen, at how they enabled three dimensional images in full color. Dual projectors project the left and right eye images through polarized filters at right angles to each other onto a screen, and the corresponding polarized filters on each glasses lens permit each eye only to see the image meant for it. Very impressive 3D quality, but limited specifically to projected media. circular polarized — a variant of linear polarized. chromadepth — the color-based technology we saw at Fright Nights, interesting because it is essentially media-independent — anything cable of producing a color image can produce a chromadepth effect, whether intentional or not. Pulfrich — a technique using two lenses of differing darkness, taking advantage of a perceptual illusion causing the dimmer image to be processed more slowly by the brain, thus making faster moving images appear closer and slower images to appear farther away — this only works for moving pictures.
2. Even more amusing, there are a myriad of e-commerce websites specializing in 3D glasses. I thought this was pretty cool to begin with, but then I found one site which specializes in high quality plastic and even metal varieties of each of the different types of lenses.
My mind immediately jumped to images of pool sharks or darts aficionados arriving at the pub with their personalized case full of custom equipment, and imagining the 3D equivalent: a Rebel-Without-A-Cause sort of figure striding into a late night showing of Jaws 3D, pulling from an Oakley sunglasses case a designer mirrored set of red-blue 3D glasses, sneering at the other audience members in their paper glasses, and running a hand demonstratively through his greased-back hair while settling into the front row of the theater.
Apparently this is precisely the angle the website is going for, as well: "Don't settle for the glasses they give you, Get our Proview plastic 3D glasses and be the envy of everyone else at the theatre!"
"Also unlike any of our other 3D glasses they have a mirrored coating which gives the viewer a more sophisticated look than someone viewing with obvious red/blue or red/cyan glasses."
"3D Polarized Aviator Style (Now in Tortoise-Shell!): These stylish polarized glasses have Polarized lenses specially cut at opposing 45 degree angles."
And my personal favorite — "ProView Clip-ons: Same high quality as above in a clip-on format. Prevent your [3D] glasses from getting dirty from putting them on top of your head when not in use."
In case there was any doubt before, it's undeniable that the baby boomers are reaching retirement age when they've started making 3D clip-on lenses. . . .
Ticket issues aside, the spookiness commenced pretty soon.
Fright Nights this year includes five haunted houses, a new haunted maze, and several of the more popular Playland rides and roller coasters.
Initially the haunted house names didn't give much indication as to what was in store:
The first three places we visited were pretty typical haunted house type things — narrow hallways, men in masks with plastic knives or the occasional chainsaw, loud noises, sudden bright lights, rubber bodies, and so on (though it's worth noting that the Reapers and Grimm house was particularly creative in their scenes).
One of the attractions, however, was special — at the Terror Under the Big Top building, we were given the option of purchasing special 3D glasses for $1 a pair, and the effect was mesmerizing: brightly colored painted wall illustrations and props scattering themselves throughout our entire field of view as we stumbled through the rooms, strange lighting effects, and costumed spooks inexplicably walking through solid objects or occupying multiple areas of space at the same time. Very unsettling, but also very fascinating.
What it turns out we had acquired for our $2 were two pairs of Chromadepth glasses, which utilize a pair of opposite diffraction gratings to offset the parallax of light of various colors based on the light's wavelength — so red objects appear much closer and violet objects very far away, with everything else somewhere in between. A clever effect, and a fun one since practically any multicolored view is altered in some kind of interesting way.
Surprised at this new experience, and wondering just how many types of 3D glasses technologies there are, I did a web search, and was startled by two different findings:
1. There are quite a few different kinds of 3D glasses out there:
2. Even more amusing, there are a myriad of e-commerce websites specializing in 3D glasses. I thought this was pretty cool to begin with, but then I found one site which specializes in high quality plastic and even metal varieties of each of the different types of lenses.
My mind immediately jumped to images of pool sharks or darts aficionados arriving at the pub with their personalized case full of custom equipment, and imagining the 3D equivalent: a Rebel-Without-A-Cause sort of figure striding into a late night showing of Jaws 3D, pulling from an Oakley sunglasses case a designer mirrored set of red-blue 3D glasses, sneering at the other audience members in their paper glasses, and running a hand demonstratively through his greased-back hair while settling into the front row of the theater.
Apparently this is precisely the angle the website is going for, as well: "Don't settle for the glasses they give you, Get our Proview plastic 3D glasses and be the envy of everyone else at the theatre!"
"Also unlike any of our other 3D glasses they have a mirrored coating which gives the viewer a more sophisticated look than someone viewing with obvious red/blue or red/cyan glasses."
"3D Polarized Aviator Style (Now in Tortoise-Shell!): These stylish polarized glasses have Polarized lenses specially cut at opposing 45 degree angles."
And my personal favorite — "ProView Clip-ons: Same high quality as above in a clip-on format. Prevent your [3D] glasses from getting dirty from putting them on top of your head when not in use."
In case there was any doubt before, it's undeniable that the baby boomers are reaching retirement age when they've started making 3D clip-on lenses. . . .