On Friday, January 23, CNN will present a 3-D tour of the Martian landscape on "Newsnight". Be sure to catch the first ever 3-D transmission from another planet!

Red/Blue 3-D glasses will be required. These can be purchased from a variety of retailers on-line. If you've got some from last summer's SPY KIDS 3-D, those will do fine as well. Polarized (clear lens) type won't work.

Hopefully, someone will release a 3-D DVD with newer Mars images in the far superior field sequential format sometime. I've got some older Mars images in that format and of course the effect is far better than the red/blue stuff.

Still, the CNN event sound pretty cool...

Take that, FOX!!!

das

I'm holding out for a 3D Pluto.

I'm not satisfied, seriously. I refuse to be placated by 50 year old gimmick photography. What I do want is downloadable 3D landscape data of the surface that can be imported into various computer programs. I want to fly over the surface in Flight Simulator 2000, have a martian war in Halo or Battlefield 1942, or just drive around the surface in a SUV from Project Gotham 2. You know the have the data, but instead NASA pulls stunts like red/blue 3D glasses.

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They've been taking 3-D photos since the 1850s. There are literally thousands of 3-D photos taken during the Civil War.

NASA isn't the only one who uses 3-D cameras. The Military, medical reseachers, teachers, etc often use it.

The red/blue approach is utilized to bring the images to the masses without any special equipment, in the here and now.

Maybe someday you can have a virtual hologram tour of the universe, but I don't think that's going to happen by next Friday...

People always think of the 1950's when they see red and blue glasses. Funny, because none of the 51 3-D films released then used them. They were all distributed in the superior polarized format, which uses clear lensed glasses. There were lots of 3-D comics and magazines which used the red/blue type though. Plus, some of the older 3-D flicks were shown on TV in terrible red and blue versions in the 80s, and a couple were even re-issued that way, but the results were pretty sad. SPY KIDS used this approach too, unfortunately, and had far worse 3-D than 1950's audiences saw.

The CNN thing will be fun but NTSC TV and red/blue anaglyph aren't a match made in heaven. Just don't expect IMAX 3-D and you'll be just fine..

Poor Aaron Brown... the camera adds 10 pounds, but the 3-D effect will add 30!!

I'm saving my 3D glasses for FOX's
"When Porn Stars Attack"

You can already see those Mars anaglyphs on Nasa's website.

Interesting. At CES, one of the big companies was demoing a 3D LCD panel. May have been Sharp. It was mostly a novelty since the effective viewing angle was very narrow, but you could definitely see the potential. It produced reasonably convincing 3D without the need for special glasses. If they refine the technology a bit, it would be pretty interesting for TV and movies and very cool for games.

Well, the coverage will be fair and balanced. Half the images will be in red, half in blue.

I want to see Rudi Bakhtiar in 3-D.