Avatar and 3D

The Wednesday before Christmas several of my new coworkers from Kitware went to see the new Avatar movie in 3D. I haven’t been to the movies much recently, generally just using Netflix to watch movies at home. I have to say it was well worth it, and I have been trying to talk Louise into going to see it with me again. We saw it at the local IMAX, and the images really popped out of the screen. It was a little off putting that they use linearly polarized light, so that the effect is lost when tilting your head. I would highly recommend that you make the trip out to see it in 3D, and hope to figure out babysitters and all that stuff so that Louise and I can go and see it before it leaves the big screen.

The story was quite engaging, but I did find it really quite lame that the mineral they were mining was called "unobtanium", or that is what is sounded like. They could have chosen a better name, but it at least it seems to have been used tongue in cheek. That said I moved my head out of the way once or twice when an object swung around. It was also amazing how much emotion was conveyed in the characters, and how tough it was to tell where the CG and real sequences were joined.

I would love to have access to 3D of this quality on my desktop. When are the 30” 3D monitors due out with Linux and OpenGL support?!?