We saw Superman Returns last night. The one detail of awesomeness was that it was in IMAX 3D. There’s something about a 50 by 75 foot screen, the 14,000 Watts of speaker power, and eye-popping 3D images that really make it an IMAX 3D Experience.

For the first time in my life I found the theatrical trailers that preceded the film to be as engrossing as the movie itself. Since they were presented in 3D as well it was a delightful teaser for what was to come.

The 3D technology that IMAX utilizes is inexpensive and over 50 years old, but still highly effective. It is a simple matter of polarizing the two cameras that project the images and handing out some special glasses (see above image) that do the same.

The key is that the left and right lenses and cameras are polarized in different directions. You can test this yourself by inverting one pair of glasses and then holding them over the lenses of another pair. With the left and right lenses overlapping, both pairs will be nearly black.

Note: Polarization is different from anaglyph glasses which use red and cyan colored lenses to filter images for the left and right eyes.

As I mentioned before, two cameras are necessary for producing a 3D image. They superimpose two images over each other and merge into a single 3D picture when viewed with polarizing lenses.

Human depth perception is primarily based on separate images that result from the slightly different angles seen from each eye. The brain assembles these two images into one coherent image through a process called stereopsis. Current 3D technology embraces this concept and provides independent images for each eye.

The net result is a fantastic film. I wish the entire 2 hours and 34 minutes of film had been converted into 3D instead of just 20 minutes, but those few minutes were extremely well done. I hope that we’ll be seeing more of this technology in the not too distant future. After all, a little bit of science goes a long way.