I just got back from the double feature, which is fantastic fun. The 3D itself is slightly better than Up, never making itself noticeable in any gimmicky way. Neither film felt drained of color, nor were they ever out of focus. I’m generally against 3D, but I enjoyed it this time. The only thing that disappointed me was the missing short films, but I already got two feature films, so oh well.
I hadn’t seen Toy Story 2 since theaters the first time, so I’m clueless about any changes in that one. Toy Story 1, however, I’ve watched several times on VHS in the past year. It seemed like many of the textures and much of the shading had been touched up. I’m attributing most of the improvement to the switch from an ancient VHS tape to a DLP theater, but obviously they changed a significant amount just in the process of making it 3D, including complete re-rendering, unless 3D is entirely a post-production affair.
Does anyone know the technical side of turning Toy Story 3D, or simply whether they improved things while they were at it? I’m very curious now, but I think most of it’s in my mind.
The 3D technology they’re using uses a reflective silver screen, a single digital projector running 144 frames per second (72 frames per eye), and circular polarization instead of the older linear polarization. This means you can tilt your head a bit and not have the 3D effect fall apart, no jitter, little to no loss of brightness, and a perfect overlay of both frames to eliminate eye strain and headaches.
My wife usually can’t handle 3D as it makes her head hurt and she usually says the effect doesn’t work well for her wearing the 3d glasses over her regular glasses. She had a rough time at Disneyworld a couple months back as they have a lot of older 3D attractions.
She wasn’t sure if she could handle a 3D double feature but came out feeling fine after 3 hours of staring at the 3D, which I thought was incredible. She even remarked how much better it was than any other 3D she’s seen.
