This article was taken from the March 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
If you want today's hottest 3D projector in your living room, prepare to take out a second mortgage.
However, if you can get hold of some older model projectors and a few pairs of polarised sunglasses, you can build your own 3D cinema on the cheap.
Hardware
Take two projectors, plug them both into a PC and stack them on top of each other. Tilt the lower one up and the top one down so you get both pictures almost on top of each other. Send the same picture to both (set the graphics card to "cloned desktop").
Putting 3 in D
Take out the lenses from a pair of polarising sunglasses. Put them together and twist them about.
At 90° to each other, they go black. Place one in front of each projector with the filter turned this way. For the 3D glasses, do the same to another pair of lenses.
The screen
A polarised system won't work on a white wall. It will work on a matt aluminium sheet, on silver spray-painted surfaces or rear-projected through frosted plastic. However you decide to make your screen, you can test a small piece with a torch and two polarisers.
Showtime!
Once you have all the equipment together, set the graphics card to horizontal span, so the desktop is split across both projectors.
Your system will now display the 3D format known as side by side, where both pictures are combined in one wide-angle frame
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
