Although there are countless explanations for why people have grown weary of 3D movies over the past couple of years, one of the minor complaints from the very start has been the fact that moviegoers are required to wear 3D glasses throughout the entire film. Not only are the glasses uncomfortable and unfashionable, but they also block out some of the brightness of the screen, making the image dark and murky. Wouldn’t it be a lot better if we could just sit down and be immersed in the movie without a piece of plastic sitting between our eyes and the screen? Well, this week, it appears that researchers in South Korea may have finally found the breakthrough necessary to achieve glasses-free 3D displays in a movie theatre. Although the technology is still being tested and refined, it seems likely that within the next few years we may be able to throw away those goofy glasses for good.

According to Wired, a paper that was published this week in Optics Express, The International Online Journal of Optics, describes a method for projecting a 3D display without the need for glasses. The technique is different than the one employed by handheld devices like the Nintendo 3DS, which use a filter in front of the screen to send slightly different images to your left and right eyes. In this case, the idea is to put an array in front of the projector itself in combination with a filter on the screen.

Obviously there are plenty of questions that remain, including whether or not the 3D effect would change based on where you sit in the theatre or how you shift your eyeline. The article also notes that the image resolution is fairly low because the filter is still blocking some of the light going to each of your eyes. Either way, it will be interesting to see what comes of this technology and whether or not it will make its way to 3D TVs as well. Would you see more 3D movies if you didn’t have to wear glasses?