Later (2015): University of Washington True 3-D Technology

Your eyes focus on the scene naturally for more realistic viewing. Goggles can cause nausea in some wearers by confusing their depth perception. True 3-D avoids this by letting you bring different planes of the image into focus, just like in normal vision. It can also augment reality by laying virtual images over the real world-say, yellow arrows from your GPS system to guide you home. www.hitl.washington.edu

How it Works:
True 3-D adjusts the focal point of each dot of light so that it seems to come from a real object at the appropriate depth. Focus on the person running in the foreground, and the exploding car behind it looks blurry, and vice versa.

Now: Icuiti iWear

No batteries required: the iWear sips power from your video iPod. Inside the goggles are two tiny LCD screens-made up of 230,000 pixels just 15 microns across-magnified by a system of grooved lenses. The resulting view looks like a 35-inch TV with near-broadcast-quality resolution. And the iWear does the iPod one dimension better, by playing 2-D and 3-D. Movies formatted for 3-D show different images to each eye, creating the illusion of depth. icuiti.com; $300