I think it is useful to compare with how stereophony works, and it might indicate that 3D is indeed a dead-end, a superfluous gimmick (as noted in other comments).<p>The simple --too simple-- view is that screens have to reproduce reality, that the world is 3D and thus that 3D will eventually win. But this has been proven false, at least for audio (which I know better).<p>Some people think they hear left or right by doing some triangulation between the two ears. Nothing more wrong: with only two ear we would not perceive height, and people deaf of one ear certainly do not "hear in 1D".<p>In fact we localise sound because of<p>- The shape of our ears. (See how complex are the ears of some animals)<p>- Tiny movements of the head.<p>- Past experience (learning) of the shape of reverberation and reflections in common rooms.<p>A full "real" simulation of sound localisation, which has been experimented and works, requires:<p>- Sounds recorded in an anechoic chamber (these are very small and expensive, you won't get a philharmonic in it, and playing music in this echo-less room is extremely painful).<p>- Microphone must be perfect, a thing that do not exist.<p>- Synthetic room reflections computed on the fly according to where the listener sits when listening (shape and texture of the room and where are the two ears in the room)<p>- A polar reflection model of the ear shapes of the listener.<p>- An helmet detecting tiny head movements and adjusting all the computation above accordingly.<p>- Perfect earphones inside the ears of the listener.<p>So this all works in theory and has been tested experimentally, but it has not crossed anyone's mind that we really need this to enjoy a properly spatialized concerto. We can approximate a soundscape enough with the very crude left-right localization provided by stereophony, and this is quite enough to enjoy good music.<p>It is certainly different for the visual field, but I would bet it will be ressembling in the big strokes: music, movies, books, painting, all these create <i>illusions</i>, automomous worlds that do not need to match reality perfectly. It needs to be realistic enough and based on accepted conventions: When we see the image of a plane taking off, we accept that our hero is likely inside, and that it is related to the story, e.g. not a random plane talking off as we would see from our window.<p>But it doesn't need to be "pixel-perfect", as exemplified by the many great black and white movies.