3D Contact Lenses — Some Assumptions
January 01, 2011 
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According to 3DTVblog, Sony has been working on 3D contact lenses since February of last year. While little is known about this technology, we can safely assume that it would have to be a passive kind of technology, as opposed to the active kind, which requires additional electronics to dissect the images. Contact lenses do not have the space to fit these additional electronics.
Currently, today’s 3D glasses use glasses that are either linearly or circularly polarized. The former can, for lack of a better word, be called perpendicular, as it usually has one side processing horizontal images while the other side processes vertical images. This will fix your head in a certain position, because if you tilt your head, the images will bleed together.
Meanwhile, circularly polarized glasses filter images that are superimposed on to the screen. Because of the circular polarization, you can move your head. Because contact lenses can in fact spiral while on someone’s retina, we can assume that 3D contact lenses will be polarized circularly instead of linearly.
One thing is certain — when 3D contact lenses are finally released, they won’t work with current 3D televisions., which require 3D glasses with active technology. This could either ensure that 3D contact lenses don’t take off, or that 3D TV technology will evolve at such a rapid pace to make the current lines seem obsolete in a short amount of time.
There has also been research into creating 3D TVs that require no glasses at all, which may end up determining the fate of both 3D contact lenses and 3D TVs.
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RealD lenses are also unsuitable for the 3D TVs soon to hit the market: Although most of the big manufacturers have secured contracts with RealD, their initial series of 3D TVs will all use shutter glasses. It remains to be seen, in fact, how practical the idea of 3D contact lenses actually is. In any case, viewers will need to remember to take out their 3D lenses before driving home at night, since they reduce the brightness of incoming light by more than half — as do all types of 3D glasses.