I agree it's "obvious" that it's the "next big step". And I'm saying that's the problem.
Obviousness is a feeling people have about ideas in their head. Feelings can be useful or misleading. Every single person who got behind previous generations of 3D thought that it was "obviously" the next step. Many thousands of people had that feeling each time, buying in to a new platform. Great sums of money were invested by smart execs. All of those people were wrong each time. All of them. That you have the same feeling is not proof that it will be different this time. Indeed, the history suggests you should distrust that feeling.
Color video is a great example, so thanks for bringing it up. Color TV and color movies were quickly and widely adopted despite the extra cost and complexity. But 3D movies and TV have failed. Wearing a pair of glasses is not a major burden; 64% of Americans do it every day. Millions of people tried 3D movies and gave a collective shrug. The pretty obvious lesson to learn from those waves is that people are drawn to the concept but actually do not care in practice once the novelty wears off.
Another way to look at it is that people don't even care about stereoscopic vision much in actual life. Humans have a lot of mechanisms for extracting spatial information from the world, and the stereo-ness of it doesn't matter much. About 10% of people don't have it; they can still drive just fine. My grandfather, for example, was blinded in one eye as a kid, and nobody ever noticed. You can try it yourself; go out for a walk and keep one eye closed. Your 3D perception will be basically unaffected except for relatively close objects.
So sure, as I've said repeatedly, anything can happen. I'm just saying there is good reason to believe this will not happen, and excellent reason to not just assume it will. To see this not as a technological problem, but a problem of demand.
As to citations, I'm not sure what you're looking for. I've mentioned the Brewster Stereoscope twice in this thread. Ditto the ViewMaster. What do you need that isn't in the first page of Google results for those?
Obviousness is a feeling people have about ideas in their head. Feelings can be useful or misleading. Every single person who got behind previous generations of 3D thought that it was "obviously" the next step. Many thousands of people had that feeling each time, buying in to a new platform. Great sums of money were invested by smart execs. All of those people were wrong each time. All of them. That you have the same feeling is not proof that it will be different this time. Indeed, the history suggests you should distrust that feeling.
Color video is a great example, so thanks for bringing it up. Color TV and color movies were quickly and widely adopted despite the extra cost and complexity. But 3D movies and TV have failed. Wearing a pair of glasses is not a major burden; 64% of Americans do it every day. Millions of people tried 3D movies and gave a collective shrug. The pretty obvious lesson to learn from those waves is that people are drawn to the concept but actually do not care in practice once the novelty wears off.
Another way to look at it is that people don't even care about stereoscopic vision much in actual life. Humans have a lot of mechanisms for extracting spatial information from the world, and the stereo-ness of it doesn't matter much. About 10% of people don't have it; they can still drive just fine. My grandfather, for example, was blinded in one eye as a kid, and nobody ever noticed. You can try it yourself; go out for a walk and keep one eye closed. Your 3D perception will be basically unaffected except for relatively close objects.
So sure, as I've said repeatedly, anything can happen. I'm just saying there is good reason to believe this will not happen, and excellent reason to not just assume it will. To see this not as a technological problem, but a problem of demand.
As to citations, I'm not sure what you're looking for. I've mentioned the Brewster Stereoscope twice in this thread. Ditto the ViewMaster. What do you need that isn't in the first page of Google results for those?