Hello all,
I'm building a planar-type stereo mirror 3d screen and found out that my 2 hp 23" monitors are linear polarized at 0 degrees instead of 45 degrees. This is a problem as the polarization is effectively unchanged when reflected across the mirror (as opposed to a screen w/ 45 degree polarization which does flip when reflected). I found out here, http://individual.utoronto.ca/iizuka/research/cellophane.htm#cellophane, that you can use regular cellophane sheets - I got a 30 ft. roll from Michael's craft store for $4.49 - to function as a decent half-wave retarder. Using a sheet of that rotated at 45, I can now get one screen's polarization rotated to 90 degrees with the other at 0 degrees and I can get selective blocking with 0/90 degree polarized glasses.

My question is simply if there's is a liquid or gel adhesive out there anyone knows of that can bond this retarder film to the LCD without messing up the polarization? It is possible I might not have searched the right terms, but google didn't really lead me to any consumer-level stuff.

-thanks

I'm a little curious myself and eventhough i've tried a lot of stuffs with polarization i haven't tried just this.
Besides glue i also believe varnish could do well. Beware though: I'm almost positive it has to be waterbased to not dissolve the plastic film/polarizer of the monitor!
You should try the polarizationproperties on a piece of glass glued together with a small piece of retarder first. The testing of polarizationproperties should be easy if you have linear polarizers (polarized glasses will do).
Since you're talking about halfwave retarder i get the impression that you will shift one monitor only. The resulting polarization after a hw-retarder which receives linear polarization will be linear polarized (very "unsharp" one though) and therefore i recommend using one extra polarizer. I think the ghosting will be just too much otherwise. It's not worse than that you can add this later on.

Another option: You could also try going for qw-retarders (single layer cellophane might work as it) and attach one film to each monitor with correct orientation. The result will be circular polarization and will work with regular real-d glasses. Circular tends to ghost a slight bit more than linear but this solution might in this case be more attractive.
Cheers!

Thanks for the info. I've got some water-based varnish that I'll do a test with. Yeah, I'm not sure if the cellophane is doing a half wave delay or quarter, I think I may grab another polarizer to see if that helps in the final result. The cellophane itself does block out the screen, but it's kind of purplish so that makes me wonder if a linear polarizer would help clean it up to make it full black to the one eye. It's weird though, the cellophane does a better job in transmitting (in 'on' state) than it does blocking or in the 'off' state if that makes sense. Any cheap places you know of for those linear polarizers other than ebay?
thanks again

I've had very different results using cellophane and while some says it's fine for retarders i had everything from qw to almost hw and other strange phenomenas from a single sheet. If one fabric doesn't work well, try another.
Your post makes me curious: You say that the cellophane itself blocks the screen? Is it without glasses/extra polarizers? In that case your cellophane also functions a bit like a polarizer and is most probably useless in an application like this.
If you use a qw or hw retarder (hw=two qw-retarders aligned properly on each other) they shouldn't in any way alter the image of your monitor since they're transparent. The actual blocking/extinction is accomplished when an extra polarizer is added.

When i experimented with this i got material from two sources. One is polarization.com (us) and the other was a deliveryagent of physic-kits for schools and universities (located in sweden but don't remember their name).

Sorry about the confusion - I meant to say when I view through the glasses, the cellophane in the right orientation will block the screen and results in a dark purple color. I will check out the poraization.com site. Thanks for that.

Two questions:
What is the technology of your screens (IPS, TN etc)?

Do you want to play with it? If yes, how do you plan to do it? Because iZ3D driver is the only that support stereo-mirror setup and iZ3D is dead. Or have you find a hardware stereoscopic demultiplexer capable to drive a planar?

Guig2000 - The screens are the IPS type.

I was able to use an AMD Firepro card I already had to give me the horizontal mirror flip. There is an option to enable this under "AMD FirePro Settings". Check the "Enable Quad Buffer Stereo" button and then choose the "Passive with Horizontal Invert (Dual Head)" option from the drop down menu.

That craft store cellophane makes a decent half-wave retarder. Games and 3D videos look great with very little ghosting. I ended up just taping the cellophane to the screen's outer bezel. I tried gluing it but there were constant bubbles and the water-based varnish softened the cellophane so that it ripped whenever I tried to smooth out the bubbles. The tape method for attaching the cellophane half-wave retarder works well - simply stretch the cellophane and secure it at several places around around the edge with masking tape.
A second polarizer film would probably eliminate all the ghosting but, for now, it looks good enough