Nicole Express looks at the Sega 3-D glasses from turn of the century.

Active shutter glasses are used with a console which sends a signal sent to the glasses tells one LCD panel, or the other, to “blank”, preventing the eye from seeing out of it. This is pretty much the same thing as an LCD game, but even simpler, since there’s only two.

The glasses are, in a sense, passive devices. Even though they’re called “active shutter” glasses. That is to say, they are entirely controlled by the signals sent by the console. Liquid crystal needs an AC signal to activate or deactivate, and I’ve captured one of the channels on my oscilloscope.

…up-front, we know the limitations of the Master System hardware; like anything that runs in a progressive mode on a standard television of the era, it can only run at 60Hz. (yes, 240p is fake and a lie, but close enough for us) As noted above, the glasses work by choosing one eye at a time. So any game is going to have to run at 30Hz. (25Hz for PAL types).

See how Nicole analyses games and software to show you the details and how a modern LCD is not the display you want to use in the post here.