At the moment, you can get the early bird discount which gets you the monitor and the lifetime software for 399.
For realtime 3D conversion you need a 3000 series GPU or a certain type of Mac
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/owl3d/owl3d-shift-the-glasses-free-3d-portal-for-your-pc
I imagine you haven't tried it. Just like AI can create images, it's relying on AI to detect depth.
It's not perfect, but just like how it was always "impossible to do that CSI thing of zoom in and enhance", and yet it kind of is possible now with things like Topaz AI.
Similar with 3D AI stuff.
Yes, you're right that Topaz AI is guessing when it upscales, but it guesses well enough that it feels like the science fiction bullcrap that was CSI "zoom and enhance".
The 3D depth detection is guessing and it can guess wrong, but it guesses right well enough that it serves it's purpose of feeling like a 3D movie.
There's some badly converted 3D movies where they barely did the bare minimum to slap a 3D label on it.
Owl3D can sometimes look better 3D than some studio 3D conversions.
It doesn't match crafted well done 3D, not by a long shot, but it's still good.
I'll put it like this. There was a fake 3D that was pretty terrible in the early days of VR that essentially made the left half of the image lag one frame behind the right image, giving the a poor facsimile of 3D sort of like how cherry candy tastes like cough syrup instead of like cherry.
Well if that old version of achieving a 3D effect was a 2 out of 10 on the scale. And a incredibly artfully crafted human done 3D movie is a 10 out of 10 on the scale, I'd say that Owl3D lands at a 6.5 out of 10 on the scale. It's not bad at all. It won't beat a good 3D native shot or a well crafted 3D conversion, but for being able to view anything in 3D at all times, it's sufficient.
Yes it's not been adopted because of lack of content, but this doesn't have lack of content. It has the ability to display native 3D, but also converts in real time anything you put on the screen. A youtube video, a movie, video game, gets converted in real time. So that solves the lack of content issue.
The other diffference is because of eye tracking you don't need that "sweet spot" that other 3D monitors need before that ghosting shows up. The eyetracking makes the 3D track wherever you're looking.