Luxottica to launch world's first 3D glasses

Italian eyewear giant Luxottica said on Wednesday it would launch the world's first range of glasses for watching 3D films with prescription lenses through its US brand Oakley later this year.

Oakley "has achieved unparalleled visual clarity while extending the wearer's peripheral viewing angle and providing a truer alignment of 3D images," Luxottica said in a statement.

Luxottica said it has been using the workshops of US industry giant DreamWorks Animation for testing.

The company said "premium editions in the new line will be the first 3D eyewear on Earth with optically correct lenses".

The first pairs of 3D glasses will be available in the United States later this year and will be launched in the rest of the world in 2011.

"We are very proud of this technological breakthrough," Andrea Guerra, chief executive of Luxottica, was quoted as saying.

The market for 3D cinema and television viewing is currently booming.

Fuji Chimera, a Japanese economic research centre, said in a study published in July that the number of televisions on the market equipped with 3D technology would constitute around half of the world total by 2015.