I disagree with you. I don't think 3D movies at the theater would have been significantly more successful if the visual quality were the same, but glasses-free. If someone won't wear lightweight polarized glasses to a movie, that means they feel the stereoscopy either adds very little, or even takes away from the experience (an exception may be people who already wear glasses and find it inconvenient to wear a second pair). If glasses had been required to watch movies in color, I don't think color movies would have been a failure, though B&W movies would probably be more common than they are now.
The 3DS was a one-off. There are a plethora of reasons it isn't really a good judge of consumer sentiment around stereoscopy. Nintendo didn't bring 3D to their next major console release. Also, there was no competing identical product without the stereoscopy option until later in its life. The stereoscopy was optional and didn't degrade the visual performance for people who chose not to use it. Nintendo only sold half as many 3DS systems as DS systems. Nintendo released games exclusive to the system, so people couldn't buy a non-3D version of the same game.
Avatar in 3D was also a big hit, but didn't start a long-lasting trend.
The biggest change with the current and future versions of 3D is that it can be responsive to changes in viewer perspective. And in the case of VR, it can show things with correct scale, which vastly increases the intuitiveness of interacting with 3D content—I can even juggle 4 virtual objects at once in VR, because I can transfer my real life skill to the VR realm (though I can juggle 5 objects in real life, so it's not quite the same).
Also, the Vision Pro has uses beyond just the novelty of stereoscopic visuals. People may be more likely to view stereoscopic video if they already using the VR/AR system because of its other advantages.
😂
