SAN DIEGO — When daredevil directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor were weighing how to film Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, they came to the conclusion that shooting in 3-D would be a waste of time and money for their outrageous take on Marvel Comics’ cursed biker.

“For us, there’s no point to it,” says Taylor in the Wired.com video interview above, adding that the conversion process is so advanced that “you don’t have to follow any rules when you shoot — you can shoot through dust, through shafts of light with little particles hanging in the air.”

That’s perfect for the directors, who work under the name Neveldine/Taylor and made the highly adrenalized Crank movies. They’re known for their death-defying approaches to capturing radical footage, and even the most cutting-edge 3-D shooting rigs would put a damper on their wild style.

“We shoot on rollerblades, we hang out of helicopters, we hang out of cars,” Neveldine says. “We can’t do this with these giant 3-D cameras. Maybe one day, when they shrink ‘em down.”

There’s plenty of debate in Hollywood over the merits of shooting in native 3-D versus the oft-maligned 2-D-to-3-D conversion process. But it all boils down to hardware versus software, says Taylor.

“Software is always going to win,” he says. “[3-D conversion software developers] can move at the speed of light. Next year, they’ll be twice as good and half the price…. Those guys are killing it now, so think of what it’s going to be like a year from now.”

The hellacious Ghost Rider footage screened at Comic-Con International this year looked pretty stunning in 3-D, so perhaps Neveldine and Taylor have hit upon the winning combination for their radical vision of the character. The directors talk about their unique workflow, the future of 3-D and what it’s like to be “eye socket to eyeball” with Ghost Rider’s flaming skull in this video, conducted in the Wired Cafe during Comic-Con.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, starring Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze (aka Ghost Rider), is slated for release Feb. 17, 2012.