Stereo 3D addon - works! Just final touches

[Tau Alpha]

For all the talk of Stereo 3D builds of Celestia (from as far back as 2006 or so) I have not found anything on the Motherlode nor any other user websites.

So I have built my own.
It has variable (auto and manual) adjustments for interocular displacement and convergence/toe in.

I designed it for a realtime environment - by which I mean stereo wall projection with an audience. I have found it to work very well, it is very smooth as it moves from target to target with manual overrides for those who want extreme stereo 3D effects..... careful! get dizzy very quickly....


***EDIT
Remainder of post erased, as the "problem" is no more.
It was a Euler angle thing, I had forgotten that early in the code I had placed some orientation bits that made it easy to get bearings on a couple of things, and that was messing up the calculations.
Is all good! I am just putting some touches on it, so others will find it easy to use.
***


Cheers!

EDIT: clarify a couple of terms.
EDIT2: fixed problem! - exceedingly simple once I saw it.

[Tau Alpha]

Quiet forum, no one with any input?

The 3D Stereo projection works beautifully!


EDIT: erased detailing of "problem", which as stated in first post was just a couple of lines of code I had placed early on and forgotten to remove.


Anyway I am onto the next step - building a dome.
Just a small one with 3 metres diameter.
This was the plan from the start.
I've done some warping tests, still developing a good solution for a stereo Celestia.
Looking at OpenGL mesh warping for the two projector outputs.
Anyway..... projector night coming up!! wooooo!!!!

[Chuft-Captain]

Could be interesting if done well...

How is the effect? Does it seem like you are truly immersed... or more like 3D TV?
What technique are you using to separate and synchronize the 2 projections?

Are any special eye-glasses required?

[Tau Alpha]

Could be interesting if done well...

How is the effect?
Does it seem like you are truly immersed... or more like 3D TV?

This is pseudo-3D from a 2D surface. The same as 3DTV, Cinema 3D and even those GREEN + RED comic books for those who remember them. The effect is the same.

Feeling "truly immersed" is an irony, as 3D pictures that give this feeling are have the depth perception amplified to a point that make people go WOW!!!..... just as surround sound which feels "immersive" have sounds separated to a more unreal level that will typically be experienced in real life.

What technique are you using to separate and synchronize the 2 projections?

In a nutshell, LEFT and RIGHT observer cameras are attached to the user's viewpoint. As the user moves around the Celestia universe, and depending on distance to current target & what manner of motion the user is in, the cameras change their convergence (how cross-eyed the cameras need to be to focus on the object - just as humans converge their eyes when focusing on near VS far objects) and also their interocular displacement (how far apart they are from each other). Some people argue against one or the other. There are definately instances when ZERO convergence is best, Celestia is not one of those.

The LEFT and RIGHT views are redrawn whenever the main observer viewport is redrawn. Always in sync.

Are any special eye-glasses required?

Depends on your own set up. Unless you happen to work for Toshiba or whoever and have one of those layered prismatic lens panels (I am guessing not.....) then you need glasses. Everyone will.

But this is external and all depends on you.
If you only intend one or few people at a time to see 3D Celestia, you will probably go for an LCD monitor that supports stereo 3D through shutter glasses.

If you want a larger audience, then use dual video projectors with polarising filters, or colour band separation (google Infinitec), or even good old RED + GREEN cellophane.


EDIT: typo