3D stereo anaglyph view for WWJ

[patmurris]

3D is not really 3D without a stereo view. I just put together a simple AnaglyphSceneController to be used in place of the SDK BasicSceneController. Get the code here.


It only works with a tilted view and the frame rate does drop a bit, but it works quite well in most situations, especially when close to some dramatic relief.

[TomServo]

Nice. Does it seem to perform any better than the WW.Net plug-in?

[patmurris]

My old video board could not render WW.net anaglyphs, so i didnt play much with it...
Each frame has to be rendered twice - no choice, so there is an overhead, but it is acceptable.

[patmurris]

BTW: if anybody wants a couple pairs of red/cyan paper glasses, i'd be happy to mail some free - just send me a private message with your address.

I'm always keen on promoting stereoscopy, i really enjoy it myself - and always shoot stereo pairs with my camera when appropriate and feasible (see some aerial anaglyph shots here).

Anaglyph is not the best viewing approach but by far the most convenient on our actual 2D monitors - unless you're good at ocular tai chi .

[AndrewW]

I would like to get WWJ to work in stereo on a Geowall projection system. This is simply a dual projection stereo view using passive polarized glasses. How easy is it to completely separate the left and right eye views and place them side by side without filtering the colors? I looked at Pat's code and saw the place where the two views are separated, but I am not a Java programmer and couldn't get anywhere by trial and error. Any advice would be greatly welcomed.

This is for a K-12 geoscience education project I am working on.

Thanks!

[patmurris]

Do you need two separate video sources - like a dual screen setup?

If so one way would be to have a second window that would be 'driven' from the main app and would display one eye point of view - the main app would show the other. Then you could have each on a different screen or video source.

I'm not sure how easy it would be to code, but it should not be that difficult.

[AndrewW]

The desktop extends across the two projectors, so I have a wide 2048 x 768 desktop with the left half (1024 x 768) going to one projector and the other half going to the other projector. So, either two separate WWJ windows or one large 2048 x 768 window with two views would work. The projectors each have polarizing filters at 90 degrees to each other so that the images can be projected on top of each other on the screen.

Could all of this be accomplished in the SceneController.java file? If not, could you tell me which files I would need to modify? I'd like to learn how to do this myself. Can you recommend a Java book that covers this sort of operation?

Thanks again!

[AndrewW]

Hi Pat,

I think I am making progress, but wanted to see if I am on the right track.

Is this what you were thinking?
1. Somehow invoke: WorldWindowGLCanvas(WorldWindowGLCanvas shareWith)
in the ApplicationTemplate file. (or is this just going to give me two mirrored windows??)

2. Somehow send the right eye drawing to the new window from the AnaglyphSceneContoller file.

Thanks!

[patmurris]

Andrew, sorry i didnt get back to you sooner, but i have limited experience with 'multiple view' display from a common GL canvas, so i'm not sure how best to proceed.

I believe there are at least two path to implement such a dual view. One would involve two gl canvases, the other could use just one but have the second view as a plain AWT component displaying a 2d image. In the latter approach, you would have to render the first eye in WW, grab the frame buffer and send it to the AWT component image, then render the second eye. I'm not sure i'm making sense though

I'll try to get some hints from the team.

[AndrewW]

No problem, I realize that you are busy and I am a complete novice.

I do understand your schemes. I like the second one as it might be less cpu intensive.

My other thought was to pre-program a flight path and capture it with a screen capture tool like Camtasia and then run it a second time using the anaglyph offset routine (minus the color filtering). I could then combine the two views in QuickTime Pro for a canned presentation. But live is so much more fun

I do think that getting the dual view going would be very popular at the 80+ universities that have GeoWall (http://geowall.geo.lsa.umich.edu/home.html) stereo projections systems in classrooms.

Also, I wanted to mention that it does work to take stereo photos looking straight down (no tilt). The USGS has taken aerial photos of practically every square inch of the US. There is enough overlap in these photos to produce a great stereo effect using a pair with a tabletop viewer. The same can be done in WorldWind with good results.

Thanks again for all of your help!
Andrew