3D Spiral Stereograph

Post by **JS Lemming** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 4:55 pm

I think stereography is krunk as heck, so I wrote a little program that generated these koo 3D spiral things. The first one is a spinning spiral. When you look at it (in 3D) it looks like you're looking into a cone that could suck something up if you threw it in.

This next one is just a spiral that looks flat at first but then stretches out towards you and back.

If you're not sure how to view these, read this quote.

http://www.jrsdesign.net/cross_parallel_viewing.html wrote:...viewers should start by letting the eyes relax while looking at a stereo pair so that the eyes will naturally want to point straight ahead. As they begin to point straight ahead, the eyes will be pointing at their respective images. As the eyes relax you should notice similar objects in each of the pairs moving toward each other until they overlap each other. When the images overlap completely, you will become aware of three side by side images. The center one will be in stereo. Placing a sheet of cardboard or any other stiff piece of paper, acting as a separator, vertically between the images sometimes helps beginners. The most important thing to remember is that similar objects in each image must be on the same level...

Now, the spiral things I made aren't that super great, but that is because it's just thin little lines. A project I plan to do pretty soon (when I get some time) is to make a first person shooter that utilizes stereography. I've been reading up on raycasting (check it out if you haven't heard of it, it's very cool) and I think the concept is simple enough for even me.

It'll be for the Dreamcast because I can utilize the PVR for scaling images fast. It will work like any other raycasting engine except there will be two scenes rendered side by side. The distance an object or wall is directly in front of the player will determine the point of focus.

Now, if I remember correctly, some people find it very difficult to blend the two stereo images together when they are sitting far away, as a TV would be. But I think I have a solution to that. I wrote a program a while back that allowed the user to "zoom" in or out on a stereo pair. Since it is much easier to blend them together when they are small images, the user can zoom out on the pair and then blend them together. Once they are in focus, the user slowly zooms in on the pair... as far as they can go without losing the blend. I've tried it and it works. I was able to look at a stereo pair about 75% the size of my monitor. Which was impossible for me without this technique.

So, what do you guys think?