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Posted by: elakdawalla Aug 17 2012, 04:40 PM

Some discussion started in the "Curiosity Image Retrieval Tools" thread about technology for viewing 3D images that goes beyond crossed-eye stereo and red-blue glasses. I'm interested in taking the plunge into an actual 3D display. Any of you guys have experience/advice to offer? If I can collect some comments and reviews I'll write up a blog post about it. If you mention a product please also provide a link to it within your post. List price would be very helpful too.

I have no experience with 3D displays but I LOVE my http://www.fujifilm.com/products/3d/camera/. While its image quality and speed are not as good as my Canon Sureshot, having 3D photos and movies of my children is awesome. List price is $600 but http://www.amazon.com/Fujifilm-FinePix-Real-3D-W3/dp/B003ZHV70M is currently offering it for about $250.

Posted by: 3d_mars Aug 17 2012, 05:52 PM

As I mentioned in the other thread I've owned the http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&partNumber=HMZT1 (retail $799) for several months. I've used it to view MER and MSL images with spectacular results. Rocks "pop" out from the surface and the images are much more pleasant to view. The terrain seems real and tangible. For me the biggest advantage of this unit over other 3D display technologies are the high quality OLED displays, one for each eye. Since each eye has a dedicated display there is no ghosting typical with single display units. The displays are very bright, with deep color and CRT-level blacks. In addition to displaying 3D images, I've also used it with google maps and flight simulators, and to play a variety of games and 3D movies on both PC and PS3.

The disadvantages of this unit are price, weight, and comfort. For many people it is too heavy to wear for extended periods of time. I solved this problem with a suspension system which allows me to wear it for hours with no discomfort. Another disadvantage is the experience cannot be shared without removing the unit to give to someone else to wear.

Posted by: dvandorn Aug 17 2012, 09:51 PM

At a base level, viewing something in 3D must involve making each eye see slightly different versions of each image. The red/blue glasses do this with a base color set, the 3D Imax movies do it by applying polarized gradients on each image so that each eye's polarized film on their 3D glasses only lets in that eye's image. Unfortunately, I don't believe they've figured out how to polarize different images differently on a computer or TV display, at least not yet.

The 3D televisions work by aligning separate images in tune with a set of glasses that blocks one eye for the fraction of a second the image that's displayed is for the other eye.

So, unless you can build a 3D tank with pixels that set in three dimensions, I think we're stuck with some kind of glasses for 3D effects for the foreseeable future. The option where the monitor image is displayed twice, once each in the lenspieces of a pair of goggles, will give you the best overall image but as has been mentioned can cause headaches from both the goggle arrangement and from the weight of those goggle setups at present.

That's the best rundown I can give on the options at present for 3D viewing.

-the other Doug

Posted by: RoverDriver Aug 17 2012, 11:09 PM

Here at JPL I have seen lenticular displays which do not require the use of glasses. I do not have stereo perception so I cannot comment on the quality of the 3D display. My only hope is that holographic displays will be available before MSL mission is over.

Paolo

Posted by: dvandorn Aug 18 2012, 03:08 AM

Lenticular displays? Kewl -- I'd have to think that would be really sensitive to head/eye positioning, though.

Working for a big cable company, I've been able to see a lot of the various attempts at 3D TV over the past five years or so, culminating in what has finally been marketed to the public (the special glasses that blink each eye on and off in sync with the interleaved R/L HDTV images). It does work and provides acceptable 3D images for most people, but we've also found that it's sensitive to view angle, so you can't have more than two or three people comfortably viewing 3D TVs right now (some 3D TVs only support use of two pairs of glasses at a time, in fact.)

Also, because the eyes are seeing interleaved images, some people get headaches and nausea from having one eye blocked half the time and the other eye blocked the other half of the time, 180 degrees out of sync. Granted it's at something like 30 cycles per second per eye, which is not noticeable consciously. But in some people it does generate a variety of physiological responses.

-the other Doug

Posted by: Ondaweb Aug 19 2012, 11:38 PM

Interesting. I came here because I have a Panasonic Viera 3d TV. I've watched many 3d movies on it and played a couple of 3d PS3 games on it. I very much enjoy the 3d display. It adds a lot of realism to good 3d media. The reason I came to this thread is because I was hoping there was a way that the 3d images posted here could be "intercepted" some point in the process of making an anaglyph and "diverted" to another stream that would produce 3d images for display on my and other tv's rather than just the red/blue anaglyphs. I'm hoping we could find a way to take a stereo pair developed by one of the wizards here and figure out a way to convert it. One thought I have is that since I have an AppleTV and airplay, I can display whatever is on my computer on my TV. If there was someway to display two images side by side (or one above the other) there might be a way to get the tv to display them as 3d (since those are operating modes by which the TV displays 3d content.) I'd be interesting in working on this project if someone knows enough to suggest a method.

Posted by: mcaplinger Aug 20 2012, 12:09 AM

Stereo Photo Maker ( http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/ ) can save a stereo pair out in MPO format, which is a Fuji format for putting two views in a single image file. LG 3D televisions can display these files in 3D directly by just putting them on a USB drive and plugging them into the TV. I'm not sure if the Panasonic supports this format but it would be worth looking into.

Posted by: Ondaweb Aug 20 2012, 12:15 AM

Great idea, I'll check it out. In the meantime, I found this http://3dmedia.com/our-products/3dcomposer which is another program (PC) that lets you create and edit photos too. There's a quick tutorial on how it works.

Posted by: Ondaweb Aug 20 2012, 02:05 AM

Also, I found this brief http://3dmedia.com/news/20/How-to-View-3D-Photos-on-Your-3D-TV with some potentially useful suggestions re displaying 3d images on 3d capable TVs.

Posted by: elakdawalla Aug 20 2012, 04:37 PM

I just discovered that some laptop manufacturers have products with 3D displays (glasses required). I'm curious if anyone has ever seen/used one of these.

http://us.toshiba.com/computers/research-center/technology-guides/nvidia-3d-vision/
http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/search-SimpleOfferSearch?SearchTerm=ENVY173D&cattitle=ENVY173D

Posted by: Ondaweb Aug 21 2012, 02:58 AM

After a fair amount of effort, I succeeded in downloading MPO files from the net http://3dmedia.com/gallery/ to my computer, put them on a usb stick, stuck it into my PS3 and viewed 3d images using the PS3 app "PlayMemories". So clearly mpo files constitute a standard for 3d that allows some systems to display 3d images. In addition to 3d TVs (which would need some system/software to display MPOs) there are 3d laptops that can do it as well as 3d video cards that can be added to PC's. I haven't checked yet re any ways of doing this on the Mac, but will check that next. The free software SPM http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/ will run on the Mac using bootcamp or VMware Fusion and it creates/edits 3d pics but you can still only view red/blue anaglyphs.

It would be great if those making the anaglyph could post a MPO version for download, or maybe the aligned pair that could then be converted to MPO (though I'm not sure how to do that yet.)

Posted by: elakdawalla Aug 21 2012, 03:12 AM

Stereophotomaker will do it. It's free, it's simple, anyone who is interested in 3D images ought to download it.

http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/

For some more fun 3D snapshots, I put all my .mpo photos from my 3D camera from my trip into the high bay to see Curiosity up close here:
https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/emily/curiosity_3d.rar
(150 MB)

Posted by: Ondaweb Aug 22 2012, 01:59 PM

Emily, thanks for those pics of Curiosity. An impressive feat of engineering, all the more evident when seen up close and in 3d like that. BTW I found another possibility for 3D on a laptop http://www.spatialview.com/product/3deescreen/ I don't know how well it really performs though.

Roy

Posted by: fredk Aug 23 2012, 07:31 PM

I could save MPO versions with my red/green anaglyphs. But then I'd need somewhere to post them - I don't know if this forum accepts that format for upload. Also it's not clear how many people would be using them, considering the extra work/bandwidth involved.

How established is that format? I'm not sure it's worth using a format that may be superceeded in a year or whatever.

Posted by: Brian Lynch Aug 26 2012, 06:45 PM

Thanks for suggesting StereoPhotoMaker, it works beautifully. I am able to open an anaglyph image and re-save it as a .jps or .mpo file for viewing with shutter glasses. Don't worry about uploading the .jps files, since the few of us with 3D displays can just do the conversion on our end. Perhaps I will add the converted files to my Dropbox and share the links.

One thing that I find disappointing is that it appears none of the colour MastCam images from left and right cameras are taken at the same time, making it difficult to make colour stereo images.

Posted by: Ondaweb Sep 4 2012, 06:23 PM

Emily et. al (if any exist):

Per Brian's response above, he and I have traded 3D images we've made from anaglyphs posted elsewhere in UMSF. To make them available to others, we thought we'd post them here until/unless told otherwise by a moderator. Accordingly, below I post a few MPOs I "made" (i.e., anaglyphs saved in that format via SPM). If anyone wants a particular image converted to MPO let me know and I'll try to do it.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2767430/hypothetical_path_to_glenelg.mpo

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2767430/3d1b.mpo

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2767430/3dmound.mpo

Posted by: stewjack Sep 4 2012, 09:47 PM

I have red/blue glasses and didn't think I could view mpo files. However, I downloaded them out of curiosity. I was surprised to discover that my NVIDIA control panel allowed me to view them as regular anaglyphs using a program called 3D Vision Photo Viewer. It takes an extra step, as I have to download the graphic file, but is a minor problem. Other members of the UMSF board might want to check if they can open them with some photo viewer program.

Jack

Posted by: Ondaweb Sep 5 2012, 12:07 AM

Here's another mpo.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2767430/scour3.mpo

Posted by: Ondaweb Sep 6 2012, 08:14 PM

Here are some mpo's of the outcrop Oppy is investigating.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2767430/1P400010793EFFBVLOP2407R2M1.mpo

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2767430/1P400010571EFFBVLOP2407R2M1.mpo

Very interesting rocks.

Posted by: eoincampbell Sep 7 2012, 01:37 AM

Any Mac users with similar free software? I've tried a handful : RedGreen, Xstereo.., AnaglyphMaker... all are either unstable or keep quitting/crashing and I resort to Gimp(not very good at-takes too long!)

Posted by: Greenish Sep 29 2012, 09:09 PM

For using StereoPhoto Maker on the Mac, I just found this: http://www.3dphoto.net/forum/index.php?topic=2585.0 ... it is free, easy and works!

Summary: uses WineBottler to make a standalone Mac app that runs the stereo photo maker .exe file in an instance of Wine.

Posted by: aventor.com Dec 4 2014, 06:30 PM

Could try stereo master. http://kibernetik.pro/home/Stereo_Master.html