Post-Conjunction at Home Plate North, Getting ready to leave Options

[fredk]

Well, I don't know if there is a proper name for that style of anaglyph, but "constant-depth" seems to fit. Have a look at the recent official Bonestell stereo pan on this page. (I was looking at the "medium image" version.)

Look for example at the far right side of that stereo pan. The foreground surface and rocks appear set slightly back from the surface of your monitor. An easy way to see this is to place the mouse cursor at the patch of surface in question and then you can see that the surface in the foreground is slightly behind the mouse cursor.

Now, still on the far right side of that pan, do the same for Husband Hill. You'll see that Husband Hill appears at the same depth as the monitor surface. (You can also see this by noticing that the two colour channels line up for Husband Hill.) But the background/horizon should appear much farther back than the foreground! So in this case the depth is going the wrong way: in the official Bonestell stereo pan the foreground appears farther than the horizon, at least on the right side of the pan. Compare with James's stunning anaglyph pan.

You can see similar effects all over the official pan, and on other official pans. I believe what has been done to the official pans is that a shear has been introduced to one (or both) of the stereo channels to "flatten" the stereo effect over the range of distances from foreground to horizon. Think of what a bare, unprocessed anaglyph would look like that extends from nearby ground to the horizon. If you line the two channels up at the horizon, they get progressively out of alignment towards the foreground.

So you could imagine applying a shear to one frame, that leaves the horizon unchanged at the top, but progressively shifts the pixels to the right or left as you move down the frame to the foreground, in just such a way as to keep the two channels always (nearly) aligned. Then viewing the resulting anaglyph would be like looking perpendicularly at a wall. Of course small hills, rocks, ridges, dunes, etc would still stand out in 3D, since the shear you applied is smooth and gradual.

It looks like this is being done to official stereo pans. I would guess the reason is to make it easier to view a stereo pan that extends over a great range of depth, foreground to horizon. Basically you compress the "dynamic range" of depth greatly. Some people have a very hard time viewing anaglyphs and the more exteme the depth range the harder, I think. And, like I said, you can still see smaller features like ridges, rocks, etc in more or less proper 3D. But I don't like the result!

Sorry about the longwinded response - you can see why I didn't give any details in my previous post!

[djellison]

Ahh - I get what you mean. I got around it when I was doing lots of anaglyphs by co-registering in the middle-ground - but even then, the channels were so seperated at near and far distance, they effect was lost. By 'moderating' the effect, you can, I suspect, get more effect over a greater range, but I can see why some people would like the 'raw and uncut' flavour of anaglyph instead.

You could use MMB - the anaglyphs are au-naturelle in there

[mhoward]

You could use MMB - the anaglyphs are au-naturelle in there

That's a charitable way of describing it. "Minimalistic" might be accurate as well.

[Guest_Oersted_*]

Finally got my computer to crunch out the full Bonestell pan in 3D colour.

Enjoy your stroll around - and try not to trip over any rocks.

James

What a beauty, but could we have it stretched out properly, i.e. flat and tidy?

[djellison]

flat

Spirit wasn't

[jamescanvin]

Spirit wasn't

Exactly. For the best 3D effect the way your eyes look at the anaglyph should be the same as when Spirit looked at it, by keeping it this way it means you don't have to tilt your head or put up with strange distortions. .

I do have both the left and right colour pans made with a flat horizon, so I may try and put them together and see how the it looks when I get the chance.

[Tesheiner]

FWIW, today was a driving sol. Expect pictures from the new site in the next downlink session.

01791::p0685::03::10::0::0::10::0::20::navcam_5x1_az_144_3_bpp
01791::p1206::04::2::0::0::2::0::4::front_hazcam_half_bpp_pri_56
01791::p1214::05::2::0::0::2::0::4::front_hazcam_ultimate_4_bpp
01791::p1306::02::2::0::0::2::0::4::rear_hazcam_half_bpp_pri_56
01791::p1313::02::2::0::0::2::0::4::rear_haz_ultimate_3bpp_pri15

[Guest_Oersted_*]

Spirit wasn't

Our dear Spirit doesn´t have the ankle joint of any field geologist who would have stood in her place, upright, parallel to the gravity vector. I'd like to see the view that field geologist would have had...

I tried fooling around with the half-size version of the panorama in Photoshop (tilting it vertically, then using the "shear" filter, then turning it back to horizontal again). I actually thought it quite pleasant to look at with red-green glasses, the flat horizon was beautiful. Only concession was that it was necessary to tilt my head a bit at times, to get the 3D-effect to click into place. But that felt like a small concession for getting an undistorted pan. Probably not acceptable to casual viewers, but for "pro image peepers" it works, even at the price of a bit of dizziness.

My woeful PS job was so bad that I didn't want to upload it, I hope some of our fantastic image pro's can do it better.

[jamescanvin]

Just for you Oersted.

Flat horizon version, seems to work quite well generally, but there a re a few areas that don't work well. Don't complain to me when it gives you a headache.



And here are the images taken after the drive off HP looking back at the slide. Loving all those disturbed rocks caused by all that trying to get up on top.



James

[ElkGroveDan]

What? No polar version? Where's Phil Stooke when we need him?

[Tesheiner]

He is at the other side of the planet.

[mhoward]

Here's a short movie flying by the depression just to the north east, where Spirit might possibly make it back up onto Home Plate. The empty area is where Spirit is currently located, more or less.

QuickTime 1.8 MB

[jekbradbury]

Wow! How did you make that movie? That looks sort of like MER3DSiteViewer from the "My Personal Mars Rover 3D Program" thread, but I could never make it look like that.

[mhoward]

Wow! How did you make that movie? That looks sort of like MER3DSiteViewer from the "My Personal Mars Rover 3D Program" thread, but I could never make it look like that.

It's generated from the rover 3D data as a programming experiment, and recorded off my Mac using "iShowU". Uses basically the same data as the MER3DSiteViewer, I imagine.

[Phil Stooke]

Gimme a break, I can't be everywhere.

Phil