wine users - Jan 2009 - feature idea for wine : stereo 3D

NVidia is pushing a 200 dollar product which is nothing more than shutter
glasses and ties into DirectX 10, encouraging people to move to Vista, which I
personally believe is yet another nail in the coffen of closing the PC platform.

Now I think a better idea would be to add a feature to wine that permits stereo
imaging to be added to any program that makes use of 3D features in wine, to
somehow establish a standard for providing this service. Proving to the
consumers that you don't need special drivers, monitors or hardware to get
3D stereo vision from any application.. It would be one more thing that Wine
provides that Microsoft doesn't to those who haven't bought Vista, and
furthermore a reason to use wine..

And it would, I believe, be so easy to add.. 

I purchased some cheap stereo shutter glasses from ebay that uses what 
looks like stereo headphone attachment, for 9 dollars, and this wasn't some
crappy Elsa glasses that were put out 6 years ago, this was new, high quality, I
will do a demonstration of the glasses on youtube.. I connected it to the
microphone port of a sound adapter and the glasses darkened, so it's likely
all that is needed is some way
to hack it to work via the sound adapter of a computer. Where I bought them was
"ultimate3dheaven.com" via Ebay..  I foresee a whole 3D visual
industry that
has not evolved because, like linux and wine, is seen as "for
hobbyists".

The advantages of stereo vision:
- perception of photo manipulation 
- more tangible representation of goods (ebay)
- ability to recognize more things in a stereo photo than would be possible in
2D.
- ability to stop time and observe imperceivable things like water suspended in
air
- ability to see mountains that appear to our eyes as flat in 3D as if looking
at a model in clay.
- perception of reflections: glass, water, smoke, anisotropical effects like
glitter, brushed metal, suede.
- the perception of increased resolution due to the added resolution of the
combined imagery.

Wine could bring this to anyone regardless of income level, with as little as
red/green, cyan,red, blue/yellow,cross-eyed/parallel layering, or as advanced as
the use of lenticular monitors, polarized projection or lcd shutter frame
synchronization.

The only thing I believe that has kept this from being brought to the PC
platform is the misperception that it is a "gimmick", you have two
eyes not one this should have been on a computer from day one.. The use of 3D
graphics libraries should make this more accessible.. But it seems that guys
like NVidia only pull out such technologies when they need to make a quick
buck..  Then years down the road they drop it from their drivers..

If anyone wants to discuss this with me, go to youtube and check out the user
"rofthorax":

http://www.youtube.com/user/rofthorax 

I pushed the development of blender (one of the few tech supports who
volunteered their time with help given by Ton Roosendal before there was a [1.5]
manual for blender). My interest in blender was the need for a 3D tool that
artists could own that wouldn't move away from them as a result of license
servers and software managed EULA, a technique of controlling the boundry of
ownership from those who pay for the software to those who dictate the use of
the software regardless of need.

This is a revolution happening in steps to give people access to things that are
so obvious, that should have been there yesterday but have not happened probably
because "there is no market for it".. That's where open source is
different, open source
development doesn't have to have a market, it just needs a chance to exist,
to be
seen and heard, to be perceived and worked with.. It can start at least with 
and idea, build into a test, become a library, folded into an utility, created
as an application and adopted as a standard, developing into a new industry..
This is how new jobs are created.. Someone reveals something that wasn't
there before and others perceive applications for that and an industry
develops..

Stereo vision is not just for games, or movies.. It could be used in the selling
of items over the Internet, observing the interior of a new car with accuracy,
observing the texture of a Van Gogh Oil painting to see the sand embedded from
the beach where Van Gogh sat, seeing a prototype before it is made with both
eyes, seeing at scales of dimension beyond what is humanly possible (such as
perceiving the soil wasting of mining experiments in a way no 2D image can
present), working at scales one can't normally (robot with stereo vision and
arms, controlled by someone with keyboard and stereo glasses), seeing beyond the
glare of a jewelery cabinet window to see the jewels inside. When people see
something with both eyes, it has a tendency to be that much more convincing and
is likely to motivate a sale like no single image can.

All that is required is first steps.. And I think a really easy way to do this
would be to add this to the directX implementation in Wine such that any 3D
scene can be augmented with stereovision (at least color separated anaglyph),
but without modification of the API.. Offer that which Microsoft will not offer
themselves in interest of leveraging peoples adoption of a OS that will likely
lead to the closing of the PC architecture as well as the accessibility to
hardware that Linux adopters can use.

One way to change the future, invent it.

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 11:00 AM, rofthorax <wineforum-user at winehq.org>
wrote:
> Wine could bring this to anyone regardless of income level, with as little
as red/green, cyan,red, blue/yellow,cross-eyed/parallel layering, or as advanced
as the use of lenticular monitors, polarized projection or lcd shutter frame
synchronization.
>
If I am correct what you're looking for is Nvidia's Stereoscopic
drivers which are available here (
http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d_stereo.html ).

Since you're wanting to use this on Linux you shouldn't need anything
apart from the nvidia driver you already have installed on your
system. Here is a guide on how to turn it on (
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=40768 )

Andrew Fenn wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 11:00 AM, rofthorax <wineforum-user at
winehq.org> wrote:
> 
> > Wine could bring this to anyone regardless of income level, with as
little as red/green, cyan,red, blue/yellow,cross-eyed/parallel layering, or as
advanced as the use of lenticular monitors, polarized projection or lcd shutter
frame synchronization.
> > 
> > 
> 
> If I am correct what you're looking for is Nvidia's Stereoscopic
> drivers which are available here (
> http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d_stereo.html ).
> 
> Since you're wanting to use this on Linux you shouldn't need
anything
> apart from the nvidia driver you already have installed on your
> system. Here is a guide on how to turn it on (
> http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=40768 )

If I'm right that only support NVidia cards from the 7 series, we are on 9
and those drivers are no longer updated..

Anyhow that's NVidia.. I'm talking beyond drivers, beyond hardware.. 
I'm talking about allowing anyone regardless of graphics hardware the
ability to access stereo presentation.. This should happen in the libraries that
provide 3D services (directx and opengl) not the hardware driver implementation,
because it is not tied to the hardware implementation.. You won't get this
with DirectX 9 because Microsoft is using DirectX10 to leverage consumers onto
Vista regardless of the needs of the consumers, which doesn't justify the
purchase of a new OS.

Anyone having had a OpenGL programming course as I, know this.. It's just a
matter of rendering two images where there is one, offsetting the camera in the
computation by a small delta.. DirectX is a bit more than a offshoot of opengl
but it must use the same matrix multiplication math that opengl uses with the
same or similar 3D pipeline.

I'm saying this should not be left to the hardware manufacturers to
implement but should be a feature of the 3D library that interfaces with the
hardware, because getting hardware developers to agree on standards such as for
stereovision is like herding cats, they each want a way to leverage the
technology in their favor.. The reality of  3D vision is it's implementable
at a higher level than the 3D library, it only requires the manipulation of the
code before it gets passed on to the 3D hardware..

Example: 
Shutter glasses: synchronize left and right eyes with odd and even frames, odds
for left, even for right, using a normal double buffering scheme.
1. show left view, left lcd frame clear, right lcd frame opaque
2. show right view, right lcd frame clear, left lcd frame opaque
3. show left view, left lcd frame clear, right lcd frame opaque

Note this is easier because all you have to do is alternate the placement of the
camera, you don't need to render two views at once.. Remember we are double
buffering here..

For anaglyph: 
Render both left and right frames (this slows down the graphics card because you
have to do both at once in the hidden buffer), multiply each by a frame of color
and average the two images together into the hidden buffer.. You could reduce
the frame rate and hold the double buffers for two frames per frame.

For lenticular display (note, lenticular displays have the ability to present
more than one stereo view), this involves moving the camera multiple times, one
per interlaced lenticular view. I think there are some lenticular displays that
can present 5 views, so all you need to do is render 5 views, creating one image
five times as wide as before, displayed on the monitor appears of a holographic
quality (requires much faster card).
How lenticular displayes work, if you've ever used a glass thermometer you
understand the concept,  a surface filled with thousands of small ridged lenses
running vertically down the display. Each lens presents one of 5 slivers of
imagery,  your left eye sees one line magnified, your right eye sees another
line magnified, shifting your position shifts which lines behind the curved lens
are magnified.  Also the resolution of the lenses determines if a 3D image can
be presented, children will not be able to perceive as many dimensions as adults
due to the amount of eye separation, so not everyone will see the effect.. I
could have that switched around. Turning a lenticular display on its side
presents a animation effect because both eyes will see the same image, but
tilting the display horizontally produces a sort of animation (as found in cheap
plastic ridged lenticular stickers in cracker jack boxes).

There is also another method of creating 3D imagery using the side to side
motion that takes advantage of a concept that your brain processes imagery more
slowly with less light, thats where the glasses had a darker lens on one eye and
a clear lens on the other.. The effect alone can be used with any video image
where video is constantly panning from say left to right if the right eye is
darkened (right perspective is delayed, left eye sees left perspective, as image
passes to right perspective, left eye is focused on next image to right, and
right eye is starting to perceive the right perspective).. At least that is my
explanation for the effect..

In every stereo vision effect, one eye has to see something different, that is
how the effect is perceived.. There is also a 3D effect that someone came up
with where prism refraction is used to present colors as being in front of other
colors.. Then there are effects like Single Image Random Dot Stereograms (those
noisy images that were popular in the 90s).

I've thought about writing a book on this stuff, but I think it could be a
rather thin book.. The technology is not at all hard to understand, what is
harder to understand is why it's been left to hardware developers to
implement, why it is not presented between the graphics driver and the 3D
library.. Wine as a unique position which no OS has, it has the capability to
have 3D vision implemented in the translation of instructions to the backend
libraries (OpenGL) or in libraries that don't support 3D vision, like stereo
support in DirectX 9 API implementation without the consent of Microsoft. Just
imagine if pieces of wine code could be used to replace DirectX on the windows
platform and add features to XP that exist in DirectX10.. Ever thought about
that? This could be one of those.. But it needs to start on a platform that is
uniformly accessible, and I doubt ATI and NVidia are going to agree on one..
This is a job for open source..


I've been told "if youare so smart, why don't you do it"..
Because I need help, and that starts with making others aware of the idea and
the need..