| Author | Message | ||
     naliXL Rating: N/A |
Hello, A few years ago, the game "magic carpet" was in the stores. One of the special abilities of this game was that you could use those red/blue glasses with it for a 3D view. Played it many times that way. Now I am wondering : Isn't there a driver or tool, that is able to make openGL or direct3D games make use of this red/blue technique. It doesn't take much system power (magic carpet was playable on a 486), nothing difficult to connect, no expensive monitor needed. | ||
| Andreas Schulz Rating: N/A |
...and they also had a random-dot autostereogram mode (remember those 'magic pictures'?) which I never bothered trying to master... Note that Magic Carpet did the whole rendering in software and was written for those old machines (in fact, it's almost unplayable fast on modern machines like my K6-300), whereas current openGL/direct3D games even push state-of-the-art hardware to its limits. To get stereo pairs, you'll have to calculate twice the frames anyway, no matter whether you display them interlaced, page-flip or anaglyph. I can't remember if I gave it a try, but since VRCaddy is based on WinX3D drivers, which supports anaglyph, it might work if you install the full WinX3D driver set (and get VRCaddy somewhere). | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
We've developed technology, called Akumira™, that allows FULL COLOR perception with red/cyan anaglyph glasses, and it works with real-time, hardware-accelerated games. It was a 100+ year old problem. Sound impossible? It’s not; after in-depth research and development, we’ve solved it (it was not intuitive!). We're using this technology for Amazing Curves™ (a racing game we are developing, see http://www.brightland.com/amazingcurves/amazingcurves.htm). We’re also using Akumira™ to convert full-color stereopairs, and for streaming video. How does Akumira™ differ from other color anaglyphs of the past? First, it allows full color perception, without inducing eyestrain (not easy). Second, you can use any colors in the source art. This means Akumira™ will work with any game and any full-color stereopair. It also works with streaming video, etc. We’ve also developed prototype improvements to red/cyan anaglyph glasses, that when combined with Akumira™ images, approach the stereo3D quality of shutterglasses. The paper Sports Illustrated glasses work pretty well, but we have greatly improved the quality of color perception and comfort with new glasses designs. If you have some red/cyan glasses, you can get a taste of Akumira™ at http://www.brightland.com/akumira/akumira.htm. We’re working with manufacturers to get our improved glasses produced. Full-screen, page-flipped, 140+Hz shutterglasses produce the best stereo3D images (page-flipped stereo in a window is possible, but not widely supported). Akumira™ comes in second (the only disadvantage is color perception will be changed slightly), then interleaved image shutterglasses (which have the problem of ½ the brightness images, ½ the vertical resolution, and very evident black line gaps). All shutterglass solutions have technical problems with synchronization, cables/wires, batteries, and hardware that can fail. Akumira™ could be implemented at the driver level in DirectX and OpenGL. This would be very easy to do. This would mean you could have very high quality stereo3D in any 3D game, without the technical problems of shutterglasses (you can also print Akumira™ images and view them in 3D). It will work on any OS (+Mac, +Linux, etc.). It can be viewed with 50 cent glasses. It can be viewed with quality approaching shutterglasses with our improved plastic glasses and lenses (for 10-20 US dollars). We’ll send a pair of our improved glasses to Christoph to review as soon as we get a production prototype constructed. Sound cool? John Schultz Brightland http://www.brightland.com info@brightland.com | ||
| Michal Husak Rating: N/A |
And what about transfer on TV screan ? Did you try to make an 3D video TV broadcased based on the Acumira color scheme, or are there some difficulties (I expect color shift). P.S. I do not still beleive that it could be so good but I will try it ... My oven experiment shows that different people have totaly different color perception witch is usualy discovered just during stereoscopic experiments with anaglyphs ... | ||
| Andreas Schulz Rating: N/A |
I just tried Akumira™ with my old Magic Carpet cardboard glasses, and the stereo effect is really great, though I'm not really convinced w.r.t. absence of eyestrain - maybe it takes some time to adopt the brain. In addition, there is slight ghosting through the red filter - maybe that's better with with better glasses. | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Michal, We’ve done some tests with NTSC (but not PAL), and Akumira™ does work. Unfortunately, due to the compression after RGB to YIQ conversion, then decompression and conversion back from YIQ to RGB, significant cross talk results (for a minimized stereo3D effect). Therefore, we’re concentrating on internet based viewing, where we stay in RGB. Various digital TV and HDTV formats stay in RGB, so Akumira™ can be used there as well. Regarding color perception: we’re well aware of the differences in individual color perception, and this has been taken into account with Akumira™. The number one factor in stereo3D quality with an Akumira™ image is the anaglyph glasses being used. Order a pair of glasses from Reel3D (http://stereoscopy.com/reel3d/anaglyph-glasses.html) such as the 7003B (not listed on their site: contact them) or the 7026, and this will give you an idea of the quality of Akumira™. Using our improved glasses, expect even better color perception with little or no eyestrain. Remember, Akumira™ is designed for RED/CYAN (CYAN = BLUE+GREEN), not RED/BLUE glasses. While it will work with RED/BLUE, the quality is much better with RED/CYAN. Andreas, The old Magic Carpet glasses are designed for a RED/BLUE image, and not a RED/CYAN image. Thus, while the 3D effect will be excellent, color perception will be low, and eyestrain will be high. Again, using the Reel3D 7003B glasses will be a dramatic improvement over any RED/BLUE glasses. Using our new glasses will result in another leap in color perception and little or no eyestrain. In general, there will be some eyestrain with any stereo3D technology except an HMD with the proper optics. However, most people get used to viewing images through glasses while viewing a screen and eyestrain is reduced even further (perhaps you’ve experienced this). Our biggest challenge to marketing Akumira™ is the common perception that anaglyph sucks. Every shutterglasses manufacturer claims that anaglyph is terrible, has little or no color, causes eyestrain, etc. Since a lot of you guys are in Europe, perhaps we’ll purchase a box of Reel3D 7003B glasses and send them to Christoph to give away for free to people in Europe. Then you can get a better idea of the quality of Akumira™. We’ll definitely send Christoph a production prototype of our new glasses as soon as we can. Remember, you can also use Akumira™ images in print, so you can print your 3D images and show them to anyone without a computer. You can also post/mail images to friends/colleagues and send them some paper glasses to view your 3D images. John Schultz www.brightland.com info@brightland.com | ||
| Michal Husak Rating: N/A |
Hi John I was testing the Acumira technology made images from your WWW and it realy looks to my big suprise realy much more beter than standard anaglyphs ! I was using red/blue glasses only ... I have an question - is the algoritm able to make an on the fly conversion of 2 view fast enough ? I mean if it can do e.g. conversion of 2 DirectDraw surfaces in 640x480 res to an Acumira colored one at refresh rate at least 20 fps ... As you probably know, I am mostly interested in stereoscopic video creation and such functionality is esential ... | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Hi Michal, Thanks for taking a look at Akumira™! Can Akumira™ convert 2 640x480 video frames at 20 FPS? That depends on our CPU budget. The code is currently in C++, and can certainly be sped up with some assembly. The question then comes down to how much time we have for conversion. I can’t even play a single 640x480 stream at 30FPS without some sort of hardware acceleration on a PII 400 (otherwise it drops frames), so dual 640x480 streams would appear to imply a need for a custom CODEC that could access some hardware acceleration. Then, if there is enough time left over, the Akumira™ conversion phase could be done. For real-time streaming, we could certainly create such custom code, especially on a dual PIII 1G+ machine. Is there another way to do this? Yes. Convert the frames to Akumira™ offline, and view a movie in native Akumira™ format. I’ve already written an Adobe Premiere plugin that takes an interleaved stereo3D video stream and converts it to Akumira™. For mild to moderate compression levels, it works great. As the compression levels get higher, cross talk begins to occur between the red and cyan color channels, harming the stereo3D effect. It would be cool to have a custom MPEG (etc.) CODEC for compressing video streams that NEVER induces cross talk between red and cyan. Thus red would be in one channel, and green+blue would be compressed in another channel. This will probably result in bigger files (maybe not if we are clever), but we could then compress the files much more without harming the stereo3D effect. If this could be done in a compatible way with existing MPEG players, that would be perfect (only effect the compression phase). Again, viewing Akumira™ images with red/cyan glasses such as the Reel3D 7003B glasses (or the Sports Illustrated glasses) will give you a better idea as to the quality of Akumira™ images and overall color perception. John Schultz info@brightland.com www.brightland.com | ||
| Michal Husak Rating: N/A |
Hi John All mpeg based compression makes some YUV quantization during the proces (4:2:0 scheme usualy or 4:2:2 in beter case). I do not know any modern video compressing algoritm witch does not mix the colors together (utilizing the low human eye sensitivity to colors in comparison to brightnes). I am afraid that some totaly non-standard compression shuld be developed ... And to develope an fast and efective algoritm and code need a lot of money and human power  . I am supprised that you can not play an 640x480 movie on an P II 400 at 30 fps. What format and playback software did you use ? I thing that the best soultion coud be to play one stream in 1280x480 (stereoscopic images in above/below format) and to do on the fly conversion to Acumira. My test with such format show, that it shuld work on PIII at about 700 Mhz. The problem is , that the best way will be to directly modify the final stages od mpeg (or mpeg4) decompresion code. And there is no acces to enaught fast free source codes of this decompression algoritms ... | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Michal, Using an above/below (or side by side) format will certainly work, even at high compression rates. This will require a custom player to convert the stereo pair into Akumira at runtime. We can approach companies such as Ligos (for MPEG*) and Apple (for Quicktime) and perhaps get them to support this. In the meantime, we can just compress at higher bitrates and get decent quality at the expense of larger file sizes. This files will play on any player or OS. I've tested high bitrate Quicktime (various CODECs), MPEG2 (Ligos), and MPEG4 (.asf MS), and crosstalk is minimal. At MPEG2 DVD bitrates, crosstalk is not visible, and playing back DVD quality Akumira at 640x480@30Hz on a PII400 with a GeForce 1 looks very, very good. John Schultz info@brightland.com www.brightland.com | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Hello! I have been looking around for hours lookig for a place to buy ASUS 3D glasses. And now i suddenly find this! Red/Cyan glasses with the same quality as shutterglasses!! Can it really be true? A few questions to you Akumira guys: I have a P3 800, ASUS Geforce 2 32MB, and 128 RAM. Will i be able to use your glasses in a 3D game, in the same quality and colors, as if i used shutterglasses. And what will be the maximum resulution? I mean if the computer has to convert everything to Akumira in real-time, can it get really slow? I mean, i wont be able to play for exaple Q3 in 1024*768 with akumira, will i? And how does it work? do i buy some software, and buy some ordinary Red/cyan glasses, and it will work? When can i buy this, and will it work in any game and on any 3D-card?? And i must say I still dont think THAT much of the quality.... | ||
| Andreas Schulz Rating: N/A |
Wouldn't hold my breath waiting for real-time, high-res, 3D-accelerated gaming in Akumira-stereo. Note that in addition to rendering the left and right pictures for each frame, which already makes the current stereo drivers cut the frame rate in half, you also have to merge the two rendered images from the frame buffers with the Akumira-algorithm. About that performance, see notes of John and Michal above... | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
Hello Anonymous and Andreas, Full screen, page-flipped shutterglasses at 140+Hz is the best stereo 3D you can currently get on a PC. There is also driver level support for D3D and OpenGL, and works reasonably well. Akumira™ approaches, but does not equal shutterglasses in terms of color quality. Akumira™ is better than shutterglasses when: 1. viewing images and videos in a window. Shutterglasses must use interlacing, which halves the brightness, halves the resolution, and introduces black line gaps. 2. cost is a factor. You can get decent red/cyan glasses for 50 cents, and nice ones for $10. 3. reliability is a factor. Akumira™ requires no complicated hardware, no wires, and no batteries. 4. printing is desired. You can print Akumira™ images with a common inkjet printer and view the images in spectacular stereo 3D. 5. you want to show a friend or colleague who does not have stereo 3D hardware some stereo 3D images. With Akumira™, you can give them a pair of paper red/cyan glasses. 6. you have an LCD flat panel display. Akumira™ looks awesome on LCD flat panels. You cannot use shutterglasses on LCD flat panels (polarization issues and too slow). 7. you have a notebook computer. If you want a portable stereo 3D viewing station, you can use any notebook computer and red/cyan glasses to view stereo 3D. Again, shutter glasses won’t work on LCD flat panels. Could Akumira™ render Q3 at 1024x768 at playable framerates on a GeForce2. Yes, absolutely. Akumira™ would have to be supported at the driver level for this to be possible, though. In fact, since the Nvidia drivers now support FSAA, it should be possible to support Akumira™ 3D with VERY LITTLE framerate penalty. How? At the driver level, render at 1024x384 per eye, and bilinear interpolate the result to 1024x768. To prove to yourself that Akumira™ is fast enough for real-time 3D, go to www.brightland.com and download and install R4D 2.0. Then, look at the example 3D models using the stand alone viewer, which you can maximize to full screen. If Akumira™ were supported at the driver level, it would be even faster! We’re building Amazing Curves™ with Akumira™ support. On a GeForce2, we’re getting 70+ frames per second at 1280x1024. John Schultz www.brightland.com info@brightland.com | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
What exactly do i have to download and do to get quake 3 arena working with akimura? | ||
| Christoph Bungert (Admin) Rating: N/A |
>>>>1. viewing images and videos in a window. Shutterglasses must use interlacing, which halves the brightness, halves the resolution, and introduces black line gaps. ASUS and ELSA already offer page-flipping in a window. Christoph | ||
| Andreas Schulz Rating: N/A |
To Anonymous2 : > What exactly do i have to download and do to get quake 3 arena working with akimura? Read John's words again : Currently, all you need are the source code for the Detonator from NVidia resp. Voodoo drivers from 3dfx and for Akumira from brightland, plus some decent C/C++ compiler and Assembler, plus some detailed hardware and programming experience...  | ||
| John Schultz Rating: N/A |
Christoph, That's cool that ASUS and ELSA support page-flipping in a window. Diamond supported it with the FireGL1000Pro (Permedia2) way back when (as well as a few high end OGL cards)... Do ASUS and ELSA fully support stereo in a window, such as OpenGL PFD_STEREO? Does it work on NT and 2000? If so, we can support it in Amazing Curves™. Regarding Akumira™ in Quake3, Andreas is correct, until we can get a major board vendor to add Akumira™ to the low-level drivers. It would only take a few days to add Akumira™ support to ASUS or ELSA stereo drivers, while it would takes many weeks to add support directly to Quake3 (I have no idea if id carried over any of the stereo3D code we added to Quake). It took a week to get basic stereo3D support working in Quake, and over a month to tweak it. The right way to do it is in the drivers (much, much easier, and faster!) as with Metabyte, ELSA, ASUS, etc… John Schultz www.brightland.com info@brightland.com | ||
| Chainsaw Rating: N/A |
Can somebody do these drivers for quake3 (better if for all opengl supporting games)? Anyone interested? Even if i got my hands on these sources i probably couldn't do much with them... AKA Anonymous2 | ||
| Christoph Bungert (Admin) Rating: N/A |
ELSA supports D3D in a Win9x window. I don't know what the current status of NT/2k and OpenGL is. ASUS supports stereo-3D video from analogue sources in a flipping window. Yep, this is rather exotic, but a gift from heaven for NuView users and 3D-video collectors. The rest of the windows desktop stays (seemingly) perfectly normal. Christoph | ||
| Steven Blye Rating: N/A |
Christoph: Would you please explain a bit more about the Asus support for page flipping from analogue source? It is in a window, so does that mean you cannot get full screen video? How large of a window? Does it de-interlace on the fly so that there is still only half the resolution and brightness? Is it a better picture than TriDVD sync doubling format? I would greatly appreciate an answer to each of these questions. Thanks, Steven | ||
| Christoph Bungert (Admin) Rating: N/A |
There are 3 zoom levels: little window, large window, full-screen. There are no interlace-lines visible. The available lines of the video source are multiplied to fill the hi-res computer-screen. TriDVD is a digital format and is therefore (in theory) superior to the analogue video source. The sync-doubler format leads to interlace-lines however. The main advantage of the ASUS player is the elimination of visible flicker, compared to a TV. The limiting factor is the quality of the video-digitizer build into the consumer ASUS-VGA-boards. It's not that good. By the way, the 3D-glasses-connector on the ASUS-boards is also not that good. Many external systems, like 60GX and Eye3D give better results, i.e. more precise synchronisation of the glasses. Another downside is that the ASUS 3D-player can't digitize and store the 3D-videos on HD. Christoph | ||
| Steven Rating: N/A |
Christoph, Thanks for your answers. |
