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Subsections

CrystalEyes Stereo

CrystalEyes stereo refers to a special hardware option available on Silicon Graphics workstations that allows one to view three-dimensional objects through the use of a special display monitor mode and special stereo viewing glasses. Stereographics Corp. is one such supplier of these glasses. This mode also requires special infrared emitters to synchronize the stereo glasses with the display monitor.

There are presently two types of CrystalEyes stereo modes available on SGI machines; which one is used depends on the available graphics hardware (see the man page stereo(7)). Follow the outline below for the relevant graphics option:

Stereo in a window (aka new-style stereo):

Available on workstations equipped with quad-buffered stereo graphics subsystems only (such as SGI InfiniteReality, Sun Expert3D, HP FX-10) this mode provides separate left and right eye frame buffers. It allows the user to have a window display in stereo, and the other windows appear as normal. Using this mode, however, sometimes requires the monitor to be in a lower-resolution display mode since it requires twice as much video memory over a normal non-stereo display. The monitor must be set in a stereo-capable mode before starting VMD. On SGI systems, one must use either the setmon or xscreen utilities to configure the display mode. On Sun systems this is done using the fbconfig utility. HP systems use the sam utility for display configuration. Windows machines use the Display Properties tab to control video board display mode settings.

Once set in the proper display mode, start VMD as normal, and select `CrystalEyes stereo' from the Display form. The image should switch to two images nearly superimposed, but slightly offset.


next up previous contents index
Next: Problems with stereo on Up: Stereoscopic Modes Previous: Anaglyph Stereo   Contents   Index
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