starting stereo

Good morning! This is my first post so I will post it to both the beginning and advanced since I don’t know which is appropriate:
I am trying to write a stereo program using both the BACK_LEFT and BACK_RIGHT buffers, then do SWAPBUFFERS, for viewing with LCD glasses. I am using an Invidia TNT2 board and get an error when I try to run the program. I am using VC++6.0 in console mode and GLUT_STEREO as a flag to glutInitDisplayMode. It compiles and links but fails ( apparently at glutCreateWindow ) with the error: GLUT: pixel format with necessary capabilities not found. When I use code from CH. 17 of SuperBible ( as a Petzold-type window ) it runs but doesn’t show both images (created in BACK_LEFT and BACK_RIGHT ), only one.
Is my TNT2 board preventing me from seeing the stereo with glasses? Would an Oxygen VX1-stereo card ( or better ) allow me to do it, or is something wrong ( or missing ) from my code?
Thank you,
Barry

We don’t support OpenGL stereo in our drivers (yet).

  • Matt

GLDirect has official support and NVidea seems to have unnoficial support. (All beta) Check out http://www.stereovision.net/reviews/gldirect/gldirect.htm http://www.stereovision.net/toxicx/717_2.htm http://www.stereovision.net/toxicx/1050info.htm
Enjoy :]
Joe

Thanks for the replies. I’ll go the hardware route since the drivers slow things down. I’ve again posted a followup on the beginner board about where to find info about how drivers work to do the stereo trick for you. I know nothing about drivers. Just curious.
Thanks,
Barry

I’ve posted an answer to your last question in the beginners forum. http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003108.html

Can’t you just fake it? I mean, how is the stereo imaging done? One way is to display the scene twice, side by side, so in 640x480 mode, you’d have two 320x240 windows side-by-side. The camera’s point of origin in the left window would be slightly to the left, and its point of origin in the right window would be slightly to the right.

Or are the two images supposed to be blended together? Either way, you can do it yourself, though it will be slow.

I’m confused by the last post. Is the 320x240 image interlaced scanline by scanline and pixel by pixel with the other one? And how would the right eye be prevented from seeing the left eye’s image? Are they to be leftside-right side images ( 320x480)?

CGameProgrammer
A question is still in the room from an ol discussion. How to depth sort transparent poyls without a distance calculation?

Originally posted by bsperlin:
I’m confused by the last post. Is the 320x240 image interlaced scanline by scanline and pixel by pixel with the other one? And how would the right eye be prevented from seeing the left eye’s image? Are they to be leftside-right side images ( 320x480)?

I think what CGameProgrammer suggested is not real stereo. In real stereo, the two images are not blended together either, they are displayed alternatively at the screen’s refresh rate and APPEAR to be blended.

As to how to fake stereo, read my post in the beginner forum for the interlaced format: http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003108.html

I also tried to emulate page-flipped stereoscopy (which will only work with a good gfx card and simple scenes as it requires a framerate equal to the screen’s refresh rate i.e. 100-120Hz) using WGL_EXT_swap_control to synchronise the images with the refresh. But the synchronisation is not perfect, causing the left eye to see the right image (and vice-versa) for a period of time before resynchronising, and so on (it might be possible to fix this with an output from the PC, e.g. parallel output).