VRizer: Stereoscopic Uutput for OpenGL Programs

An anonymous reader writes "VRizer was developed at the Ars Electronica Futurelab to utilize conventional OpenGL games or OpenGL software for virtual reality or virtual environment setups. This is done in Linux, by creating a library that, when preloaded, intercepts the proper OpenGL/SDL calls to create 2 stereoscopic views out of 1 single frame stream. So the original software (the game) is not altered in any way.
VRizer now works best for UT2003, but a few other games were tested succesfully: FooBillard, TuxRacer, Scorched3D, Neverball, Armagetron, Trackballs. For download (binary only for now) and screenshots see the project and the website"

Uutput?

[skinfitz]

erm.. shouldn't that be Output?

Re:Uutput?

[Bluesman]

If you cross your eyes so that the O in OpenGl covers the U, it's spelled correctly.

It's a demonstration of the technolgy.

Re:Uutput?

[Webmonger]

Maybe it's German for Output?

Re:Uutput?

[/dev/trash]

The poster speaks Farsi.

Re:Uutput?

[UrgleHoth]

Vinne: "These two uuts"
Judge: "What did you say?"
Vinnie: "What? What did I say?"
Judge: "Did you say uuts?"

Quake2

[mnmn]

This was reported for Quake2 a while ago. It was too blocky and the niose generated on th screen was very distracting. I dont know if these guys use softer fractal-based images but I'd keep away from this if it looks like that earlier Quake2 project

Re:Must be a different system

[Bastian]

This system must be a completely different project than the one you're thinking of. It doesn't use SIRDS or anything like that; it appears to allow display through either a side-by-side stereogram or a red/blue 3d image.

Lara Crofts Ass!

[polyp2000]

Seems to work in epsxe playstation emulator! I've just been watching lara crofts ass in glorious 3D.

nick ...

Check out the Chromium project

[SeanAhern]

Intercepting the OpenGL calls from non-modified OpenGL applications and rendering them to walls and CAVEs is a nice trick.

If this interests you at all, you also need to check out the open source Chromium [sourceforge.net] project, which can do that, and much, much more. While it doesn't have the event tracking that VRiser appears to have, it has the ability to render to tiled displays, stereo displays, CAVES, do distributed sort-last compositing, OpenGL stream modification on the fly, parallel OpenGL submission, and a heck of a lot more. It supports high-speed cluster interconnects such as Myrinet, Quadrics, and Infiniband. It's also pretty easy to add your own OpenGL modification if you want to do something special.

As an example, check out this project that uses Chromium to split up live Quake games into an external isometric view [stanford.edu].

(Disclaimer: I'm one of the Chromium developers, and my Lab [llnl.gov] helps pay the external developers to write this open source tool.)

little lacking

[Satai]

Seems a little lacking on documentation. I've spent a while trying to get it to work on our stereoscopic visualization wall, but can't seem to get it to cooperate -- but probably the fault lies with me. Maybe with the source this would be easier to figure out...

Re:little lacking

[Anonymous Coward]

put a "rgstereo y" line in your vrizer.conf file, in the same directory of vrizer.so, then
export LD_PRELOAD="./vrizer.so"
and run your favourite game. quake and tuxracer work ok. and it's really cool.
but will there be the source? in the readme there is a mention of a "make" step.

Re:little lacking

[Satai]

I meant more specifically, our setup is a quad-buffered dual-projector system with polarizing lenses. We try not to use Xinerama, and instead use active-stereo techniques that are rendered to two separate outputs on a Quadro4 card... So rgstereo negates what I wanted to do.

Re:little lacking

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm, i see. Using the stereo features with GL_LEFT and GL_RIGHT is not yet implemented in VRizer due to lack of the proper hardware, sorry.

Two questions...

[pwagland]

1. Why, oh why, is their watermark [futurelab.aec.at] not "placed" into the virtual image... in the virtual image it is very blurry :-\ 2. How do they deal with the mouse cursor? I.e. on what plane does it move around, and how does it interact with the screen? In particular can you still use it to aim? Or does it appear to point to the wrong place? Still... way cool.

Wicked3D

[CoolGuySteve]

This was done a long time ago under DirectX, Glide, and OpenGL by the Metabyte Wicked3D line of products. You would get glasses with 2 LCD screens and a Wicked3D card or their driver CD. The drivers would then render 2 images that were slightly offset from eachother by intercepting the calls at some level. I almost bought the glasses but decided it wasn't worth the investment if I ended up hating it.

It worked with a shitload of games though, which was cool.

http://www.stereo3d.com/wicked3d.htm [stereo3d.com]