I am proud to present a new version of SIV, the stereoscopic image viewer for Linux I published on MyGNU.de. It should be compilable also on MacOS and Windows, but I have never tested this. SIV is  capable of displaying JPS stereo images and MPO stereo images in different stereo modes. It is tested in fullscreen/windowed mode with anaglyphic and quad buffered stereo mode. Different output devices I tested were my Vuzix VR920 and relevator shutter glasses  on Nvidia Quadro FX 350M and FX 3700.

siv-1.1 the stereoscopic image viewer

Key Features

• support for side by side JPS stereo images
• support for MPO stereo images (used by Fujifilm Finepix Real 3D cameras)
• many display modes, including quad buffered stereo
• headtracking support for the Vuzix VR920 HMD (driver available on mygnu.de)
• black-white and sepia filter
• controls for gamma, brightness, contrast and parallax
• on screen display

Basic usage
You may supply one or multiple .jps or .mpo files at the command line.  I.e.  siv *.jps will display all JPS files in the current folder. Once the first image of the list is being displayed you may use CURSOR_UP/DOWN or the mouse wheel to select a different image for being displayed. You can enable/disable the slideshow mode by pressing the [Enter] key. When displaying an image the filename of the image is displayed in the lower left corner for a few seconds. Using the number keys one may select different ways to zoom/navigate in the image. In VR920 mode or normal trackball mode use the right mouse button together with mouse movements to zoom the image. You can use the middle mouse button together with movements to pan the image. While displaying an image you may alter gamma, brightness, contrast and parallax for the best viewing experience. Some images may look better in black-white or sepia mode. By pressing the [t] key you may toggle these filters. The filters and controls use shaders on the GPU, so if you experience problems with these options you may disable them with the –disable-shaders commandline switch. At present the shader code is only tested on Nvidia hardware. If you have tested it on Intel/ATI please leave a comment.

Important keybindings are:

+/- increase/decrease parallax
HOME/END display first/last image
UP/DOWN display next/previous image
SHIFT+UP/DOWN jump 10 images forward/backward
F1/F2 decrease/increase brightness
F3/F4 decrease/increase contrast
F5/F6 decrease/increase gamma
F5/F6 decrease/increase slideshow delay
t toggle filter (normal/bw/sepia)
[Enter] toggle slideshow on/off
h Help

Press h to get the full list of keybindings.

Headtracking
If you want to try out the VR920 headtracking, enable the headtracking support with the “–vr920” option. You may want to specify the distance to the image with the “-d” option. Values between 0.25 and 0.5 seem to have a nice effect when using the headtracking. When headtracking is active you may press [z] to set the zero view so that with your current head position you will see the center of the image. If you want to manipulate the view manually press the left or mittle mouse button as described above and move the mouse. The “-m” and “-p” options allow to set IP-address and port for the connection to the headtracking driver.

Commandline Usage

siv [options] stereofile(s)

Options:
–CullDrawThreadPerContext                 Select CullDrawThreadPerContext
threading model for viewer.
–CullThreadPerCameraDrawThreadPerContext  Select
CullThreadPerCameraDrawThreadPerCo-
ntext threading model for viewer.
–DrawThreadPerContext                     Select DrawThreadPerContext
threading model for viewer.
–SingleThreaded                           Select SingleThreaded threading
model for viewer.
–accum-rgb                                Request a rgb accumulator buffer
visual
–accum-rgba                               Request a rgb accumulator buffer
visual
–cc                                       Request use of compile contexts and
threads
–clear-color <color>                      Set the background color of the
viewer in the form “r,g,b[,a]”.
–disable-shaders                          disable shaders for unsupported
graphics boards
–display <type>                           MONITOR | POWERWALL |
REALITY_CENTER |
HEAD_MOUNTED_DISPLAY
–filter=[bw|sepia]                        enable filter on startup
–rgba                                     Request a RGBA color buffer visual
–samples <num>                            Request a multisample visual
–screen <num>                             Set the screen to use when multiple
screens are present.
–serialize-draw <mode>                    OFF | ON – set the serialization of
draw dispatch
–stencil                                  Request a stencil buffer visual
–stereo                                   Use default stereo mode which is
QUAD_BUFFER if not overriden by
environmental variable
–stereo <mode>                            ANAGLYPHIC | QUAD_BUFFER |
HORIZONTAL_SPLIT | VERTICAL_SPLIT |
LEFT_EYE | RIGHT_EYE |
HORIZONTAL_INTERLACE |
VERTICAL_INTERLACE | CHECKERBOARD |
ON | OFF
–vr920                                    enable headtracking support for the
vuzix vr920 hmd
–window <x y w h>                         Set the position (x,y) and size
(w,h) of the viewer window.
-O <option_string>                         Provide an option string to
reader/writers used to load
databases
-d                                         distance (values between 0.0 and
1.0 are senseful)
-e <extension>                             Load the plugin associated with
handling files with specified
extension
-h or –help                               Display this information
-l <library>                               Load the plugin
-m                                         non default multicast ip
-p                                         non default multicast port
-s                                         start in slideshow mode
-t                                         delay for slideshow mode, defaults
to 15 sec

You may notice that most of the options come from osgViewer, which is the base class for the viewer. This gives the advantage, that one can use the “normal” osgViewer controls such as flying around the scene. Try to press [f] for toggling fullscreen mode or press [s] for toggling the onscreen stats (fps, etc.) display.

Download      

I decided to publish the viewer under the creative common noncommercial license. Make sure you have the OpenSceneGraph library installed before trying to compile or run the viewer. You may download the full source (Eclipse Project) from here: SIV-1.1 source (2062 downloads ) or an x86_64 binary from here: SIV-1.1 x86_64 binary (2165 downloads ) . More binary formats may be available in the future. Fore the x86_64 binary you’ll need OpenSceneGraph-2.8.2.
Binaries of the OpenSceneGraph library for most linux distributions can be downloaded from www.openscenegraph.org.  On gentoo one can just emerge openscenegraph.

Building from source
For building from source unpack the zip and cd to siv/Release and run make.

Possible Problems
As default SIV starts in fullscreen quad buffered stereo mode. Thus if your graphics hardware does not support this mode, the viewer will exit with the following error:

Error: Not able to create requested visual.
GraphicsWindow has not been created successfully.
Viewer::realize() – failed to set up any windows

In this case try anaglyphic mode or the apropiate 3D mode for your hardware (see the –stereo option). For instructions on how to get the xserver to work in stereoscopic mode see: Vuzix VR920 with Linux and active 3D stereo

History
SIV-1.1
-support for the new MPO file format
-black-white and sepia filter
-controls for gamma, brightness, contrast and parallax
-improved OSD
-manual controls in vr920 headtracking mode

SIV-1.0
-slideshow mode
-vr920 headtracking

SIV – first version
-initial realease with support for jps files, quad buffered stereo and various other display modes

Footnote
If you like the viewer, feel free to link to www.mygnu.de. To request commercial licenses contact us at info(at)mygnu.de. Well, if you just want to support our work on MyGNU.de use the donate button 😉

have fun, enjoy the 3rd dimension and have a merry Christmas

Jürgen

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Posted in 3d, graphics, linux | 2 Comments »

Last year I published the first release of my stereoscopic image viewer, SIV here. At the time it was the first viewer for Linux supporting jps files and quad buffered stereo. As far as I know it is still the only one with support for the headtracking of the VR920 head mounted display. Currently I am working on a new and better version which will have the following additional features:

• native support for the MPO file format (used by Fujifilm stereo cameras)
• adjustments for
  -parallax
  -brightness
  -contrast
  -gamma
• Improved OSD
• Filters
  -black/white
  -sepia

In the current development stage most of the features are basically working so expect the new version of the viewer to be released soon. I hope to get it ready for Christmas, for those of you who have their new 3D camera under the Christmas tree.

Stay tuned for updates

Jürgen

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With my upcoming new headtracking driver for the vusix vr920 hmd it is likely that I manage to get the famous flight simulator FlightGear to work with it. This led me again to the problem that FlightGear does not work in quad buffered stereo, as  I described in my comment to FlightGEAR 2.0.0 on GENTOO.

One expects to enable stereoscopic mode in FlightGear starting it with the following line:

export OSG_STEREO_MODE=QUAD_BUFFER;export OSG_STEREO=ON; fgfs

When starting flightgear this way, one gets the following console output and no stereoscopic view:

Warning: detected OpenGL error ‘invalid operation’ after RenderBin::draw(,)

Getting FlightGear to work with quad-buffered stereo

Doing some code analysis in OpenSceneGraph-2.8.0 I discovered the following lines of code in View.cpp:

osg::DisplaySettings* ds = osg::DisplaySettings::instance();
if (ds->getStereo())
{
switch(ds->getStereoMode())
{
case(osg::DisplaySettings::QUAD_BUFFER): traits->quadBufferStereo = true; break;
case(osg::DisplaySettings::VERTICAL_INTERLACE):
case(osg::DisplaySettings::CHECKERBOARD):
case(osg::DisplaySettings::HORIZONTAL_INTERLACE): traits->stencil = 8; break;
default: break;
}
}

It seems that the stereo context in FlightGear does not get initialized properly in WindowBuilder::makeDefaultTraits(bool stencil). Thus these lines have to be added to WindowBuilder.cxx. For convenience here is the patch against  FlightGear-2.0.0: [download#43]

Perhaps some nice FlightGear developer can include this into upstream code. You have to use a professional graphics board that supports quad buffered stereo, like a NVIDIA Quadro FX or a Ati FireGL and proper display hardware, like shutter glasses, a HMD or a stereoscopic projection system, to benefit from it.

Problems remaining

When using the quad buffered stereo mode in flightgear there occur some graphics errors. These are not very annoying, but they are there. Some cockpit controls and other scene details contain yellow lines, like a wireframe,  which are not there when starting FlightGear in “normal” display mode. I suspect this to be another bug in FlightGear, which has still to be located. See the screenshots below for details. The problematic parts of the scenes are marked red. Especially the night pictures show the problem. This problem does not only exist in quad buffered stereo mode, but also in other stereo modes like HORIZONTAL_SPLIT.

FlightGear by day, quad-buffered stereo, with errors

FlightGgear by day, no stereo, without errors

FlightGear by night, quad-buffered stereo, with errors

FlightGear by night, no stereo, without errors

The Gentoo way

For gentoo users here is my overlay including the modified ebuild: [download#44] Download the modified overlay (including the patches) and extract it in /usr/local/portage. Be sure to include the following line in your /etc/make.conf:

PORTDIR_OVERLAY=”/usr/local/portage”

Then emerge flightgear and enjoy it in three dimensions.

Have fun

Jürgen

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Posted in 3d, gentoo, graphics, linux, programming | 5 Comments »

Last year I published the first version of my linux headtracking driver for the VR920 HMD here. Currently I am working on a new driver version which will have the following additional features:

• Multiple Protocols:
  -UDP multicast (as before)
  -UDP unicast (for flightgear connection and perhaps more)
  -mouse emulation (via uinput)
  -joystick emulation (via uinput)
  -character device for direct angle readings (via cuse, will
  require a kernel >= 2.6.31)

• Inverting of axes (to have moving the head up making the mouse pointer up or down, depending on needs)
• Better filtering algorithm (more stable headtracking)
• Scaling of data (i.e. to match screen size with mouse mode)
• Customisable delay between sensor readings
• User interface separated from the driver

With the upcoming MPX and the mouse emulation it should be possible to control the visible viewport by turning around the head. Controlling the view for games or other software that do not natively support headtracking should also be possible with the emulation.

In the current development stage most of the features are basically working so expect the new driver to be released soon.

Stay tuned for updates

Jürgen

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Posted in 3d, drivers, graphics, linux, programming | 7 Comments »

Today I found this petition for Gimp. Have a look and support gimp. It seems that gimp should be removed from the next ubuntu release. There for have a look at Bring Out The Gimp petition. Below is a copy from this site. Now Sign the Petition and stay tuned.

To:  GNU/Linux major distributions

We, the undersigned, kindly ask all major distributions not to cripple their release CD’s by removing important applications like OpenOffice.org, GIMP, and others.

These applications may have their set of problems. Granted. Let’s work on them as well.

However, removing such important applications in order to save space for any “current trendy application” just because said application depends on bloated, problematic and polemic runtime environments reveals a worrysome mindset: form over substance.

If the functionality said application provides, is also provided by another application which is far leaner, then please fix the problems with the leaner applications rather than removing important applications such as The GIMP.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

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The java3d ebuilds in the gentoo portage tree are very outdated, and didn’t even work for me anymore. So I wanted to install a newer version of java3d. This resulted in the updated ebuild you can download from here:

[download#22]

I tried the ebuild together with sun-jdk-1.6.0.13 on x86_64 gentoo linux, but it schould also work on i586.

To use it just create the directory structure

mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/dev-java/sun-java3d-bin/

and copy the new ebuild to that directory. Then run

ebuild /usr/local/portage/dev-java/sun-java3d-bin/sun-java3d-bin-1.5.2.ebuild digest

Be sure to include the following line in your /etc/make.conf:

PORTDIR_OVERLAY=”/usr/local/portage”

Then just emerge sun-java3d.

emerge /usr/local/portage/dev-java/sun-java3d-bin/sun-java3d-bin-1.5.2.ebuild

The ebuild creates some symlinks in your VM’s directory, so if you switch the browser plugin or the entire VM you have to reemerge sun-java3d-bin. To have the library ready to use you also have to add the following lines to your /etc/profile:

if [ “$CLASSPATH” = “” ] ; then
CLASSPATH=”/usr/share/sun-java3d-bin/lib/vecmath.jar:/usr/share/sun-java3d-bin/lib/j3dutils.jar:/usr/share/sun-java3d-bin/lib/j3dcore.jar”
else
CLASSPATH=”${CLASSPATH}:/usr/share/sun-java3d-bin/lib/vecmath.jar:/usr/share/sun-java3d-bin/lib/j3dutils.jar:/usr/share/sun-java3d-bin/lib/j3dcore.jar”
fi
export CLASSPATH

if [ “$LD_LIBRARY_PATH” = “” ] ; then
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=”/usr/lib/sun-java3d-bin/”
else
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=”${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:/usr/lib/sun-java3d-bin/”
fi
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

To have the changes in effect logout and login again.

If you want to have java3d useable in firefox you have to modify the line:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=”/usr/lib64/mozilla-firefox”

in your /usr/bin/firefox to:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=”/usr/lib64/mozilla-firefox”:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Otherwise you will end up getting unstatisfied link errors since the j3d library cannot be loaded.

Finally you can test if your java3d works on Testseite für Java und Java3D – VS-C. If you are working in a multiheaded environment, this java3d version may only work on the first display. So, if you experience problems just place your browser on the first head.

Have Fun

Jürgen

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Posted in 3d, gentoo, graphics, linux | 1 Comment »

I just recognized the osgocean release on the osg mailing-list. Osgocean is a library that one can use to render water effects in a very realistic way. It was used to generate the above and below water effects in the VENUS project. For more information on the osgocean project see: osgocean You can see how realistic it looks if you watch the youtube video below.

It looked very interesting, so I decided to try it out. To do so I wrote two ebuilds, one for osgocean and one for  fftss, the fast fourier transformation library it depends on. Both are available in following archive: [download#21]

Extract the archive to your portage overlay.

# mkdir /usr/local/portage/
# cd /usr/local/portage/
# unzip osgocean_overlay.zip

Be sure that PORTDIR_OVERLAY=”/usr/local/portage” is included in your /etc/make.conf, then you can emerge it:

#emerge osgocean

For this you need to have the OpenSceneGraph library installed. Detailed Instructions on how to build OpenSceneGraph on gentoo can be found on PlopByte.

Since openscenegraph is now in the main portage tree I have updated the ebuild dependencies today (31/08/2009) to either media-gfx/openscenegraph or dev-games/openscenegraph.

Updated ebuild is now available here: [download#42] Just copy it to /usr/local/portage/media-gfx/osgocean/ after extractingosgocean_overlay.zip like described before and run:

ebuild /usr/local/portage/media-gfx/osgocean/osgocean-1.0.1.ebuild digest

Best regards

Jürgen

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Posted in 3d, gentoo, graphics, linux, programming, science | No Comments »