3D Views with red-cyan anglyphs

You have been to the movies to see "Up" ?

You are planning to see "Avatar"?

Trying to see objects in 3D on a flat 2D thing is one of the big issues of men kind over the last 200 years.
With a remarkable return time of about 10 years, 3D is popping into our lifes, promising a new kind of fascination over old stuff.

Starting with old fashioned stereoscopy cameras in the early 1900ies, going over to the stereographic viewers in the 1970ies, with several stops in the 1980ies with "stereo-TV", we are now at a place again, where 3D is intended to be estabilshed as a new standard of seeing things.

As you might have realized from the prevoius paragraphs, we are not totally in the 3D hype. For us as the ENVI-met producers, whe asked ourselfs: Are we going to ignore it completly or is there some benefit we could find for our users (and some fun as well)?

Well, the recent 3D technology that is used in your cinema around the corner cannot be transferred easily to a computer screen as it requires two images to be displayed (special monitor) and to be seen (special 3D glasses). Also, the technology is restricted to computer monitors or expensive beamers. That might make sense, apart from cinemas, for specific remote sensing tasks, but is a number too high for just seeing 3D images.

However, on the cheap side of life, there is the old Anaglyph Technology (see here in Wikipedia). This basically involves only a cheap pair of glasses coloured red/green or (today) red/cyan. Then, a blurred imaged is produced which can be viewed by looking through those glasses. The effect is then generated as each eye behind the red or cyan glass sees only the cyan or red image parts, but not those parts which are in the same colour as the glass is.

The effect is not bad, but the technology has some drawbacks. One of the main drawbacks is of course the concept of using color as a seperator for the right and left eye. There are many images where you get a perfect 3D illusion including the colors, but here are also many examples where it will not work at all. So, the correct choice of a colour platte not interfereing with the stereographic seperating colors is a big stone in the garden of 3D graphs. We will work on this issue and provide you hopefully with a 3D color set getting the best that is possible out of this technology.

The good thing about the anaglyphys is that you can also PRINT them, so your poster on a conference might be 3D as well (if you provide glasses and find a way to stick and keep them to your poster..).
However, this again requires a fine tuning of your printer because the printed colors must EXACTLY match the colors of the 3D glasses supplied. It is very unlikely that this will work just out-of-the-box, especially not on a WINDOWS system, maybe more likely on a MAC.

To come to an end: both the ENVI-eddi Editor as LEONARDO in V4 will provide 3D anaglype technique as an option and we will see how to get the best out of it ;)))

Here is Sydney CBD model in red/cyan anaglyphs (if you have a red/green glass, get yourself a new one ;) ))

or the Soccer Stadium in Mainz known from the 3D Section of the page:

Remember, each color anaglyph is more or less bounded to "its" glasses.
Although there are certain standards on these colors, the way how they are displayed on a web site like this depend on many things like the browser settings
and the color calibration of your monitor (things you might never have thought about before).
So if the 3D images above do not work for your individual combination of monitor and glasses (and eyes as well...) make sure that you cannot see the red shapes
through the red glass and cannot see the cyan shapes through the cyan glasses as well. Even the slightest shade in one of the glasses might destroy the 3D impression...

Also, remember, that the eye and the brain needs time to "understand" the 3D images as they are a trick of mind.
Finally, about 5-10% of the population cannot see 3D pictures at all...