Just a quick update about "Stereoscopy", the journal of the International Stereoscopic Union:

Stereoscopy Issue 121 (1.2020) is at the printer. It will arrive from the printer in mid July and then be mailed to all current ISU members. A preview can be found at https://www.isu3d.org/stereoscopy-journal-121-2020-1.html

Contents include the following articles:

* The President's Column (by Hermine Raab)
* From the Editor (by George Themelis)
* Member Highlight: Andrew Lauren
* Stereoscopy History: ISU Founding Members
* ISU Congress 2021: What makes Krumlov so special?
* A Versatile Low-Cost Stereo Close-Up and Macro Device (by R J Pryce)
* Virtual 3D Meetings (by Ray Moxom)
* Custom Built Digital Stereoscope (by Matěj Boháč)
* Tiny People & Small World in 3D (by Guenter Pomaska)
* 3D Gallery: Fuji W1/W3
* Featured 3D Picture: Royal 3D (by Job van de Groep)
* Upcoming 3D Events

If you are no member, please join the ISU on-line. All options and an application form are here: https://www.isu3d.org/joining.html

Best regards,

Alexander Klein
Treasurer
International Stereoscopic Union
P.O. Box 102634
70022 Stuttgart
Germany
Tel: +49(711)5208768-3
Fax: +49(711)5208768-9

SeaMonkey?  Is this another browser?

SeaMonkey is a combination of IRC client, Mail+News client, Browser and Composer.
Composer is a simple Web-Editor which I used long long time ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMonkey

Download:
https://www.seamonkey-project.org/

More browsers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers

If you are looking for a "different browser" you may start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_engine

Paul

I am sure many of us would like to know which "purpose-made" 3D cameras you are referring to.

Fujifilm W3, Nintendo 3DS, and RED Hydrogen One in my case.  The Nintendo 3DS has awful image quality, and the Fujifilm W3's pictures aren't perfect either, but at least both of them had perfectly aligned sensors, as does Hydrogen. 

The more pictures are added to the view, the more the effective resolution goes down.

Yes that's usually true, but there are solutions to solve that, for example, temporal frame-shifted multiview.  For example, imagine a 4K screen with four views, which gives you 3D 1080p, running at 60fps.  If that screen was 120hz however, you could interlace two sets of four views(each view sent in a novel direction from the display), giving you eight views of 3D 1080p at 60fps.  I haven't seen anyone do it successfully, but that is a reasonable path forward, especially as mobile device screens increase in screen refresh rates.

It seems that for most consumers, however, clarity isn't the primary issue with 3D.  Convenience, viewing angle, cost, and detriment to 2D content(like the constant screen shimmer on the Rokit phones) seem to be the biggest points of friction preventing adoption.  Clarity is very important, but only after the other roadblocks are solved.  Leia displays have solved all but the cost issue, so clarity is the obvious next step after that.

I really wish more companies would develop non-lenticular autostereoscopic technologies and products.  I thought the parallax barrier on the Nintendo 3DS was fantastic, especially the "Super Stable 3D" from the head-tracking on the New Nintendo 3DS line of devices.

If someone made a 1080p parallax barrier 3D monitor with head tracking I would buy it in a heartbeat for ~$1000 or less.

 

You can shoot very wide-angle pictures, but when you are looking to them this leads to very important distorsions, since you cannot see them on a so wide angle.

> due to the fact that I'm used to using purpose-made 3D cameras and not DIY rigs.


I am sure many of us would like to know which "purpose-made" 3D cameras you are referring to.


> Another possibility is simply that the relatively low resolution of the Hydrogen display doesn't meet their expectations.


The more pictures are added to the view, the more the effective resolution goes down.  That's why the entry level version of the Looking Glass has got such a poor resolution.  No doubt a next generation Leia phone would need a 4K display to provide an image which appears sharp.


>  or a stereoscope and stereo cards.


More like a stereoscope with achromatic lenses and stereo slides - especially MF slides.

Francois

Who out there loves shooting wide/ultra-wide angle stereo photos?? I'm talking 15-24mm range. I would love to see some of your work! I've shot a bit of 20mm cha-cha, one of which will be shown on this saturday's NYSA zoom meeting, but it would be greatly educational to see some other people's wide angle work. My main curiosity is how the corners of the frame fuse in stereo at the extreme end. Is there so much distortion that only the center of frame is usable? Gopro and VR180 rigs are much wider and seem to work, but perhaps they need a bit of editing to get there?

Thanks,
Dave

I visited Phereo again today and checked "latest".  My surprise this time was that all the last pages I mentioned and screen captured last time have essentially disappeared !

Witness my post above with screen captures that show pages 12385 and 12391.  Today, the last page in the "latest" section on Phereo is 12350 - and it is a blank !

Scrolling back a few pages, I find that the images that appeared on page 12385 a couple of days ago now show up on 12345 !

One wonders if this shrinking will continue...

Francois

What settings do you use in the HTML5 viewer for you 3D Phone (and which model phone)?

Oliver and Paul,
Thanks very much for the feedback. This is the problem with outdated methods like plugins. They will work on one person's setup and be unstable or not work at all on another one.

Jim Tozour

http://tozourfluorescentrocks.net/2d/Page51ebay2020/Page51ebay2020Plugin.html

Your link does not work. When I click on an image, nothing appears.

It works fine on my IE 11 and SeaMonkey 2.49.5.

P.S. Jim: Thanks for your wonderfull 3D Website

Regards

Paul

If these are the same depth maps used to display stereo on the device, then I think it needs work because I often see it make some pretty huge mistakes.

These are specifically the depth maps stored in Leia Image Format images taken with Hydrogen One.  If you're importing images from other cameras, the quality of the depth estimation will fluctuate wildly depending on the quality of the image itself and the rectification/alignment of the camera's sensors.

Even one of their stock images looks very broken (Woman holding out an apple).

Some of the stock images are conversions or taken with very early hardware and camera firmware of Hydrogen One, so their quality isn't indicative of what you can shoot today.  The depth maps that H4V Image Tools extract are from Leia Image Format images taken from mid-2019, internally known as Leia Image Format 2.0 images(the earlier image format did not usually have depth maps encoded and were instead estimated on-the-fly).

I save the side-by-side pairs rather than any of the "processed" stuff.

As have I in the past, but the beauty of Arthur's new H4V Image Tool is that there's no longer any additional flexibility gained by capturing in SBS.  You can shoot in Leia Image Format(which is backwards compatible on ALL devices and can be easily shared as a simple 2D image) and you can extract a full-quality SBS from the image at any time when you desire.

A number of my friends that have been making 3D images for years have commented on "soft" images displayed on the H1, and I suspect that is because they have seen images that have been totally synthesised from the original pair and then stored as a flat image and a depthmap. Which is then used to synthesise a new display set. 

Of course, lots of people have raved over the 3D images displayed on the H1. But these are people who tend to be new to 3D imaging, so they have no experience of the other, better ways to display 3D images...

That's interesting.  Were your friends using images imported from other sources?  The quality of the depth maps decreases significantly when the sensors on the images aren't aligned or "rectified", which the majority of rigs I've seen aren't.  In fact, I've been surprised by the lack of quality(mainly in alignment) in most images(maybe about 2/3rds of images) that are submitted to photo contests in the 3D groups I've attended(Golden Gate Stereo, LA 3-D Club, New York Stereo).  I feel strongly that the quality of the synchronization/alignment/rectification of a 3D image is as important or MORE important than the image resolution, and though the submitted images are usually high resolution other qualities like the color balance between each eye or alignment severely detract from the overall quality of the image.  I may be more sensitive than most due to the fact that I'm used to using purpose-made 3D cameras and not DIY rigs.  Vertical disparity in particular is not handled well at all by the Hydrogen software, and any lack of alignment will make the quality worse.

Another possibility is simply that the relatively low resolution of the Hydrogen display doesn't meet their expectations.  Needless to say that hopefully won't be an issue in future products!  That said if you're a sucker for fantastic 3D image quality, there's really only two high-quality, high-resolution solutions: a PC with an Nvidia 3D Vision 1440p monitor or a stereoscope and stereo cards.

Your link does not work. When I click on an image, nothing appears.

http://tozourfluorescentrocks.net/2d/Page51ebay2020/Page51ebay2020Plugin.html

I made a new page for some rocks I got on ebay, with the usual viewing methods including links to jps files that open the sView application ( not the plugin), then I decided to make another page with embeded jps files to use the plugin. It works fine
with Internet Explorer, it should also work with the versions of Firefox ESR that work with Phereo and Stereopix.

Jim Tozour

On 7/5/20 5:53 PM, ron labbe via groups.io wrote:

Would love to see this~ may have to look at going to the ISU convention next year :)
https://2021.isu3d.org/

There are 6 of the stereoscopes somewhere in the USA already - but sure, you'll be welcomed in September 2021!:-)

Matěj

Hi Robert,
Yes, I used PLA. It should not be exposed to heat, but otherwise I like its characteristics and appearance...
Matěj

Would love to see this~ may have to look at going to the ISU convention next year :)

https://2021.isu3d.org/

--
ron labbe
studio 3D

Beautiful viewer. I like the color accents. Looks like you printed in PLA. Can you share which material you used?  Some are not very dimensionally stable.