3D Vision Blog » Anaglyph Glasses

How to Play Games in Stereo 3D Mode on Your Sony PSP Console

Bloody — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:33:31 +0000

No, Sony hasn’t released a 3D-capable PSP console yet. However thanks to a piece of software called PSP3DPlugin for the PSP console written by a German guy going under the nickname of PSPWizard you are able to play some games in anaglyph 3D mode. This plugin however requires you to have a modified PSP console with custom firmware, allowing you to run homebrew software as it is not official software and is not supported on non modified consoles, so you may not be able to run it on just about any PSP. Also have in mind that the software will not convert all games for PSP into stereoscopic 3D mode for use with a pair of anaglyph glasses, but only some games will work. The example anaglyph 3D screenshot above is from the game Ridge Racer 2 that works quite well with the PSP3DPlugin, it is for anaglyph 3D glasses with red-cyan color filters, but the plugin also supports green-pink (magenta?) and yellow-blue color filters in both this order and in reversed order of the color filters.

To install the PSP 3D Plugin you can download the package I’ve provided for you from the link below and extract the contents of the archive in the main folder of the memory card you use in the PSP console. You need to preserve the exact folder structure in order for everything to work and after you extract the required files you need to reboot your console. If your console does not have a custom firmware installed that will allow you to run homebrew software, then after the reboot nothing will change and you will not be able to use the plugin. But if the console is with a CFW that allows you to run homebrew, the 3D will be loaded and you would be able to activate the anaglyph 3D mode in games (it will work only in games, not in the console’s menu for example). In the package below, besides the 3D plugin, I’ve also included a software that will allow you to capture screenshots from games, this software is also a homebrew and will require a modified console and it can capture both normal 2D screenshots as well as anaglyph 3D screenshots that you can easily transfer to your PC and share. The screenshots are being saved on your Memory Stick in the PSP folder under SCREENSHOTS with a separate folder created for each game (screenshots are saved in BMP format). You can also preview the screenshots you take from the Photo menu, when you open the Memory Stick menu you will see folders with the names of each game you have taken screenshots in.

After installing the 3D plugin on your PSP console you are able to call an additional menu, like the one you see on the photo above, so you can adjust the 3D effect while in game. By default the key assigned for activating and deactivating the anaglyph 3D mode in a game is the key of the console with a note on it (the one left from the Select button) and with the display key (the one left from the note key) you can capture screenshots in games. When you are in a game, in order to call the extended menu you see shown on the photo above you need to hold the Start button pressed down for about 5 seconds. This extra menu allows you to also enable/disable the 3D mode, change the color filters used in the anaglyph glasses, and tweak the level of the stereoscopic 3D effect. There are two settings available for adjusting the stereo 3D effect in a game, these are the 3D angle (something like convergence) and the 3D position (something like depth), so playing with these settings you can adjust the volume effect you get in the game. You are free to try different settings for different games and you can save something like profiles, so your settings won’t be lost the next time you run the game.

As I’ve already mentioned, not all games support the 3D plugin and not all of these that work will be absolutely problem free, but it is worth trying if you have a PSP console fitting the requirements for the plugin to work. For example the game Ridge Racer 2 works very nice and looks quite OK in anaglyph stereoscopic 3D mode, the game Gran Turismo for example also works with the plugin, however when you activate the anaglyph 3D mode the framerate drops a lot to an unplayable level, so the game is pretty much unplayable. Another example is the game Lego Star Wars III that is apparently not compatible with the plugin and when you try to activate the anaglyph 3D mode in it nothing happens, so you can try and report what games work and what not. The developer of the plugin has posted a short list of games that work for sure and of some that might work, but those lists are not very full and since there are a lot of other games for the PSP out there if you try any of them you are welcome to share your feedback.

- To download the PSP3DPlugin and PRXshot screenshot software for the PSP console…

Turn Your Apple iPad Tablet Into an Anaglyph 3D Sketchbook

Bloody — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:28:10 +0000

DeepSketch is an interesting new application for Apple’s iPad and iPad 2 that can turn these tablets into a digital stereoscopic 3D sketchbook, using the most common anaglyph 3D (red-cyan). DeepSketch has been developed by Mattis Folkestad with the idea to be easy for use and provide spectacular results… that is if you are good with drawing sketches, there is no need to be that good with the use of stereo 3D as you can quickly get the hand of it. The DeepSketch application is already available on the App Store for $1.99 USD and it works only on iPads with iOS 5.0 installed, so if you still haven’t upgraded yours to iOS 5 you will have to in order to use this application.

DeepSketch uses a slider for easy manual control of the current depth you are going to draw at (left for deeper, right for closer), so you just need to consider if the specific part of the sketch needs to go deep inside the screen or pop-out and respectively adjust the slider, and there is also automatic control of the depth available to help you out (the depth starts from the point where you set it at and moves either closer or farther from you while you draw). You just set the depth of the line using the slider and start drawing, the software automatically draw the two colored lines needed to recreate the feeling of volume, so you can draw wearing a pair of anaglyph 3D glasses or without glasses (if you are a bit more advanced 3D user). The key here is that you need to be able to draw pretty well and I’m not that good with drawing by hand, but still I like the end result, even if it is not the prettiest drawing… it is quite fun to use this application. It supports not only the most widely spread red-cyan anaglyph glasses, but cal also work with red-green, red-blue, magenta-green in this and in the reversed order of the color filters. You can also control the minimum and maximum volume in your drawings, so that you will not get too high separation or too low and make it harder for the people that are supposed to like your 3D drawings. The images you have drawn are saved in lossless PNG format, so that the maximum details are preserved and you can access them from the Photo library on the tablet and of course easily upload or share them with others. Just make sure that you have a compatible pair of anaglyph glasses lying around before getting DeepSketch as the application will not be any fun without the glasses that will allow you to actually see the volume in the drawings.

- For more information about the DeepSketch application for iPad tablets….

Onuprova 3D Camera Helps You Record in 3D From Two Webcams

Bloody — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:43:52 +0000

Onuprova 3D Camera is a free software that can help you easily use two web cameras in order to be able to take photos and record videos in stereo 3D, the application can output the resulting footage in anaglyph 3D format using multiple options. The five different anaglyph color schemes supported by the software are: red-cyan, red-green, red-blue, magenta-cyan and green-magenta. And if you don’t have two webcams (preferably the same model) you can also take two photos with a little offset in between with your mobile phone, digital camera or webcam and then import the two images in the software and get anaglyph 3D output. Onuprova 3D Camera is simple and easy to use and you should be able to quickly get the hang of using it, it could take you some more time in order to learn to place the two web cameras with the right distance in between or properly converged in order to give you the best results in 3D, especially if you are new to stereoscopic 3D shooting. Just have in mind that the closer the object you are shooting in 3D the less should be the distance between the two web cameras and the more distant it is the larger the distance should be. As a base you can start with the rule of 1/30, meaning that the distance between the lenses of the cameras should be 1/30 of the distance from the cameras to the object you are shooting in 3D, and this should work quite well as a base to start experimenting with.

- Here you can download the latest version 2.3 of Onuprova 3D Camera…

World’s Most Beautiful 3D Magazine for Mobile Phones and Tablets

Bloody — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:30:24 +0000

World’s Most Beautiful (WMB) 3D is an ambitious new magazine that is going to be available on print in 3D and online for mobile devices such as Android-based smartphones and iPhone, as well as for Android-based tablets and Apple’s iPad in both 2D and 3D. The mobile applications for accessing the magazine from Android-based devices as well as for the iPhone and iPad are already available in the Android Market and Apple’s AppStore respectively. WMB actually is a 3D magazine with the 2D version being there just for the sakes of “backwards compatibility” as not everyone is yet 3D-ready and here by 3D I’m referring to anaglyph 3D made for anaglyph glasses with red-cyan color filters. The magazine’s first issue is just out and it features Kim Kardashian as a cover girl, but the magazine is not only about models and celebrities, it covers topics such as travel, gadgets and technology and so on, so it seems promising so far. But don’t get the wrong idea it will be most for the photos in 3D and not as much for the content in the form of text as the text is after all still in 3D and it won’t look that cool even if it is made in 3D as would the photos of beautiful girls or expensive cars.

There were a lot of newspapers and magazines all over the world that went out with single issues made in mostly or entirely in 3D, but this appears to be the first commercial magazine that starts as a completely 3D publication and will continue to be made entirely in 3D. Will this turn out to be a successful strategy or not is yet to be seen, but if it succeeds we are sure to see more publications to follow this trend. So let us see how things go from now on with the WMB 3D magazine now after the first issue is already out…

- Visit the official website of the World’s Most Beautiful 3D Magazine for more information…

Pinball HD for Android 3.0 Honeycomb Tablets with Anaglyph 3D Support

Bloody — Thu, 12 May 2011 20:45:33 +0000

This week I was trying out for a bit an Acer Iconia Tab A500 tablet using Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system, actually one of the first to become available to the market in Europe (similar to Motorola Xoom in US). The tablet is based on Nvidia Tegra 2 and although there is no 3D screen present (fear not, 3D-capable tablets are also coming), I was surprised to find a game that actually natively supports stereoscopic 3D mode and more specifically anaglyph 3D rendering if you have a pair of paper or plastic glasses lying around. The game is Pinball HD, released just recently and is optimized for Tegra. It comes with three different “tables” and all of them support anaglyph 3D rendering in multiple formats – red-cyan, green-magenta and yellow-blue.

I’ve tried the game with a plastic pair of anaglyph red-cyan glasses that I’ve had laying around and it seemed quite nice… and I haven’t used anaglyph 3D for quite a while. Have in mind that activating the 3D mode in the game can increase the load on the tablet and you can notice some slight lag at times, that is with the default of 1GHz per core on the Tegra chip (overclocked Motorola Xoom running at 1.5GHz per core is more than fine). But back to the game, in both stereo 3D and normal 2D mode it looks really nice and if you happen to get a tablet with Android 3.0 this is one of the games that you should try, it can help killing some free time when you have it… especially when traveling and I plan to do some next week. And with that said, Pinball HD will be my dose of anaglyph 3D for now and I’m going back to active shutter glasses, although I do plan to try some other 3D apps from the Android Market that seemed interesting while testing the tablet… ;)

Stereoscopic 3D Website for the Upcoming 3D Movie DAM999

Bloody — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 20:00:53 +0000

DAM999 is an upcoming 3D movie directed by Sohan Roy, and the production company behind that movie has recently launched a dedicated 3D website for the movie (for anaglyph red-cyanglasses), which is dubbed as the world’s first 3D movie website. I can say that I like the idea, although for the moment besides the website’s dynamic 3D background and the 3D movie trailer, there is not much content in 3D available, but more is expected. And maybe in the future we’ll be seeing more dedicated 3D websites from other movie productions that will be made in 3D, also releasing official 3D movie trailers not only in anaglyph, but in Side by Side format as well.

Movie Storyline:

The story revolves around the central edifice in this movie, a 100 year old Dam built by British during their colonial days in India. Like a Dam, each character in this movie, holds back their emotions for various reasons, eventually the DAM breaks along with that of its characters drawing the audience to gripping climax. The numerical 999 has got great importance in British Colonial Indian historical pages. The story reveals the concealed truth of India’s age old myths and science.

The movie is a message to the world about the overlooked dangers of outdated dams; the realities of the marine world; the tradition, culture and forgotten medical cures of the Indian history; the pain and pleasure of being in love and the nine hidden but living emotions of a man. This movie is a tribute to the 1975 Banqiao Dam disaster in China that claimed 250,000 innocent lives. DAM999, the movie is in its final Post production stage and is expected to be released in 3D later this year.

- To view the 3D website for the 3D movie DAM999 (for anaglyph red-cyan glasses)…

Microsoft Office 2010 German Stereoscopic 3D Cinema Advertisement

Bloody — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 08:48:00 +0000

Microsoft is among the first companies to make 3D commercials, at least in Germany with the release of a 45 second 3D advertisement continuing the line of 2D ads for the promotion of the new Office 2010. Apparently the video was shot with two Arri Alexa 3D cameras as well as two high-speed cameras and it was made to be shown in 3D cinemas in Germany before 3D movies projection starts. If you are interested you can watch the 3D commercial in anaglyph format (the video above), uploaded to YouTube by Microsoft, however they did not upload it in SbS or A/B 3D format with the yt3d tag, but instead already compressed video in anaglyph. So the big question is will this commercial make you get the new Office 2010… ;)

Street Dance 3D DVD in UK, but With the Wrong Anaglyph Glasses

Bloody — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 17:29:56 +0000

The movie Street Dance 3D is available in UK with anaglyph 3D version, however they’ve mxed up things a bit as reported by Gareth from Stereo3D.co.uk who bought the movie and discovered with a surprise that the video is encoded for red-green anaglyph glasses, but the bundled pair of paper anaglyph glasses is red-cyan. This comes as quite a surprise, considering the fact that the anaglyph glasses are branded for the movie and are packed inside the DVD, so the mistake is not made by the retailer, but most likely is coming from the DVD packaging company that put the glasses for the movie using the wrong color filters. It may come as a surprise to them but not all 3D is equal, and not all anaglyph 3D is the same – there are multiple formats and solutions and you should be very careful not to mix up things like that, because nobody will be happy when the 3D does not work as it is supposed to. And if the 3D does not work because of such mistake and the user is not aware of where the problem comes from, he might as well get bad opinion about the 3D in general… although anaglyph 3D is not the best form of 3D it is still the most widely usable and affordable at least when you match the right color filter for the glasses with the content encoded with the right anaglyph format. This might be just an issue with the UK 3D anaglyph release of the movie, but the problem might as well be bigger, so if you’ve got the movie and have the same problem please do report it here…

3D Drawing Pad is a Very Simple, but Ingenious Product For Kids

Bloody — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:26:19 +0000

The 3D Drawing Pad is intended as a fun product for kids that relies on very simple, but effective idea to get the kids attention and interest in 3D technology and make them want to learn more about it. What you get is a 50 sheets of paper attached to a pad with each sheet having a red-cyan background image printed and a pair of red-cyan paper anaglyph glasses. Then when you write or draw something over the paper with a black pen it looks like a normal note on a paper, but when you put on the anaglyph glasses the text you’ve written seems to pop-out of the paper. The reason for that is that the printed red-cyan background on each sheet of the pad when viewed with the glasses seem to go inside of the paper and the text seems to stick out from it. As I’ve aid pretty simple concept, but making it interesting enough for smaller kids and you can use the 3D Drawing Pad as a means to get their attention to 3D and how everything works…

- The 3D Drawing Pad is currently available at Amazon for $6.95 USD…

Trying Anaglyph Stereoscopic 3D Gaming on your Laptop

Bloody — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:13:30 +0000

The usage of Anaglyph method for viewing stereoscopic 3D is still by far the easiest way to get a glimpse of what is possible in the world of S3D and what you can expect from a better solution. Of course there are some issues associated with the anaglyph method like problems with color reproduction or you getting tired even after a little use of the red-cyan or other color filters. But still having in mind that you can try it without the need for special display, glasses or even software that you have to pay is just enough for a lot of people to want to try that first and then go with solutions like 3D Vision, iZ3D Monitors, Zalman Trimon and others that require a serious investment in hardware and not only for the 3D setup itself, but also for the PC that will be able to handle the 3D content good enough. So lets get to the point how you can test anaglyph stereo 3D gaming on your mobile computer in particular, but the same solutions will also work on a desktop PC…

If your laptop has an Nvidia-based GPU inside (GeForce 8xxx or later mobile graphics) you can go for the 3D Vision drivers and use their free anaglyph mode called 3D Vision Discover with any pair of plain red-cyan anaglyph glasses paper or plastic. Or it was working without problems for the 3D Vision Drivers up to version 190.38, as with the later 191.xx (if I remember correctly) up to the latest ones you will get the error above when trying to enable the Stereoscopic 3D mode from the control panel. It seems that when you run any newer 3D Vision drivers they try to find a compatible 120Hz LCD panel in your laptop and if they don’t you are out of luck and cannot even enable the 3D Vision Discover mode to try out the anaglyph mode. It is still weird why Nvidia did not do anything about his issue since it has been around for some time already, or maybe they are simply ignoring all the owners of gaming laptops since there is still no official 3D Vision support for mobile systems with external monitor (with shutter glasses and 120Hz LCD). If you are a lucky owner of Asus G51J 3D laptop – the only one so far with a 120Hz panel you are Ok and you probably should not have any problems running the 3D Vision Discover anaglyph mode too, but why would you do it on this laptop anyway? Still with a modified drivers and and external 120Hz LCD monitor you can run both anaglyph and shutter glasses mode with the 3D vision driver. At least running the anaglyph mode on your desktop PC does not bring any issues, but still if you don’t yet have the shutter glasses you cannot even try the anaglyph mode on your laptop, why?

Anyway, the good news is that there are alternatives for laptop owners that still want to try the free anaglyph mode and that is to use the iZ3D Driver that does support Anaglyph and a few other stereo 3d viewing methods apart for the specific mode used for their own stereoscopic 3D displays. Another good thing about the use of this driver is that it will work not only on Nvidia-based hardware (including pre-stream processors architecture GPUs), but also on ATI-based video cards. The only drawback here is that the iZ3D Driver still does not support DirectX 10 games, unlike the Nvidia solution, although the company seems to be working on adding it for some time now. So if you have a laptop and you want to try out stereoscopic 3D gaming on it with anaglyph mode you should definitely download and try the iZ3D Driver.

- To download the iZ3D Driver with free Stereoscopic 3D anaglyph mode…

3D Vision Blog » Anaglyph Glasses

How to Play Games in Stereo 3D Mode on Your Sony PSP Console

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