NMC Campus Observer

View a 3D World in 3D! University of Michigan SL Viewer

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Jan 30, 2007 01:04pm

We’ve just gotten word from NMC Member University of Michigan’s 3D Lab of a new development using the open sourced Second Life client. They have connected a modified version of the client to the platform developed under the GeoWall project — off the shelf hardware that powers a set of paired computer projectors to create stereoscopic views.

So you might strap on a pair of 3D movie glasses and see how the world of Second Life looks as 3D projection!

The University of Michigan 3D Lab has brought Second Life one step closer to real life by developing stereoscopic support for the Second Life viewer. This recent addition allows visitors wearing special glasses to see the objects of Second Life pop out of the screen similar to watching a 3D movie.

Using the recently released source code by Linden Labs, Gabriel Cirio and Eric Maslowski have developed a stereoscopic version of the Second Life viewer that works with a large-screen stereo projection system. This low-cost system uses passive stereo based on polarizing filters and was built from off-the-shelf components.

The University of Michigan 3D Lab is continuing development of their Second Life viewer, as well as other projects related to Second Life and Virtual Reality. For more information contact “um3d-secondlife[at]umich.edu” or visit http://um3d.dc.umich.edu/.

8 Comments Add your own

1. Moriz Gupte | January 30th, 2007 at 1:37 pm

This is really very cool. Those anaglyphs (red blue cyan green) I suppose, would be great to give us an idea of how 3d would look like. There were a few gave dev API (e.g. 3dstate) based on opengl that provided this functionality so have first hand experience of this type of 3d. Great for demos, but not so much for continued long term use, there are some physiological concerns to consider, headaches might result for spending a long time using anaglyph glasses. I used to obtain best results if the scene is projected on a wall rather than watching on a desktop.
2. Jeff Barr’s Blog &r&hellip | January 31st, 2007 at 2:59 pm

[…] NMC Campus Observer: View a 3D World in 3D! University of Michigan SL Viewer - “We’ve just gotten word from NMC Member University of Michigan’s 3D Lab of a new development using the open sourced Second Life client. They have connected a modified version of the client to the platform developed under the GeoWall project — off the shelf hardware that powers a set of paired computer projectors to create stereoscopic views.“ […]
3. The Waving Cat » Bl&hellip | February 1st, 2007 at 1:49 am

[…] However, even with the client out just for a few weeks, a few projects cool have already popped up: At University of Michingan’s 3D Lab, a modified version of the client is being developed to hook up Second Life with the GeoWall project to create stereoscopic views (Link). […]
4. NMC Campus Observer &raqu&hellip | February 2nd, 2007 at 11:58 pm

[…] Today I gave a campus tour to Doctor Tower, actually one avatar representing a group of people at the University of Michigan 3D Lab — remember these are the folks we mentioned a few days ago who have developed the stereoscopic viewer for Second Life based on the open source SL code. […]
5. Jeff McNeill » Blog&hellip | February 3rd, 2007 at 2:55 pm

[…] Turns out the open-sourcing of the SL client enabled researchers at the University of Michigan to output stereoscopic video from inside SL, as reported by the New Media Consortium blog.Some additional resources on this technology […]
6. Jeff McNeill » Blog&hellip | February 4th, 2007 at 6:24 am

[…] View a 3D World in 3D! University of Michigan SL Viewer Hacking the SL client to deliver stereoscopic output to a Geo-Wall, holy smokes! (tags: 3d secondlife opensource) […]
7. NMC Campus Observer &raqu&hellip | March 29th, 2007 at 9:56 pm

[…] of mashups, in addition to the Geowall/SL 3-D combo that has been mentioned here before, after seeing some of the haptics tech that was presented by Gary Bertoline and Enkhtuvshin […]
8. max | April 15th, 2008 at 7:51 am

mmm the anaglyph viewer was announced for november 2007 ; we’re in april 2008 and still no link to download it… what a nice dream it was :’(