[Visualpython-users] stereo

[John B. <jb...@te...>]

Hi, Jonathan et.al.

Noting release of new VPython, wondering if/when another release will
contain a modification to the stereo='passive' function, to make it
selectable between "walleyed" stereo (as it now is) and "crosseyed" stereo.

I understand, from converse with Bruce (Sherwood) that the 'passive' stereo
function was written in walleyed because that was the _de-facto_ (not
'agreed-upon') 'standard' in the industry for _projected_ stereo, and that
amazingly enough, no thought _at_all_ was given to the community of stereo
"freeviewers."

There is an enormous amount of people out here who do "freeviewing"
(walleyed and/or crosseyed) stereo, and perhaps even many who, like me, do
it every day, and who _work_ in it.

Every freeviewing stereo computer modelmaking program I have ever seen,
_at_least_ offers the option to do the freeviewing either way.  Those
include Struck, Fluidiom, and Graph3D (to mention just the ones _I_ use
often), and a half-dozen others I have used but found wanting for one reason
or another.

I won't repeat all the arguments I made to Bruce, regarding why crosseyed
stereo is superior in many ways to walleyed for people who actually use it
in their studies, but I will mention that I think it was a piece of poorly
thought-out decisionmaking, to _exclude_ crosseyed-freeviewers from using
Visual Python's otherwise wonderfully simple-to-code stereo methodologies.

Bruce also mentioned he thought that making the option selectable between
walleyed and crosseyed would be a "minor" tweak to the code (it simply means
offering a way to switch the positions of the two images of the object, in
the frame), so I hope that at least by the next version release, you might
have seriously considered this, and made the option available for
crosseyed-freeviewers.

It would make no difference to those already using the 'passive' option for
projected (polarizer-using) stereo, and would open up VPython's stereo
options to those of us 'newbie' coders --in scientific studies or not-- who
know better than to try to use walleyed viewing on large monitors.  (It
would also not have impacted the 'standard' users of projected stereo, to
have made the stereo crosseyed in the _first_ place, since the stereo depth
is dependent solely on which eye one puts which polarizer in front of....)

Please?  Please?
Thanks!

Peace
JB
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