greythorn associates

Why stereo visualisation?

It is the way your brain expects to see things, with a left eye view and a right eye view, and from the minor differences that around 60mm of eye separation creates in these two views, the brain is able to calculate depth and therefore able to construct and understand the real world we experience every day. It is the difference between looking at a flat photograph or illustration of an object and reaching out and touching the object itself.

who uses stereo visualisation?

Until very recently, the cost of around £3m for an immersive visualisation system limited this technology to major international companies and some University research departments. Early adopters were the Oil & Gas industries, (Shell, BP, Texaco) quickly followed by all the car (BMW, Mercedes, General Motors) and airplane manufacturers and for just one reason, use of high performance, real time, stereoscopic visualisation shows a real return on investment. It saves money. Whether, it is reducing the need for physical prototypes, giving a clearer understanding of complex data, enabling and encouraging a collaborative working environment, reducing time to market, improving decision making, the result is the same, faster time to insight, better products and reduced costs. In recent months the advances in "consumer" graphics cards, CPU performance and projection and display technologies, have brought the cost of creating a high performance stereo visualisation environment within reach of small businesses, University departments, hospitals and schools. In fact, for most users requirements, a standard Mac G5, Linux or even Windows computer can outperform the £3m system of only a year or so ago.

who can benefit from stereo?

If you work with, or need to explain, 3d content or complex data then stereo is essential. Stereo provides all the depth information that the brain requires to understand the scene, allowing it to concentrate on understanding the problem, rather than image processing. So everyone can benefit. You just need to see it, to believe it!

With affordable real time, stereoscopic visualisation now being a reality, why is it not more widely adopted? The answer is simple, hardware is only one part of the equation, traditionally these systems have been run by experienced computer programmers and without these skills it has been either impossible or very expensive to create your own content. Not any more!

Gee-Viz Present3D is a real breakthrough in power, flexibility and ease of use for a stereo visualisation authoring tool. Completely cross platform, the same presentation can go from laptop, to desktop, to multipipe stereo visualisation environment independent of the OS and hardware used and, most importantly, any one can use it! No programming skills required! And it gets better, Present3D allows the creation of seamless presentations that combine, text, bulleted text, backgrounds, images, stereo images, movies, stereo movies, point cloud models, polygonal models (over thirty formats currently supported including massive terrain and vizsim .flt models) and animation paths, all in a real time, fully interactive environment....drop in a model, turn it, zoom in and explore a detail, fly through and around it..... but why stop at just one model, Present3D uses the familiar slideshow format of applications like Powerpoint, so not only can a single slide combine all of these elements, including multiple models, but you can have as many slides as you require. Go from a text and movie introduction, to a fly through of a virtual town, to a full colour laser scan....what ever is required to explain your research, product, topic or design. By using animation paths and the autorun facility you can also build fully interactive stereo kiosks, for medical information, science centres, museums and heritage applications, now the limit is your imagination.