NVidia is pushing a 200 dollar product which is nothing more than shutter glasses and ties into DirectX 10, encouraging people to move to Vista, which I personally believe is yet another nail in the coffen of closing the PC platform. Now I think a better idea would be to add a feature to wine that permits stereo imaging to be added to any program that makes use of 3D features in wine, to somehow establish a standard for providing this service. Proving to the consumers that you don't need special drivers, monitors or hardware to get 3D stereo vision from any application.. It would be one more thing that Wine provides that Microsoft doesn't to those who haven't bought Vista, and furthermore a reason to use wine.. And it would, I believe, be so easy to add.. I purchased some cheap stereo shutter glasses from ebay that uses what looks like stereo headphone attachment, for 9 dollars, and this wasn't some crappy Elsa glasses that were put out 6 years ago, this was new, high quality, I will do a demonstration of the glasses on youtube.. I connected it to the microphone port of a sound adapter and the glasses darkened, so it's likely all that is needed is some way to hack it to work via the sound adapter of a computer. Where I bought them was "ultimate3dheaven.com" via Ebay.. I foresee a whole 3D visual industry that has not evolved because, like linux and wine, is seen as "for hobbyists". The advantages of stereo vision: - perception of photo manipulation - more tangible representation of goods (ebay) - ability to recognize more things in a stereo photo than would be possible in 2D. - ability to stop time and observe imperceivable things like water suspended in air - ability to see mountains that appear to our eyes as flat in 3D as if looking at a model in clay. - perception of reflections: glass, water, smoke, anisotropical effects like glitter, brushed metal, suede. - the perception of increased resolution due to the added resolution of the combined imagery. Wine could bring this to anyone regardless of income level, with as little as red/green, cyan,red, blue/yellow,cross-eyed/parallel layering, or as advanced as the use of lenticular monitors, polarized projection or lcd shutter frame synchronization. The only thing I believe that has kept this from being brought to the PC platform is the misperception that it is a "gimmick", you have two eyes not one this should have been on a computer from day one.. The use of 3D graphics libraries should make this more accessible.. But it seems that guys like NVidia only pull out such technologies when they need to make a quick buck.. Then years down the road they drop it from their drivers.. If anyone wants to discuss this with me, go to youtube and check out the user "rofthorax": http://www.youtube.com/user/rofthorax I pushed the development of blender (one of the few tech supports who volunteered their time with help given by Ton Roosendal before there was a [1.5] manual for blender). My interest in blender was the need for a 3D tool that artists could own that wouldn't move away from them as a result of license servers and software managed EULA, a technique of controlling the boundry of ownership from those who pay for the software to those who dictate the use of the software regardless of need. This is a revolution happening in steps to give people access to things that are so obvious, that should have been there yesterday but have not happened probably because "there is no market for it".. That's where open source is different, open source development doesn't have to have a market, it just needs a chance to exist, to be seen and heard, to be perceived and worked with.. It can start at least with and idea, build into a test, become a library, folded into an utility, created as an application and adopted as a standard, developing into a new industry.. This is how new jobs are created.. Someone reveals something that wasn't there before and others perceive applications for that and an industry develops.. Stereo vision is not just for games, or movies.. It could be used in the selling of items over the Internet, observing the interior of a new car with accuracy, observing the texture of a Van Gogh Oil painting to see the sand embedded from the beach where Van Gogh sat, seeing a prototype before it is made with both eyes, seeing at scales of dimension beyond what is humanly possible (such as perceiving the soil wasting of mining experiments in a way no 2D image can present), working at scales one can't normally (robot with stereo vision and arms, controlled by someone with keyboard and stereo glasses), seeing beyond the glare of a jewelery cabinet window to see the jewels inside. When people see something with both eyes, it has a tendency to be that much more convincing and is likely to motivate a sale like no single image can. All that is required is first steps.. And I think a really easy way to do this would be to add this to the directX implementation in Wine such that any 3D scene can be augmented with stereovision (at least color separated anaglyph), but without modification of the API.. Offer that which Microsoft will not offer themselves in interest of leveraging peoples adoption of a OS that will likely lead to the closing of the PC architecture as well as the accessibility to hardware that Linux adopters can use. One way to change the future, invent it.
