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Mars In 3D

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the next-lets-blow-bubbles dept.

xaositects writes "Now I know all of you have your 3D glasses from 1985 still, so don them once again to check out these cool 3D images of Mars's Arctic landscape from the Phoenix Lander's stereoscopic imager. There are also a few close-ups of the parts of Phoenix that are in view and a link to more pictures on the Phoenix Image Gallery."

3 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. separated images available? by radarsat1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does anyone know if they post the left and right images separately anywhere?

    For those of us who don't have immediate access to a pair of red-blue glasses, there are other ways..

    For instance, they could provide an animated gif of both images alternating, which gives you a 3D impression as if you're moving your head to the left and right. This doesn't require glasses and can be a pretty effective way to get an image to "pop out" without actually being stereoscopic.

  2. Why these green/red thingies? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The glasses look admittedly geeky but steroscopic projection has come a long way since 1985. Better than even the polarized glasses are the LCD shutter based glasses. They effectively have LCDs that will black out the left eye and then the right eye some 30, 60 or 120 times a second. The glasses are synched with a display that will show left image when left eye lens is clear and right eye's view when right lens is clear. Thus most CAD models and CGI images leap out of your plain LCD display screens.

    What is more important almost all the 3D Computer Generated Images have depth information already to do hidden line removal. Thus there are already displays in the market to render any OpenGL or similar input into stereoscopic projection. So yeah, it is getting more and more popular in CAD, CGI worlds.

    Sorry don't have time to search and post links to these technologies, but they are easy enough to find using google.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  3. The Parallax View by d'baba · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd guess the reason they don't use anything more expensive than 1920's technology is that you don't really get anything for it except the cool factor. Note also that the term 'cool' is one of those nebulous characterizations that's been around almost as long.

    I keep a pair of red/blue 'glasses' (my current pair is from celebrateexpress.com) and a pair of polarized ones for snitz and giggles but I would like someone to tell me what kind of real, useful information you can get from these parlor tricks. I'd think that if fine-grained 3d images were useful then you'd be seeing holography equipment aboard instead of bi-chromatic stereoscopes.

    Please prove me wrong.

    -- Hypertext isn't what it's marked up to be.