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Hubble In Anaglyph Stereo 3D
rwllama writes "We at the Hubble Space Telescope have quietly released our first anaglyph (i.e. red/cyan) stereo 3D movie of a flight into a Hubble image. This work is a follow-on to the sequences we produced for the 'Hubble 3D' Imax film. Note that the 3D interpretation uses lots of artistic license, so it is not intended to be scientifically accurate. We would love to hear the Slashdot crowd's feedback on whether you want more, are artistic interpretations of scientific data acceptable, is anaglyph 3D too annoying, how many could watch this with a real 3D (e.g., NVIDIA 3D Vision) setup, etc?"
First new word I leaned today: Anaglyph
From TFA:
"Q: I am color blind. Can I see the stereo 3-D movies?
A: Unfortunately, no. The anaglyph stereo 3-D technique relies on colors to separate the left and right eye images. If one can not see or distinguish between certain colors, then the anaglyph stereo 3-D effect will not work."
That's incorrect. The color of the image and the color of the lens is used to direct a false colored monochrome image to each eye. That is, the left eye receives a blue tinted monochrome image and the right eye receives a red tinted monochrome image (or vice-versa).
For someone who is color blind and can't differentiate red and blue, then they will perceive the color arriving at each eye to be the same. For them, the 3D effect will be even better.
I don't care if it's made to be poop color...there are never enough images from the Hubble. Anything they are willing to present is good in my book!
Living With a Nerd
The 2D version of the movie is available as well: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/29/video/a/
Given that, outside the solar system, there's hardly anything closer than a couple parsecs except for some very faint objects, and 1 parsec is 1 parallax *second* (as in, 1/3600th of a degree), and it represents the angle formed by watching the same object from 2 observation points spaced 1AU (or 2AU?) apart, does this allow any actual 3d effect to be perceived by the brain? The left/right image separation should be insufficient (unless of course the content has been heavily software processed).
Also, please, don't release anaglyphs, there's a lot of different video hardware to enable 3d vision. Just release video with the left/right frames (side-by-side, above/below, alternating, you choose) and let each of us view it optimally on our hardware. There's plenty of software to accomplish that, even java applets and browser plugins.
Vacuum cleaners suck. Kings rule.
Ouch - this is the best that Hubble can do? The images show serious chromatic aberrations, with significant red-blue fringing on edges. What's worse is that the effect gets more pronounced as the camera moves around. They should really consider ditching the point-and-shoot and movie up to an SLR with a decent carl-zeiss lens if they want to be taken seriously.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Yes, that line in the post was intentionally ironic. We did not trumpet the 3D in the press release for the general public, but if the post made it to slashdot we would be loud to the tech savvy audience who could give us the best feedback.
If you design the experience properly you don't have to choose between an artistic and scientifically accurate rendering of the Hubble material. You can first show the artistic version and then add a scientific overlay with a basic set of data (what you're looking at, distance from earth, chemical makeup, etc). You can then transition into the wonky scientific version for a final pan across the subject matter so that you're representing the needs of multiple viewers. A decent 3D Info-graphics template can look really cool and add some production value without breaking your budget as well.
If I someone at Hubble was actually interested I'd be willing to donate some time in making a storyboard that illustrates the concept.
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
The visualization does uses separate left and right cameras. However, I forgot to mention in the posting that the "3D" is mostly "2.5D". We have no information about what the backside of the nebula looks like, so we could only do full 3D modeling if we artistically created volumes and pixels that Hubble does not observe. We did some of that for the "Hubble 3D" film, but did not invest such time on this project. We did sculpt the front side of the clouds in the nebula into landscapes, but the camera path stays mostly in front, so the sculpting is not that obvious. We are testing to see how much effort is required to get "enough" immersion.
Cool! But parallel viewing works just fine, too. How 'bout a version in that?
I have always preferred cross-eyed free-viewing. I can't cross my eyes outward, so I can only use parallel for images smaller than my ocular distance. Anyone who has never tried either one should look into it.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
I am color blind, lacking the ability to see red light. The red-cyan glasses don't work for me because from my point of view the red lens is completely opaque (black) and the cyan lens completely translucent (clear). Thus, you could simulate my experience with the glasses by covering your left eye with your hand and watching the movie with your right eye only. It's not exactly an improvement ...
Existence usually comes as a surprise (Idem)
FAKE.
This isn't true 3D, just like the special edition of Nightmare Before Christmas was not true 3D.
Unfortunately they didn't have the budget to place the cameras 500 light years apart to get a true stereoscopic image of the Large Megallanic Cloud.
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