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Fields of Study
Binocular Vision
For life forms posessing two forward-facing eyes, the most powerful depth cue is stereopsis. This cue examines the slight differences between the images projected onto the two retinas, and deduces the 3D scene. In the laboratory, there are two common methods for presenting different images to the left and right eyes. The first technique is to present left-eye and right-eye images on alternating video frames. The alternating video frames are then shown to alternating eyes using LCD shutter goggles that are synchronized to the video. The second technique is called a haploscope. This method takes two separate images, usually from two separate displays, and optically presents one of the images to only the left eye, and the other image to only the right eye. VPixx Technologies supports both strategies. Our DATAPixx and VIEWPixx hardware both have a standard VESA mini-DIN-3 connector for directly driving LCD stereo goggles. To implement a haploscope, the DATAPixx has two video outputs which can be configured to present the left/right halves of a single video image to two separate displays. The advantages of this haploscope solution are that the software only needs to manage a single OpenGL context, and the two displays will always be perfectly synchronized.