p2gStereoStage™ features a variety of user options
to make your 3D stereoscopic viewing experience as pleasant as
possible. All functions can be controlled with a button bar
underneath the image or video display. Depending on the web
designer's preference, this button bar may or may not be
visible. Clicking anywhere on the display quickly shows or
hides the button bar.
Shows a text caption for the current image or video, usually
consisting of a brief explanation or a copyright notice.
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“Media” Pane
Contains thumbnail images representing the scenes in this
presentation. Mousing over the thumbnails and clicking them
lets you select other scenes. If you lose your way, click the
[?] button to move back to the current scene.
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“Player” Pane
Allows you to control the presentation at your own pace. [Play],
[Pause], and [Stop] work pretty much like you're used to from
other media players. [Prev], [Next], and [First] move you to the
previous, next, and first scene respectively.
The “Seek” slider shows the progress of the current
animation or video clip. Drag the slider thumb with the mouse to
pause and move within the current clip. You can also control the
volume or mute audio alltogether, if the current presentation
has sound.
The player can be controlled with the numeric keypad, too: [5]
toggles between “play” and “pause”. [1]
stops and rewinds the current media. [4], [6], and [7] move you
to the previous, next, and first scene. [F] switches the display
to fullscreen mode. Depending on your browser, you probably need
to click the applet at least once for the keypad to work. In
fullscreen mode the keys will be inactive. This Flash security
feature prevents applets from hijacking your screen. The [Esc]
key will always cancel fullscreen mode.
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“Display” Pane
Here you can select the stereoscopic display mode you're most
comfortable with. The “Convergence” slider lets you
control the stereo depth, e.g. to correct uncomfortable
violations of the stereo window after the fact. This slider also
controls focus when “time-for-space animation” is
selected. Slide it to the left to focus on near objects and to
the right to focus on farther away items. The
“TFS Fade-In” and “TFS Fade-Out” sliders
also let you manipulate “time-for-space animations”
for best results.
Check the “Fullscreen” box to escape the limitations
of the browser page and enjoy a cinematic 3D stereo experience.
Uncheck the box, or press the [Esc] key to return to the web
page. Check “Stretch to fill” to utilize every last
bit of available screen real estate at the expense of aspect
ratio. Go ahead and play with the options; you'll get the hang
of them quickly…
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“Anaglyph” Pane
Switches the display to anaglyph (“funny glasses”)
mode and lets you select the most comfortable color settings for
your glasses. Please note, the presentation author may have
pre-selected the best setting for each scene. If this bothers
you, check “Don't override my colors” to stay in
control.
Check “Swap left/right colors” if the
filters on your glasses are reversed, e.g. cyan/red instead of
the standard red/cyan, or if you're more comfortable
wearing your glasses backwards to compensate for your eyes'
different color dominance.
Although the p2gStereoStage™ applet doesn't support
the newer, patented ColorCode 3-D® amber/blue filters, it
can render the much older blue/yellow color scheme instead (not
patented). Owners of ColorCode 3-D® glasses can get a
reasonably good 3D quality by swapping the filter colors.
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“About” Pane
You'd probably agree that I should be allowed to “see my
name in lights” for all the pro-bono work I invested in
p2gStereoStage™…
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[F] Button, [X] Button
Clicking [F] quickly switches to fullscreen mode and back. [X]
closes the currently open pane and aligns the button bar with
the bottom of the applet.
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* requires very high bandwidth
** with permission of DHM Berlin
p2gStereoStage™ is the world's first
“multi-everything” 3D stereoscopic media player for the
World Wide Web. Webmasters and bloggers can now easily combine very
different types of audio-visual source media into unified, polished
presentations to play anywhere and in any size. From a lowly stereo
image on some web page all the way to a full-blown cinematic 3D
extravaganza with hundreds of scenes: Let p2gStereoStage™
handle your 3D stereo display on the web. Best of all: It's FREE to all
non-commercial fans of stereoscopic imagery.
Take a few minutes to read this page and look at the various
presentation samples I prepared for you before rushing to download
p2gStereoStage™. In order to get the most out of
p2gStereoStage™, you need to know what it can do. This
harmless little proggie is a powerful presentation tool indeed –
but it also has some limitations you should be aware of before
spending time on setting up a presentation that doesn't look
right…
Initially, most samples are presented in a small window for
red/cyan anaglyph glasses – but you are always in control! The
buttons at the bottom of the display let you quickly change settings to
whatever you are most comfortable with.
Thanks to Aidan O'Rourke, the photographer and creative allrounder from
Stockport, U.K., for his contribution to the making of
p2gStereoStage™. Take a look at
this cool presentation of Aidan's photo art,
or visit him at www.aidan.co.uk for more photographic gems.
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“Multi-Everything” Features
Multi-Media: The p2gStereoStage™ applet can play
still images, animated images, video streams, and audio in a variety of
configurations. By design, the visuals are supposed to be 3D
stereoscopic in nature, but conventional
2D imagery
can, of course, also be shown. Presentation authors can “mix and
match” 3D/2D visuals and audio to their heart's content.
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Multi-Platform: With the player implemented as an Adobe
Flash® applet (Flash 10), your 3D stereo presentation can be played
on pretty much any modern computer, regardless of operating system.
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Multi-Source:p2gStereoStage™ opens JPG, JPS, PNG,
and GIF images as well as FLV Flash video and MP3 audio files. 3D
stereoscopic visuals (i.e. images and videos) can be side-by-side stereo
pairs with cross-eyed or parallel arrangements, KMQ-style over/under
stereo pairs, or individual files for the left and right eye view. The
applet also
extracts greyscale views
from existing red/cyan anaglyph images.
Still in the experimental stage is a facility to generate
pseudo-stereo views from 2D video.
Video clips exhibiting a reasonably stable sideways motion, e.g. 2D
“Pulfrich” videos, will be excellent candidates for this.
Non-stereo visuals can still take advantage of the applet's
“smart” multi-sound mixing capabilities (see below).
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Multi-Format: The applet can show stereo media in a variety of
popular 3D stereoscopic formats. The very same stereo source (which is
the point, isn't it?) can be processed on-the-fly to 22 different
anaglyph flavors: red/cyan, cyan/red, blue/yellow, yellow/blue,
green/magenta, magenta/green, full color, half color, optimized half
color, Dubois, and greyscale.
Cross-eyed or parallel freeviewing, mirror-assisted freeviewing,
KMQ-style over/under displays, and time-for-space animation
(“wiggle” stereo) are also part of the display arsenal.
Presentation authors can “suggest” preferred viewing modes
and stereo window adjustments, while users can override these settings
to whatever they're most comfortable with. Play with the applet on this page to try the different options.
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Multi-Sound: MP3 audio can be arranged on up to 11
“smart” soundtracks. The audio streams are mixed live, i.e.
as the presentation plays, to create a dense movie-like sound canvas.
“Smart” means, the audio can be configured to deliver a
consistent mood accross entire blocks of scenes – whether the
show plays in a linear fashion, or the user bounces around different
scenes using the “Media” pane. Adding “smart”
soundtracks to your presentation can turn a simple photo album –
stereoscopic or not – into a full blown cinematic extravaganza.
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Multi-Size:p2gStereoStage™ can be embedded in a web
page as small as 452 x 250 pixels without jumbling up its user interface
– or smaller still, if the UI is not to be used. Your audience may
leave the confines of the page with just one mouse click and enlarge
p2gStereoStage™ to take over the entire screen. Inbetween
those extremes, anything is possible. The applet always resizes itself
dynamically, thereby maintaining the original aspect ratio of the source
visuals. Alternatively, images and video can be stretched to take over
the applet's entire display space.
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Multi-Color: The user interface of p2gStereoStage™
has (so far) 14 built-in color schemes that can be activated with just
one setup parameter. In other words, you don't have to spoil your
elaborate page design with an “off” color like my
<proggies2go>™ orange seen here – you can match the
applet's UI to your site. Try the
blue,green,
and
silver
color schemes.
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Multi-Purpose: Webmasters can deploy p2gStereoStage™
in a variety of ways. In its simplest form, the applet can be embedded
in a page strictly as a design element, i.e. like a plain image, albeit
a 3D stereoscopic one. Have a look at a
red/cyan anaglyph
or a
cross-eyed
sample. If the availability of viewer options is no concern, you should
look at my p2gStereoPhoto™ applet,
which contains the identical 3D stereoscopic rendering subsystem as
p2gStereoStage™, but a much less elaborate UI and no audio.
The next step up is, combining a series of pictures to a
simple photo album.
Change only two parameters in the setup, and your photo album becomes a
no-frills slide show.
Personally, I prefer the “simple photo album” and the
“no-frills slide show” setups to create collections of
antique stereo cards.
This example of WWII stereo cards is presented with kind permission
of Dr. Dieter Vorsteher of the Deutsches
Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) in Berlin.
However, with just a few more tweaks of the setup file to add some
subtle animation, and a little music for good measure,
our slide show begins to take on a video-like quality,
with virtually no effort at all. So far, we have invested about 30
minutes in playing around with a few pictures, including all the typing
in the applet's XML setup files. Now it's time to go Hollywood!
Before you look at the demo, you need to understand that the soundtrack
was not created ahead of time with an expensive multi-track
software. The dense sound canvas you're about to hear is mixed live by
p2gStereoStage™ from about two dozen individual 22.05 kHz
MP3 files. In addition, the photos are synced to the narration. The
applet's 10-track-audio feature alone is so useful, I can see many
webmasters
deploying p2gStereoStage™ for regular 2D photos, too.
By-the-way, the photos in the show were taken with two $1.95
disposable cameras stuck together with double-sided tape. Considering
the source materials,
this turned out to be a really cool show.<TOP>
Multi-Media Revisited: Everything that has been said about photos
in the previous paragraphs applies to FLV Flash video, too. Provided
there is enough on-line bandwidth, you can have
p2gStereoStage™ play a single video movie, a string of
video clips, or a
blend of video clips and animated images.
Once again, you have 11 “smart” soundtracks (10 x MP3, 1 x
FLV) to impress your audience with a
full-blown cinematic 3D stereo extravaganza
– and you don't need $1,000.00 worth of professional software to
pull it off. All it takes is p2gStereoStage™, a plain text
editor, and some commonly available freeware proggies to prepare the
source files.
However, especially when it comes to video, a few words of caution are
in order: With 3D stereoscopy, the requirements for running a smooth
presentation pretty much double. Your audience may not have the
bandwidth, memory, or processing power to actually enjoy your show! For
some of my demos on this page, for example, I have pushed the envelope
by incorporating side-by-side video at a resolution of 1200 x 348
pixels, streaming at 1,000 kbps! With my equipment, this still looks
decent even in fullscreen mode. You be the judge how it looks on your
machine! Perhaps you'd
and let me know?
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Installing p2gStereoStage™ On Your Server
Download and
un-rar the p2gStereoStage™ package. Upload the
p2gStereoStage folder to your server and browse to the
windowed.html or embedded.html file. The
sample setup should run right “out of the box”. If you don't
have a local test server, download the p2gStereoStage™ stand-alone demo application (MS
Windows only). The stand-alone demo already contains my p2gChinchilla™ HTTP
presentation server and is configured ready-to-run.
To run p2gStereoStage™ presentations in a separate window,
copy the file windowed.html and open the copy in your text
editor. The HTML code is marked with instructions in 5 places. Modify
the code according to your needs, and your presentation will size itself
to any browser window when the copied page is loaded. Please note, it's
up to you to provide the JavaScript code to open and style the
window. The entire affair should take you no longer than five minutes.
To embed p2gStereoStage™ in a page of your own, open the
file embedded.html with your text editor. There are 4
sections clearly marked with BEGIN… and
END… for you to copy and paste to your own HTML
page. Don't forget to modify the code (paths, applet dimensions) after
you paste it. Again, I did all the work for you already – a few
minutes is all it takes.
A word of advice:Before making presentations with your own
media, I suggest you first follow my easy instructions above and get the
applet to run off your server, on your own pages, but with
my sample presentation. This way – if something doesn't
work right – you know the problem must be in your presentation
XML, and not somewhere else.
To make presentations with your own media, open the
sample.xml file in the media folder with a
text editor. As you can see, there aren't many XML tags, and they are
almost self explanatory. For details on each setting, open
Presentation.xml in the #INFO folder, which
has detailed explanations for all tags and their attributes. Learning
curve: about one half hour. If you don't have any stereoscopic 3D photos
yet, you can learn an easy method to
take stereo photos with any off-the-shelf camera. To prepare media
for a show, I find the following freeware 3D programs useful:
Many long hours went into creating this utterly unique 3D stereoscopic
multi-media presentation tool, yet p2gStereoStage™ is still
FREE to all non-commercial webmasters and bloggers. However, you must
provide a backlink to <proggies2go>™ from any page the
applet is shown on. I also require that the media you display are in
good taste by commonly accepted standards. That's all. You have to
agree, a small price to pay for the privilege of having
“killer” 3D stereo presentations on your web site or blog.
Please
to negotiate a license fee if you want to use
p2gStereoStage™ in a commercial application.
