Is Second Life 3D enough for you?

Don't we all love Second Life, and how it looks so 3 dimensional? Well, apparently, to some it still doesn't look right. The 3D lab of the University of Michigan in the USA has made it's own 3D stereoscopic viewer, using the open source of the official SL viewer. So it's time to get those silly looking 3D goggles out and really go in deep.

And you know what's even better? That same university has also announced that it will be implemented in the standard viewer in the future. I don't know if that's supposed to leak out already, but they said it on their website.

There are different kinds of 3D images. The most common types are where you wear the red-blue or red-green glasses and look at a slightly distorted image. Nowadays there is a more modern equivalent of that, which looks more like sunglasses. But the idea behind it is the same. It's called stereoscopic or anaglyphic viewing and it doesn't only work with still pictures. The UM 3D Lab has found a way to use it for moving pictures like in SL as well.


Then there's also the type of 3d images that only works for still images. It's basically 2 pictures that are next to eachother, but have a slightly different offset to one another. You can see the 3D effect when you look at them cross-eyed. Moriash Moreau has a website with some examples, like the well known SL location Bora Bora.


And there's the well known 3d images, or autostereograms, that you have to stare at for 3 days (or a few seconds, if you've managed to get it a couple of times). Like with the picture below ... look for the shark. However, this would not be a practical thing to do within SL, for obvious reasons.


There are a couple of other ways to look at things in a 3d way. You can find them on this Wikipedia page.

So for now, for all you geeks out there, the anaglyphic method where you need the goggles is the best way to go for now. However, I coudn't find any download link for the official University of Michigan version of the SL viewer, but I did find this site, which is an ongoing 'beta type' project for a new viewer. It has some nice features, including the 3D anaglyph patch from the UM.