Free Stereo Software!

[JakeKristy@xxxxxxx]

First, my hats are off to John Berkovitz for bringing intelligent debate to a
silly "versus" battle that turned from Mac vs. PC to Realist vs. Kodak (hmmm,
I wonder who brought up the Realist? ;+)  ).  John makes some delightfully
solid arguments for both the Realist and the Kodak.  But, let's take a look
at the best *stereoscopic* software I have ever seen and keep in mind that it
is available for the Mac. . . only.

The program of which I boast is Rotater.  Imagine this:

*You start the program and load a colorful wireframe model (many excellent
examples are included).

*By moving your cursor about on the object's window, you find yourself
rotating the "3-D model" in any direction imagineable.

*When you "swipe" the cursor across the window, the object begins a
continuous spin in the direction and speed of your choice.

*You decide to view the object in real stereoscopic 3-D!  You control the
left-right placement of the images, for wall-eyed or cross-eyed viewing.  You
dictate the separation between image halves and the amount of depth you see.
 Now, while in the stereo viewing mode, you are allowed to perform all of the
static and dynamic rotations--just as in mono mode!

Rotater is a free program.  I'm certain that you could input your own 3-D
data sets and have Rotater automatically perform the stereo conversion.

The Rotater program is available (to the mac-public) via anonymous ftp at

"ftp.sunet.se/pub/mac/info-mac/gst/grf/rotater-30.hqx"

I would decode the .hqx file with StuffitExpander and. . . have a great (in
the U.S.) Thanksgiving holiday.

A toast to the Rotater.  (See, Mr. Quail, "tater" does have an "e" in it.)

--Chris


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