Flyby Stereo Issues

Stereo is enabled by default on Indigo2 Maximum Impacts, Octane MXI, and Onyx2 Infinite Reality systems. There are a number of options to using Flyby in stereo. But in all cases you must make sure once Flyby is running to select stereo from the mode menu.

The possible ways to enable stereo on Flyby are:

Run flyby with the -wstereo option. This option will use the default stereo command coded into Flyby.
Run flyby with the -wsetereo option and the -stereoCommand option. The -stereoCommand option takes a string argument containing the command to execute to switch the workstation into stereo mode.
Modify your ~/.Xdefaults file and set the Flyby*stereoCommand resource to the command to switch the workstation into stereo mode. e.g
Flyby*stereoCommand: /usr/gfx/setmon -n 1024x768_120s
Make a system specific ~/.Xdefaults-hostname file. Where hostname is the fully qualified name of the system. (i.e. voyager.cecs.missouri.edu).

System Type	Default Stereo Configuration File	Any special requirements to do stereo
O2 ("crm" graphics)	1280x492_120s	None
Indigo2 Maximum Impact ("impact" graphics)	1280x492_120s	None
Octane MXI ("impactsr" graphics)	1024x768_96s	If using an Octane with a 24" monitor then you must issue the command as root: `/usr/gfx/setmon -x 1280x1024_60` then restart the graphics with the command: `(/usr/gfx/stopgfx ; /usr/gfx/startgfx) &` When done with stereo mode return to the normal user graphics with the command: `/usr/gfx/setmon -x 1600x1200_60` and restart graphics with the command: `(/usr/gfx/stopgfx ; /usr/gfx/startgfx) &` A bug report is out on this.
Onyx2 Infinite Reality ("konal" graphics)	1024x768_120s	None
All other systems	640x512_120s	None

There is an additional keyboard control option while in stereo mode. Using the left or right arrow keys of the numeric keypad will modify the separation between the stereo images. The left arrow will decrease the separation and the right arrow will increase the separation. The separation value delta can also be entered using the Frustum Control from the Controls Menu.

On any system except an Onyx, with a stereo visual, four buffers are used (left front, right front, left back, and right back). This reduces the number of color bits to only 5 when on an Octane MXI. Without a stereo visual, the Octane MXI normally has 12 bits per color. With only 5 bits per color, close up viewing of the model will show a "contour map effect". The solution with FlyBy was to create two visuals, one with stereo and one without stereo. When the users switches between normal viewing and stereo, the current GLX OpenGL widget is destroyed and recreated with the proper visual.

There are some Bugs/Problems with using stereo right now.

Jeremy Hinegardner
Last modified: Mon May 24 13:30:44 CDT 1999