JAVA Stereo Display Toolkit

Abstract

This toolkit provides a common interface for displaying graphical user interface (GUI) components in stereo using either specialized stereo display hardware (e.g., liquid crystal shutter or polarized glasses) or anaglyph display (red/blue glasses) on standard workstation displays. An application using this toolkit will work without modification in either environment, allowing stereo software to reach a wider audience without sacrificing high-quality display on dedicated hardware. The toolkit is written in Java for use with the Swing GUI Toolkit and has cross-platform compatibility. It hooks into the graphics system, allowing any standard Swing component to be displayed in stereo. It uses the OpenGL graphics library to control the stereo hardware and to perform the rendering. It also supports anaglyph and special stereo hardware using the same API (application-program interface), and has the ability to simulate color stereo in anaglyph mode by combining the red band of the left image with the green/blue bands of the right image. This is a low-level toolkit that accomplishes simply the display of components (including the JadeDisplay image display component). It does not include higher-level functions such as disparity adjustment, 3D cursor, or overlays all of which can be built using this toolkit.