A Stereo Computer Display Device for SLD

Justification

Primary uses would be

• Event Displays
  Stereo computer displays may be a useful tool for studying complex event displays. A very quick trial with such a system at UCSC showed that stereo is particularly useful in studying vertexing where traditional event displays can show only a set of overlapping lines which may or may not truly converge in the third dimension.
• CAD
  Many of the newer CAD programs contain support for stereo displays. Such displays have come to replace traditional model building in the design of complex devices (heavy machinery, aircraft, etc). While the CAD work for SLD is done, SLD 2000 and NLC remain.

Available Stereo Display Devices

• Immersive Displays (also called Head Mounted Devices or HMDs)
  These are the popular "virtual reality goggles" one associates with military flight simulators and entertainment applications. High quality versions are unaffordable (tens of thousands of dollars). Affordable versions do not offer sufficient resolution for HEP event displays (they typically offer only 100 by 300 lines, a resolution at which stereo viewing becomes uncomfortable). Thus immersive displays are not practical for us at this time.
• Monitor Devices
  These devices involve the user looking at a monitor rather than wearing some sort of goggles. The user does not get a sense of being immersed in a virtual world, however the image on the monitor shows full spatial information. The dominant product in this field, the CrystalEyes system, can deliver good resolution (496x1280) at an affordable price ($800). We propose that SLD purchase this system.

CrystalEyes

The CrystalEyes system can work with PC, SGI and AIX systems (manufacturers claims confirmed by a 29 May 96 note by James Lipscomb of IBM). While we would initially propose to use the system with PCs, it is a plus that it might also be used with our existing RS6000s.

When used with a 1024x1280 monitor, the system offers a resolution of 496x1280. This resolution is satisfactory for HEP displays. It should not be necessary to add the cost of another monitor to this order. One of our existing PC multisynch monitors may be fine for 120 Hz. Otherwise, we just need to insure that one of the PC monitors we will be buying anyway happens to be able to handle 120 Hz (such monitors do not intrinsically cost more than others).

CrystalEyes has been available for about four years. The product currently on the market is the second generation of this technology. Many organizations do seem to be using CrystalEyes for work in molecular modeling and CAD though it is hard to tell if these users are getting much done or are just testing out the technology.

A number of software solutions are already available to drive CrystalEyes for our purposes:

• Event Displays could be drawn to VRML files. Free VRML browsers are available which can output CrystalEyes format images.
• Event Displays could be drawn to OpenInventor files (the HEPVis 96 conference showed that HEP event displays are moving in this direction). OpenInventor can output CrystalEyes format images.
• Unified Graphics could be made to output CrystalEyes format images. Len Sweeney has done such work for the SGIs and RS6000s. It may be possible to run CrystalEyes with our existing RS6000s. Otherwise, one could adapt Len Sweeney's work to a format suitable for PC viewing (such as GIF).
• For CAD work, most of the major packages already contain support for CrystalEyes.

Costs