CrystalMaker Online Help

What's New in CrystalMaker 4.0?
Real-Time Stereo

CrystalMaker 4.0 allows real-time display of stereo graphics. Two stereo modes are possible:-

Stereo Pairs

Stereo Pair plots show two side-by-side images, representing left- and right-views of a model. The two views should have an angular offset between them (as for red/blue stereo plots), and the distance between the two images on the screen should not be too large (it should relate to the distance between your eyes - the inter-occular distance).

Red/Blue Stereo

Red/Blue Stereo superimposes two views of a model at an angular offset defined in the Rendering Options/Stereo dialog page. The two views are filtered so that one uses shades of red, and the other shades of cyan (a mixture of blue and green). If you wear stereo glasses (supplied with the program), a rather splendid three-dimensional view may be achieved - with the model appearing to emerge out of the screen towards you.

Stereo glasses must have the following scheme:-

Left eye: Red filter
Right eye: blue or green filter

Important Notes:

Red/Blue Stereo plots are designed for use in 16- or 32-bit colour, however it is possible to view them when your monitor is set to lower colour depths (e.g., 8-bit colour). In these cases, the graphics will appear rather grainy and plotting is much slower.. We strongly recommend that you set your computer monitor to display 16-bit/"thousands" (faster) or 32-bit/"millions" (highest quality; slower plotting) of colours. To change your monitor's colour depth, go to the Monitors control panel (System 7) or the "Monitors and Sound" control panel (MacOS8) and choose a new colour depth; you may need to reduce the screen resolution (numbers of pixels) in order to get more colours.
Red/Blue Stereo plots require approximately twice as much memory (RAM) as regular graphics. Please bear this in mind when planning output (printing or copying graphics). You may need to increase the amount of RAM available to CrystalMaker (in the Finder, select the program's icon, then choose the File > Get Info command, and enter a larger figure in the memory box in the Info dialog). If you are running into memory problems, you may find that 16-bit ("thousands") colour gives the best compromise between graphics quality, speed of plotting, and memory requirements.

Main Menu