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3D Stereoscopic Viewer


Yes, that's me and yes I am very excited in the picture. Ok, so a couple of weeks ago I decided to take a new project and build myself a 3D stereoscopic viewer. I've always wanted to do this so I could play around with it at home and create my own 3d movies. I could have just as easily made an Anaglyph viewer but I can't stand using those red and green glasses, they hurt my eyes to much. I started by following a tutorial I found online "How to build a home Vizard (video-wizard)". First thing I needed to do was to find two matching flat screen displays. I was able to find both 19" monitors for $230 at Staples. The next step was to build an enclosure for the screens. I asked a friend of mine if he would help me design and build the box. Lucky for me not only did he help build the box but he already had all of the materials laying around from past film projects he'd worked on. Since the monitors I used had different dimension from the ones used in the tutorial we had to augment the design of the box. The next step in putting the box together involves purchasing a very hard to find Half silver mirror or a 50/50 mirror. There are many names for this kind of glass and after doing some research I discovered that this was the same glass that was used for teleprompters. Needless to say the glass turned out to be the most expensive item on the list. I found very few sources online and with a little research I was able to find an east coast company that would manufacturer this special (Beam Splitting) glass custom. They quoted $175 for a single 15'x16' size piece. I though this was a bit to expensive so, after researching some more I called around to my local glass shops. I was able to ordered a piece of reflective mirror from a place down the street from my house. The glass worked perfectly and only cost me $34.00. After all of the parts were put together I hooked the monitors up to my computer and surprise! I have my very own 3D viewer! Over all it was a fun side project but ended up being more work than the tutorial lead me to believe. This is definitely a project for those who like the "do it yourself" thing. If you have the money and are serious about 3d I would recommend you go out and buy a setup. The one drawback I found for the home Vizard was the lack of software or support for mac users. I am trying to find a work around for this and have a few ideas already in mind but have yet to test them out. Below is the original video tutorial from wired magazine for those of you who might be interested in trying it out for yourselves.


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