Enabling Stereo Viewing in ParaView

Nicholas Schwarz, Luc Renambot

Version: July 15, 2004

ResearchGear ID: 20040715_schwarz

This document explains how to enable RedBlue, active, and passive stereo viewing modes in the ParaView visualization software.

ParaView supports RedBlue stereo without any modification to the code. Enable RedBlue stereo by starting ParaView from the command line with the '--stereo' option.

Support for active stereo (CrystalEyes) in ParaView requires modification of the ParaView source code and recompilation. One line of code must be added to four ParaView source files. The following table indicates the required changes.

File Before Modification After Modification
vtkPVDeskTopRenderModule.cxx 
  if (pvApp->GetUseStereoRendering())
    {
    this->RenderWindow->StereoCapableWindowOn();
    this->RenderWindow->StereoRenderOn();
    }

  if (pvApp->GetUseStereoRendering())
    {
    this->RenderWindow->StereoCapableWindowOn();
    this->RenderWindow->SetStereoTypeToCrystalEyes();
    this->RenderWindow->StereoRenderOn();
    }
vtkPVIceTDisplayRenderModule.cxx 
  if (pvApp->GetUseStereoRendering())
    {
    this->RenderWindow->StereoCapableWindowOn();
    this->RenderWindow->StereoRenderOn();
    }

  if (pvApp->GetUseStereoRendering())
    {
    this->RenderWindow->StereoCapableWindowOn();
    this->RenderWindow->SetStereoTypeToCrystalEyes();
    this->RenderWindow->StereoRenderOn();
    }
vtkPVIceTRenderModule.cxx 
  if (pvApp->GetUseStereoRendering())
    {
    this->RenderWindow->StereoCapableWindowOn();
    this->RenderWindow->StereoRenderOn();
    }

  if (pvApp->GetUseStereoRendering())
    {
    this->RenderWindow->StereoCapableWindowOn();
    this->RenderWindow->SetStereoTypeToCrystalEyes();
    this->RenderWindow->StereoRenderOn();
    }
vtkPVRenderModule.cxx 
  if (pvApp->GetUseStereoRendering())
    {
    this->RenderWindow->StereoCapableWindowOn();
    this->RenderWindow->StereoRenderOn();
    }

  if (pvApp->GetUseStereoRendering())
    {
    this->RenderWindow->StereoCapableWindowOn();
    this->RenderWindow->SetStereoTypeToCrystalEyes();
    this->RenderWindow->StereoRenderOn();
    }

Each file contains a check to see if the '--stereo' flag was given on the command line. If it is 'pvApp->GetUseStereoRendering()' returns 1, the code to enable stereo is executed. This is standard VTK code for enabling stereo. By default VTK enables RedBlue stereo. Add 'this->RenderWindow->SetStereoTypeToCrystalEyes();' to the code to enable active stereo (CrystalEyes mode).

Passive stereo is achieved by running ParaView in active stereo mode, and using an nVidia Quadro graphics adapter set to nView Clone mode with quad-buffered stereo enabled.

This has only been tested using ParaView 1.2.1 for the x86 platform on a single processor machine without MPI.

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