Stereoscopic game development

(Remember, stereoscopy is not necessarily the best for depth perception!)

Here I’ll try to list references to documents on stereoscopic game development.

There is a chapter in the NVidia GPU Programming Guide about Stereoscopic Game Development (Chapter 9) with some useful tips about “How stereo works”, and “Things that hurt stereo”.

Why care about Stereo ?

People see with two eyes in the real world. While artificial stereoscopic viewing (on a screen versus in real life) is not a huge market, many gamers enjoy the extra sense of presence obtained by playing games with inexpensive shutter glasses along with NVIDIA’s stereo override driver.
In addition, there are benefits to viewing your game in stereo during development. You immediately pick up on things that look fake. Keep in mind that motion parallax gives similar visual cues to stereo but the stereo viewer perceives instantaneously what users see if they move around and obtain depth information via motion parallax.
Using stereoscopic viewing while developing a game is a competitive advantage; you see and correct visual defects before they even come out in a game. This of course will also enhance the experience of those who play your game in stereo.

For more extensive informations about stereoscopy for immersive applications, check out the Stereographics Developers Handbook and the Autodesk Stereoscopic Whitepaper.

For more information about the available stereoscopic displays, check Stereoscopy at home.

For technical information about asymmetric cameras :

- Stereo geometry in OpenGL

- Calculating stereo pairs, by Paul Bourke

Some rules to follow to create successful stereo effects : Stereoscopic 3D Film and Animation – Getting it right.