It is even possible for several people to see the images in stereo at the same time. (Possible ... but not really useful.)

In the case of the Sharp stereo monitor, the lenticular lens is replaced with a light collimator placed behind the screen. However, the effect is the same - light from half the pixels on the screen goes to one eye and the light passing through the other pixels goes to the other.

In both scenarios, part of the trick is to take 2 separate pictures, cut them into narrow vertical strips, and then to recombine them into a single picture by selecting a vertical strip from one image and then the other and continuing in that way until a complete image is produced. (This process looses one half the horizontal resolution of the original images.)

However, the software did not work. (2 additional drivers had to be manually installed ... see below.)

The provided CD comes with several programs - 2 of them require the .NET runtime (now there's a bad idea).

Application has generated an exception that could not be handled.

Unfortunately, it does not run

File or assembly name Sharp.SmartStereo.Devices, or one of its dependencies, was not found.

Based on my analysis, SSDLIB.DLL is missing. Apparently, it *should* have been installed via D:\3D\SSD\ENGLISH\SSDMAN.MSI.

Based on that, I manually installed SsdMan.msi and SsdComp.msi (by double clicking on them, in that order - the order is important).

At that point the software worked fine ... without errors.

I left the error descriptions above because they must be common enough that they SHOULD have been on the support web site, in the manual, or at least found via Google. This way, anyone else will have a clue and not waste a day debugging.

• You can rotate either image
• You can crop the images

To produce your own slide show, select a few images (or a directory) in Windows Explorer, right click, and run the slide show.

This only works with images that contain both the left and right portions. If you have separate left and right images, you must first combine them using the SHARP SmartStereo Photo Editor.

I have used this program with images I took using a digital SLR camera with special stereo lens that captures both left and right images on a single frame ... it looks great. (Close ups are a bit of a problem ... but they still work.)

However, this program has a problem with scanned stereo cards. Basically, each card image usually contains the 2 images and the left and right card borders. Since the software merely cuts the complete image in half and aligns the 2 halves, the Left and Right Images are actually too far apart. (I can fuse them by crossing my eyes, but several other people have had problems.) This software would be much better if it allowed the user to control the relative horizontal offset of the 2 halves.

Program commands from the Users Guide
Key	Control
Escape	Exit
Right cursor key	Next image
Left cursor key	Previous image
Enter	Full screen mode on/off (just changes image size)
Space	Automatically cycle images on/off
Up cursor key	Increase image viewing duration
Down cursor key	Decrease image viewing duration

The fix turned out to be fairly simple (it only took 2 weeks to stumble on to it).

In the monitor menu, select Gain Control and set it to auto. On my system, this changed the following settings

Setting	Original Too Bright	New Looks Good
Black Level	65	65
Contrast	65	50

Text is extremely hard to read in stereo mode

Because of the technology used to produce the stereo effect, normal text is seen with color fringing when the monitor is in stereo mode. This is not really a big deal, but I do suggest having 2 screens on the computer - one for text and the second for stereo.

The monitor requires a USB connection

For video, the monitor plugs into a regular video port. However, for software to automatically switch to stereo mode, a separate USB connection is made ... thus, consuming one port on your system. With towers, this is usually not a big deal ... but my laptop only has 3 ... and I use them all.

If I had my way, the monitor would have an integrated USB hub so that you would actually GAIN ports instead of loosing one. (Both of the external USB 2.0 hubs I already have cause the system to actually run so slow that I refuse to use them.)

The 3D works ... but

In many ways, shutter glasses are better than this monitor

• If your eyes are not in exactly the right spot, there are numerous artifacts - vertical dark bars and double images being the most noticeable
• Moving slightly closer or farther from the monitor is a real issue
• Moving your head side to side effectively reverses the left/right association, producing a pseudo stereo image
• Shutter glasses provide twice the horizontal resolution (but usually half the vertical resolution)

However, if you have a display somewhere for people to just walk by and look ... this is a SUPER monitor BECAUSE it does not require glasses.

On the other hand, the viewing zone is very small and some people need instructions on where to stand (or sit).

The face plate is very reflective

When I print stereo pairs, I always request matte finish because reflections spoil the stereo effect. Reflections from this monitor don't really bother me, but several people have complained that they make it difficult to focus on the stereo image.

URL: http:// cpcug.org / user / clemenzi / technical / Upgrades / Sharp_3D_Monitor.html