How do I output 3D images to my 3D TV?

Question

I have a 3D TV and feel that I would be shirking my responsibilities (as a geek) if I didn\'t at least try to make it display pretty 3D images of my own creation!

I\'ve

Answer 1

Because you have a passive 3D TV, it's likely that the left and right eye views are rendered on alternate scan lines. (or perhaps on alternate pixels in a checkerboard pattern)

Thus your mission is to render the left-eye view to the even numbered scan lines, and the right eye view to the odd numbered scan lines (or vice versa). This can be accomplished either via OpenGL stencil operations, or, more modernly, using custom fragment shaders.

This way, you can avoid the whole quad-buffered video card/GL_BACK_LEFT/GL_BACK_RIGHT approach described by datenwolf. And you want to avoid that approach, as I have never encountered a video driver that directs quad-buffered stereo 3D to an actual 3D TV.

I agree with datenwolf's advice that you should use asymmetric frustum shift rather than scene rotation to generate the right and left eye viewpoints.