Global market overview of stereoscopic software solutions

Often, many users from the high-tech indus­tries of biochemistry/molecule research, geoin­for­ma­tion (GIS, pho­togram­me­try & LiDAR), med­i­cine (CT, MRI & ultra­sound) or con­struc­tion (CAD, CAM & 3D print­ing) do not know which of the appli­ca­tions offered on the mar­ket are stere­oscopy-capa­ble and, in con­trast to the mono­scop­ic, per­spec­tive-flat dis­play, thus enable true, spa­tial 3D visu­al­iza­tion. After two years of inten­sive research, Schnei­der Dig­i­tal, known for its pro­fes­sion­al 4K/8K and VR/AR hard­ware solu­tions, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with lead­ing soft­ware man­u­fac­tur­ers, has now pub­lished for the first time a glob­al mar­ket overview of all rel­e­vant 3D stereo soft­ware solu­tions. In a month­ly updat­ed com­mu­ni­ty-based data­base, more than 300 appli­ca­tions includ­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers are cur­rent­ly list­ed and linked. Schnei­der Dig­i­tal first checks the indi­vid­ual appli­ca­tions for their basic 3D stereo func­tion­al­i­ty before cer­ti­fy­ing them indi­vid­u­al­ly for plug-and-play oper­a­tion with its 3D mon­i­tors or the smart VR wall.

With the con­tin­u­ous main­te­nance of this cen­tral data­base, in which all world­wide rel­e­vant 3D stereo soft­ware appli­ca­tions are sum­ma­rized, Schnei­der Dig­i­tal, as a spe­cial­ist for 3D and VR/AR hard­ware solu­tions, pro­vides users with a con­stant­ly updat­ed ori­en­ta­tion aid on how their work process and visu­al­iza­tion qual­i­ty can be improved through the use of 3D stereo tech­nolo­gies. One of the declared goals of the Mies­bach-based com­pa­ny is to effec­tive­ly help as many soft­ware man­u­fac­tur­ers as pos­si­ble to inte­grate the stereo­scop­ic mouse point­er into their exist­ing mono­scop­ic appli­ca­tions in addi­tion to the stereo­scop­ic image out­put option, which enables users to reach every point, sur­face and edge in 3D space directly.

Schnei­der Dig­i­tal has been pro­vid­ing not incon­sid­er­able com­pa­ny resources for this pio­neer­ing work for two years now. The result is a man­u­fac­tur­er- and hard­ware-inde­pen­dent “Open Source Com­pendi­um” for all soft­ware man­u­fac­tur­ers and users. The glob­al mar­ket overview shows at a glance which of the soft­ware appli­ca­tions offered are real­ly native­ly 3D-stereo capa­ble. In oth­er words — “which soft­ware is able to dis­play mod­els in detail, holo­graph­i­cal­ly as real 3D objects in space and which soft­ware already has a 3D stereo cursor”?

Cross-industry compendium of 3D stereo applications

To achieve its vision of cre­at­ing a ful­ly com­pre­hen­sive mar­ket overview of all rel­e­vant 3D stereo appli­ca­tions, Schnei­der Dig­i­tal reviewed more than 300 soft­ware appli­ca­tions for their 3D stereo func­tion­al­i­ty. Most of them have already been cer­ti­fied by the com­pa­ny for oper­a­tion with its own pas­sive 3D mon­i­tor sys­tems, the 3D Plu­raView models.

The appli­ca­tions are sort­ed accord­ing to soft­ware and appli­ca­tion areas and are list­ed and linked in alpha­bet­i­cal order, togeth­er with details of the respec­tive man­u­fac­tur­ers. With the help of this overview, soft­ware man­u­fac­tur­ers and users can quick­ly and con­ve­nient­ly fil­ter out a solu­tion tai­lored to their require­ments. There are also plans to fur­ther expand the com­pendi­um with video tuto­ri­als for 3D stereo con­fig­u­ra­tion set­tings as well as a graph­ics card data­base with all suit­able stereo-capa­ble, pro­fes­sion­al graph­ics card solutions.

“Our vision is to con­tin­u­ous­ly expand this mar­ket overview into a com­plete, com­mu­ni­ty-based data­base of all rel­e­vant 3D stereo appli­ca­tions world­wide. In addi­tion to list­ing all man­u­fac­tur­ers and appli­ca­tions, we also want to inte­grate the cor­re­spond­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion, how-to’s and video tuto­ri­als for soft­ware con­fig­u­ra­tion there.”

- Josef Schnei­der, project initiator

Complete 3D stereo workstation solutions — a combination of powerful software and hardware

Work­ing with holo­graph­i­cal­ly dis­played 3D mod­els is becom­ing increas­ing­ly estab­lished in appli­ca­tions such as research, ana­lyt­ics, devel­op­ment, con­struc­tion, design or diag­nos­tics. A 3D mon­i­tor has become the indus­try stan­dard for all stereo­scop­ic soft­ware appli­ca­tions because it guar­an­tees pre­cise 3D stereo visu­al­iza­tion in the high­est res­o­lu­tion up to 4K per eye. It is used in a wide range of indus­tries, such as pho­togram­me­try, GIS/mapping, LiDAR point clouds, laser scan­ning, oil and gas prospect­ing, archae­ol­o­gy, AEC/BIM, visu­al­iza­tion of 3D city mod­els, CAx, med­ical or biotech­nol­o­gy and mol­e­c­u­lar chemistry.

3D visu­al­iza­tion tech­nol­o­gy is a com­plex sub­ject area that only the per­fect inter­ac­tion of soft­ware and hard­ware com­po­nents leads to one hun­dred per­cent indus­try-stan­dard visu­al­iza­tion results. Schnei­der Dig­i­tal has over 25 years of indus­try and prod­uct expe­ri­ence with sophis­ti­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­al hard­ware and has detailed mar­ket knowl­edge and appli­ca­tion exper­tise. Schnei­der’s expe­ri­ence has shown: The com­bi­na­tion of com­pu­ta­tion­al per­for­mance and visu­al­iza­tion tech­nol­o­gy is crit­i­cal! If you use a 3D stereo soft­ware solu­tion and want to work stereo­scop­i­cal­ly or with VR/AR, you need a pow­er­ful CPU/GPU hard­ware solution.

Only in per­fect inter­ac­tion with pow­er­ful pro­fes­sion­al hard­ware can land­scapes, build­ings, entire cities, com­plex CAD mod­els, GIS infra­struc­ture, indus­tri­al process­es or human anato­my be processed and visu­al­ized in a three-dimen­sion­al, detailed and flu­id way. The larg­er the data sets to be processed, the high­er the demands on the per­for­mance of the work­sta­tions and the image qual­i­ty of the 3D mon­i­tors. Pro­fes­sion­al users with demand­ing 3D work tasks ben­e­fit from Schnei­der Dig­i­tal visu­al­iza­tion tech­nol­o­gy in com­bi­na­tion with pow­er­ful work­sta­tions and 3D/VR/AR input devices as a com­plete work­sta­tion solution.