Emergence is a stereo image and video viewer for Mac OS X. It provides iPhoto-style organization of stereoscopic photos and movies, and QuickTime Player-style video playback. During my research into stereoscopy, every viewer I found could only display one image at a time, and there was a general lack of Mac-based programs. I thought I could improve on this and started the Emergence project.

Emergence is still in early stages of development. Video viewing is not yet implemented, and only stereo images in separate left and right format can be imported. No adjustments are yet possible (e.g. cropping and parallax). And the viewer can only view one image. But most of the infrastructure is there for these features to be added easily. I haven't worked on it since 2006. Download the current source code here:

• Emergence source code

Emergence takes advantage of several Mac OS X technologies. Core Data is used to store Emergence libraries. Core Image and OpenGL render standard Cocoa controls in stereo, providing seamless integration of stereo into the normal desktop environment.

Screenshots of a stereo application pose a challenge. The images below are designed to be viewed using the cross-eyed method. They can also be viewed in a JPS viewer. Keep in mind that Emergence is still in an early stage of development. (Click to enlarge.)

Development of Emergence began by Jonathon Mah during an internship at the South Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (SAPAC), over the (Australian) summer of 2005-2006. It is now maintained by him in his ever-diminishing spare time.