Postcardware. This program was published in PC Plus magazine on the cover disc and although the copyright remains my property and, although you are strictly forbidden to reverse engineer any of it, you are free to use it and distribute it in its original form. The only other condition of use is that you send me a post card from wherever you are in the world. My snail mail address is in with the files in the distributed .ZIP file that you will receive.

Many of the SIRDS pictures that are available today (posters and so on) are produced using repeat patterns that are so large that only a small amount of detail can be reproduced in them. True SIRDS are made up from random dots and, if colour is used, these dots are able to represent a lot of three-dimensional information. See the Stereogram Page

SIRDS work by repeating a dot across the image at a regular interval that is modulated according to the distance from the image plane that it represents. They are viewed by the viewer focusing in the image plane but his (her) eyes converging in a different plane (normally behind the image plane). In producing these images, a dot will start off in a particular place and, as it is replicated across the image, the spacing will vary according to a number of assumptions made by the programmer.

The assumptions are:

These assumptions lead to many people (mainly older people as people become progressively longer sighted as they get older) not being able to see the images.

My program does not make any of these assumptions and will allow the user to specify whether the convergance-plane is in front of or behind the image-plane, what the dot density should be and so on. There is also an editor (shown in the screen shot on the right) so you can make your own pictures - 3D maps and so on (such as this map of the elevation around Uttoxeter in the UK).

Getting a Copy:-

You can obtain a copy of the program SIRDS.EXE (for DOS/Windows PCs) in the form of a ZIP file either by downloading it directly or you can receive it as an e-mail attachment.

To get a copy, click Here to go to the download page.
Over 3,700 downloads
sirds.zip 93,926 Bytes
MD5 hash = cdbbb33c3661cb05e0994f7e354bf440

For some other SIRDS links, look at Gareth and Peter's SIRDS pages

Learn how to view the picture below - see the Stereogram Page

The images can move and it still works.