VMD-L Mailing List

From: Jeff Hoch (hoch_at_uchc.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 18 2007 - 12:18:15 CDT

Dear Colleagues:

Based on advice accumulated from this mailing list, we finally
decided to coble together a Mac-based system for passive stereo
projection using VMD. I’m delighted to report that it all works
swimmingly, at a very reasonable cost compared to the commercial turn-
key systems that are available. The total cost was just under $8.5K,
and could be considerably lower.

Here’s the component list:

Mac Pro (with NVIDIA Quadro FX4500 graphics
card) $5,200
2x Optoma DX607 DLP
projector
          $2,000
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics
card $ 149
Projector stand, polarizing filters, and glasses (from
studio3d.com) $ 295
15” LCD
monitor
                                $ 149
Balt presentation
cart
                 $ 193
Da-lite “silver”
screen
                   $ 500

The high-end graphics card in the Mac is really not necessary, which
could yield substantial savings.

The system could hardly be easier to set up:

Configure the Mac so that the two projectors are driven by once
graphics card and the LCD screen by the other. In the “Displays”
panel of System Preferences set up the displays with the LCD as the
“main” display (with the menu bar) on the left, and the two
projectors to the right. Edit the “/etc/bashrc” file to add the commands

VMDDSCRPOS=”1280,0”
VMSCRSIZE=”2048,768”
EXPORT VMDSCRPOS VMDSCRSIZE

The numbers above reflect the resolution of the LCD screen (1280
width) and the resolution of the projectors (1024 by 768) and should
be adjusted accordingly for different projector/screen resolutiions.
These commands cause VMD to position the graphics window at the
origin of the first projector.

Aligning the projectors is straightforward: while in the “Display”
pane of System Preferences, identical menus displaying the
configuration of the projectors will appear, and the stand is
adjusted (along with the zoom and focus on the projectors) to
superimpose the menus. In VMD, set the stereo option in the Display
menu to “SideBySide”, making sure that the polarizing filters are in
place in front of the projectors and you have on a pair of polarized
glasses.

Enjoy!

Jeff Hoch