VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed May 24 2000 - 09:54:10 CDT

Hi Kim,
  We've never tried VMD with an I-desk, so I'm not familiar
with the way they are usually configured. I know vaguely how
they are setup, but not what the difference in the coordinate
system in the CAVE is. Here is the .vmdsensors file that I
use in the NCSA CAVE:

# Configuration for the CAVE
device cavetracker cavetracker://local/cave
scale 1.0
offset 0.9 -4.0 -1.0
device cavebuttons cavebuttons://local/cave:0,1,2,3

Also, you asked about the relationship between the CAVE and Fastrak
trackers: There isn't any, they are totally unrelated. In fact, if
you're not using VRPN to talk to a Fastrak tracker, you will probably
want to delete those lines from your .vmdsensors file.

Tell me if our CAVE .vmdsensors lines work for you or not, I'm
curious how different the I-desk is from the cave.

By the way, which binary version of VMD are you running?

Thanks,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, May 23, 2000 at 04:09:40PM -0500, Kimberly Ann Foster wrote:
> Hi -
> I have recently started using VMD with an I-desk, and have set VMD to
> output to a CAVE environment. I created a .vmdsensors file, and have been
> using the "trackers" menu to set up a cavetracker and cavebuttons, and can
> use these with a "rotate" tool. This works alright - structures can be
> viewed and rotated on the I-desk, but there appears to be some sort of
> calibration or tracking problem - the pointer used for directing the
> rotations sometimes does not follow along with hand movements, and the
> protein being viewed doesn't change properly with the tracked glasses when
> I move to the side of it or look down on it.
>
> This is the .vmdsensors file I am using:
>
> device fastrack0 vrpntracker://local/Fastrak:0
> rot right 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0
> rot left 0 0 -1 -1 0 0 0 -1 0
> device fastrack1 vrpntracker://local/Fastrak:1
> rot right 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0
> rot left 0 0 -1 -1 0 0 0 -1 0
> device fastrack2 vrpntracker://local/Fastrak:2
> rot right 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0
> rot left 0 0 -1 -1 0 0 0 -1 0
>
> #Configuration for the CAVE device
> cavetracker cavetracker://local/cave scale 1.0 offset 0.9 -4.0 -1.0 device
> cavebuttons cavebuttons://local/cave:0,1,2,3
>
> #For left-handers
> #device left_handed_cavebuttons cavebuttons://local/cave:3,2,1,0
>
>
> I am not even sure if I have the right device names for the Fastrak right
> now, and I don't understand what the relationship is between the
> cavetracker and fastrak devices. Any advice about setting up the
> .vmdsensors file or getting tracking to work properly would be
> appreciated.
>
> Thank you, Kim
> 

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