VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 13 2001 - 00:21:10 CDT

Hi Kristian,

Here is a list of video boards that we know things about so far:
  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/vmd-1.6.1/accelerators.html
 
This table lists which boards we know have stereo, and whether they
work on Linux/NT, and what modes need to be used for stereo or higher
performance rendering.

You'll note that we don't list any of the NVidia cards as having
stereo support. In fact, as you've discovered there are ways to
do stereo with them, but they aren't using the standard OpenGL
mechanisms for doing stereo, so VMD is unaware of the stereo
feature and cannot use it. This may change in the future,
but that's the current situation. If you'd like to see VMD work
on the NVidia hardware, I'd recommend sending mail to your video
board vendor and let them know that you'd like them to implement
stereo in their OpenGL driver.

What contradicting information did you find on the web site BTW,
it would be useful to know what you found confusing so we can
improve our site!!! :)

My opinion is that the new FireGL boards and the 3DLabs boards are
probably your best best for stereo on a PC right now. But, there
may be others that I'm not thinking of. Most of the other boards
I know of are sold as part of a whole workstation system, such as
the HP FX boards, which I don't think are available separately...

Let us know if we can help with anything.

  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 06:41:36PM +0200, Kristian Mueller wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I would like use to the hardware stereo option under Windows, preferably Windows
> 2000. If anyone knows an affordable priced and easy to install solution for
> Linux this would be helpful as well.
>
> I tried an Asus graphic card based on the GeForceMX chip (Asus 7100 combo) which
> comes with shutter glasses and has a driver for OpenGL virtual reality running
> under Windows 2000. The hardware works as I can display a test image using the
> provided viewer. However the VMD display remains split between the top and
> bottom of the screen. Already during the startup I get the warning "stereo in a
> window not enabled".
>
> Are there recommendations regarding a graphic card, operating system, and a pair
> of glasses which work? I would like to purchase an inexpensive combination which
> is already working with VMD.
>
> I browsed the web-sites mentioned for the windows release notes, but got some
> contradicting information regarding the hardware capabilities.
>
> Any suggestions are welcome.
> Thanks,
> Kristian
>
>
> ___________________________
> Dr. Kristian Mueller
> Institut fuer Biologie III Tel. ++49-(0)761-203-2762 (office)
> Schaenzlestr. 1 Tel. ++49-(0)761-203-2763 (lab)
> D-79104 Freiburg Fax. ++49-(0)761-203-2745
> Germany e-mail kristian_at_biologie.uni-freiburg.de 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349              
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078