From: Alexander Balaeff (abalaeff_at_chem.duke.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 19 2011 - 12:07:18 CST

Dear VMD users/gurus:

Could someone kindly advise me on the right set of graphics card
options (or non-existence thereof) for getting VMD to display
stereo with the NVidia Quadro 5000 graphics card?

Details: I am runnning the latest VMD (1.9) on a Dell workstation
with Windows 7 and the stated graphics card. The stereo tests
built into the card setup wizard show that the stereo works.
However, VMD shows only what appears to be the right or the left
part of the image when switched to the QuadBuffer stereo mode. No
switching/blinking: a plain image with its counterpart lost
elsewhere in the graphics card buffers.

I tried to duplicate the setup described in
http://cismm.cs.unc.edu/core-projects/visualization-and-analysis/setting-up-a-simple-stereo-system/
and it did not work. NB: in my card setup Wizard, VMD is marked
as an individual program with its own set of stereo options; I,
naturally, made those options match the default options for any
other stereo-employing program. Did not work. What's more,
starting VMD messes up the window manager: any window, when
moved, disappears from the screen but does reappear at a new
location on the screen when the focus is switched to another
window.

Has anyone had a similar problem? Is there a known combination of
options for display/video card that resolves that problem? Or is
VMD stereo simply incomaptible with the NVidia card? :(

Thank you! Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Alexander.

PS. More data for this case. Here is what VMD outputs when it
starts:

Info) Detected 1 available CUDA accelerator:
Info) [0] Quadro 5000 11 SM_2.0 @ 1.03 GHz, 2491MB RAM, KTO, OIO, ZCP
Info) OpenGL renderer: Quadro 5000/PCI/SSE2
Info) Features: STENCIL STEREO MDE CVA MTX NPOT PP PS GLSL(OVF)
Info) Full GLSL rendering mode is available.
Info) Textures: 2-D (16384x16384), 3-D (2048x2048x2048), Multitexture (4)

Here are the display parameters:
Display: SA2311W
Resolution: 1920x1080
Refresh rate: 120 Hz

Here are the NVidia parameters from the setup wizard:

Global settings: "3D App - Default Global Settings"

Ambient Occlusion: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: Application-Controlled
Anialiasing-Gamma correction: Off
Antialaising-Mode: Application-Controlled
Antialaising-Setting: Application-Controlled
Antialiasing-Transparency: Off
Buffer-flipping mode: Auto select
CUDA-GPUs: All
Enable overlay: Off
Export pixel type: Color indexed overlays (8bpp)
Maximum pre-rendered frames: 3
Multi-display/Mixed-GPU acceleration: Multiple display performance mode
OpenGL rendering GPU: Auto-select
Power management mode: Adaptive
Preferred refresh rate (SA2311W): Controlled by stereo
Stereo - Display mode: On-board DIN connector (with NVIDIA 3D Vision)
Stereo - Enable: On
Stereo - Swap eyes: Off
Threaded optimization: Auto
Triple Buffering: On
Vertical sync: Use the 3D application setting

Program Settings: vmd.exe

Ambient Occlusion: Not supported for this application
Anisotropic Filtering: Application-Controlled
Anialiasing-Gamma correction: Off
Antialaising-Mode: Application-Controlled
Antialaising-Setting: Application-Controlled
Antialiasing-Transparency: Off
Buffer-flipping mode: Auto select
CUDA-GPUs: All
Enable overlay: Off
Export pixel type: Color indexed overlays (8bpp)
Maximum pre-rendered frames: 3
Multi-display/Mixed-GPU acceleration: Single display performance mode
OpenGL rendering GPU: Auto-select
Power management mode: Adaptive
Preferred refresh rate (SA2311W): Controlled by stereo
Stereo - Display mode: On-board DIN connector (with NVIDIA 3D Vision)
Stereo - Enable: On
Stereo - Swap eyes: Off
Threaded optimization: Auto
Triple Buffering: On
Texture filtering - Aniso. filter optimization: Off
Texture filtering - Aniso. sample optimization: Off
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Allow
Vertical sync: Use the 3D application setting

========================================================
                Dr. Alexander Balaeff
  Department of Chemistry Phone: (919) 660-1634
  Duke University, Box 90349 FAX: (919) 660-1605
  Durham, NC 27708-0349 E-mail: abalaeff_at_duke.edu
========================================================