VMD-L Mailing List

From: Izrailev, Sergei (Sergei.Izrailev_at_3dp.com)
Date: Thu Oct 09 2003 - 09:03:14 CDT

John,

As I mentioned before, I stopped by the CAChe booth at the ACS meeting
and looked at this laptop. The 3d graphics looks somewhat like a hologram.
There is indeed a button that turns the "stereo" on and off.
The quality of the picture is somewhat questionable, and they didn't
have their demo with molecular graphics running that day, so I can't tell
that it was spectaular, but it doesn't need any glasses.
 
The middleware that actually allows the 3D display is DDD's Tridef
stereo software. I have no idea what it is, but apparently they can render
OpenGL on this laptop.

>From DDD's website it looks like the middleware converts 2D image to 3D,
rather than rendering a 3D scene into 3D, but I may be wrong. Apparently,
they target marketing, advertising and entertainment (including 3D TV).
However, they partnered with SGI last July (see
http://www.ddd.com/aboutus/releases/pr_03jul02.asp ) Here's what it says
about OpenGL:

"TriDef Visualizer enables an OpenGL interactive computer graphics software
application to deliver output suitable for presentation on a 3D display
without the software developer having to change the application code."

Another quote (from their press release with CAChe):

"Using DDD's unique approach, the CAChe molecular modeling software,
developed in OpenGL, has been integrated with the latest 3D LCD
and plasma displays without making any changes to the CAChe software
application."

So it might well be that VMD would work on that display as well as
any other OpenGL applications. Unless, of course "without any changes" is
not entirely accurate :-)

I didn't copy Ioana on this message since it really doesn't answer her
question.

Cheers,

Sergei

-----Original Message-----
From: John Stone [mailto:johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 11:45 PM
To: Ioana Cozmuta
Cc: vmd
Subject: Re: vmd-l: vmd information

Dear Ioana,
  There's no obvious answer yet, since I haven't even had a chance
to see one of these new Sharp laptops yet. They sound similar in
design to the DTI autostereoscopic flat panel displays that VMD
already has support for, but I haven't been able to track down
any specific details on how their display works with OpenGL.
If its a display built with a parallax barrier, then most likely
VMD would achieve stereo by one of two means:
  A) standard OpenGL stereo functionality
      (dubious, most of the other autostereo displays
       require weird rendering hacks presently...)

  B) stencil buffer based rendering tricks where VMD skips rendering
     every other horizontal or vertical line and then merges the left
     and right images into a single buffer. Even in the case of A), this
     would be done by their display driver.

Since Sharp has no information on their web site yet (at least
that I was able to find) I can't really hazard a guess as to which
situation it is.

In any case, if you want an autostereoscopic display for an SGI, you
can use one of the DTI flat panel displays with VMD, I tested one here
a number of months back, on PCs, Suns, etc, and it worked fine.

I hope this is at least somewhat helpful for you. My advice would
be to test the software (including VMD) you want to run on a demo
laptop before you plunk down the cash.

Thanks,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 06:12:20PM -0700, Ioana Cozmuta wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Maybe my question has an obvious answer but I will still ask it. I want to
> know if VMD IS a software that generates 3D images. Someone sent an e-mail
> a while ago on the CCL list about a 3D "Auto-stereoscopic" Laptop designed
> for computational chemistry (Sharp, 2.8GHz Pentium based machine that
> displays true 3D-stereoscopic images without the need for any special
> glasses, the 3D-stereo can be instantly switched on or off and is built in
> to the patented 15" XGA display, Windows XP).
>
> (check www.cachesoftware.com the link to the Free 3D
> Autostereoscopic Laptop)
>
> I would like to know if VMD is 3D compatible with this laptop.
> Additionally, does anyone know if there is a version that works for SGI's?
>
> Thank you,
> Ioana 

-- 
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              
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