From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 17 2014 - 11:53:45 CST

Hi Carlos,
  I'm not familiar with the TV you're using, but I can say a few
things that are broadly true of a wide range of HDTVs that support
stereo that may also apply in your case.

If a TV has a DVI input (unlikely), then one is sometimes able to use it
just like any other stereo display.

If the TV uses HDMI, then the options for stereo will depend
somewhat on which operating system the computer is running what
video card, and what driver are being used.

In regards to the NVIDIA GPUs, the "Quadro" GPUs have the best support
for stereoscopic display across all OS platforms. Last I knew however,
HDTVs are considered a special case, and at least on the Windows platform
there was/is a special driver that one had to use to allow stereoscopic
display to an HDTV over HDMI (3DTV Play) for games and the like:
  http://www.nvidia.com/object/3dtv-play-overview.html

I just looked up the NVIDIA web site regarding stereoscopic display,
and they have clearly rewritten much of it since the last time I looked:
  http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-professional-users.html

I would expect that the Quadro would have a good chance of working with
a 3D HDTV, but you will likely have to set the NVIDIA driver's stereo
mode to one that your TV agrees with. If you tell me which OS
you're running, we can work through a few of the details there.
The most important thing is to see if VMD lists "STEREO" during the
OpenGL feature startup messages that it prints to the text console.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 02:25:25PM -0500, Carlos Simmerling wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm trying to optimize my stereo viewing.
> I have windows 7 pro, a quadro fx-4600 and a samsung UN60F8000BF LCD
> TV (http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/UN60F8000BFXZA) that came with
> active stereo glasses. I also have an old stereographics emitter with
> 3-pin DIN connector that plugs into my quadro card, along with some
> stereographics glasses. VMD tells me this at startup:
> Info) OpenGL renderer: Quadro FX 4600/PCIe/SSE2
> Info) Features: STENCIL STEREO MDE CVA MTX NPOT PP PS GLSL(OVF)
>
> So, what I need help with is optimizing my 3D viewing. So far I can
> only get this setup to work when I select side by side 3D in VMD, and
> on the TV I also select side by side and use the glasses that came
> with it. It's ok, but the glasses are cheap and there's some bleed
> through, and of course I lose resolution.
>
> I suspect I'd be better off using the emitter and the expensive SG
> glasses. When I plug in the emitter, the red light goes on so it seems
> to be working. If I select stereo/quadbuffered in VMD, it looks like
> it's doing the right thing, but using the SG glasses doesn't seem to
> sync properly.
>
> A few other questions:
> 1) do the settings in the Nvidia control panel under "manage 3D
> settings" impact VMD? In there you can choose the 3D mode,
> antialiasing, etc. I don't know if that controls the openGL part.
> 2) Is it possible to send a >60HZ signal to these screens? It claims
> it is 240Hz, but I don't know if that's internal interpolation or
> accepts inputs >60Hz.
>
> thanks!

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