VMD-L Mailing List

From: Carlos Simmerling (carlos.simmerling_at_gmail.com)
Date: Tue Feb 18 2014 - 07:06:04 CST

Hi John,
thanks for the quick reply.
I included VMD's output in my original post- yes, it says stereo, and
I can indeed get VMD to do stereo if I pick side by side mode in VMD.
I'm using win 7 pro (though I'd upgrade to win 8 if I knew that would
solve the problem). The TV is HDMI only, unfortunately. The quadro
card has only DVI outputs, so I'm using a DVI to HDMI cable.

 I'm hoping to find a way to do quad buffered stereo at a reasonable
refresh rate.
Carlos

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 12:53 PM, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> 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/