VMD-L Mailing List

From: Mads Nørregaard-Madsen (MN_at_nuevolution.com)
Date: Fri Jan 14 2005 - 05:09:54 CST

Hi Thomas,

We have been using Eye3D for 3+ years on linux boxes equipped with Nvidia Quadro 4 cards and it works very well with applications such as VMD, PyMol, Sybyl and Swiss PDB viewer. The glasses are very light and much more comfortable than the CrystalEyes glasses I used with SGI machines.

Concerning the graphic cards you need to make sure that the card supports stereo (Nvidia Quadro, ATI FireGL and maybe 3DLabs) or you need to make sure there is a commercial driver available from XIG (www.xig.com).

In general I think Nvidia Quadro cards are the best choice for VMD 3D stereo - drivers are updated regularly.

Hope this helps,

Mads Nørregaard-Madsen, Ph.D.
Director of Molecular Design
Nuevolution A/S
Rønnegade 8, DK2100
Denmark

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Hedegaard Pedersen [mailto:c971742_at_student.dtu.dk]
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2005 9:41 AM
To: vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu
Subject: vmd-l: 3D/stereo hardware recommendations wanted!!!

Hi,

We would like to take advantage of the 3D capabilities of VMD...for that
purpose we intend to buy a new workstation (PC with linux) with two
monitors - one for the 3D (stereo) viewing and another one for the
control windows.

I have had a look at previous postings to the mailing list and done some
searching on the internet, however, I'm still a bit confused about what
equipment to buy. As far as I can see there are four reasonable
solutions (when not considering 3D monitors!):

   1) "CrystalEyes Workstation" from StereoGraphics (shutter technique)
   2) "Monitor ZScreen" also from StereoGraphics (polarization
technique)
   3) "E-D 3D" from eDimensional (shutter technique...seems only to
support page-flipping display mode...I guess that's not supported in
VMD!!!)
   4) "Eye3D" by i-Art (shutter technique)

The latter two options seeming to be the least expensive ones by far!
Can anyone recommend one over the other of these solutions (or other
solutions if they are better) for the dual monitor setup????????

Concerning graphics cards, my impression of the postings is that one
should go for an NVIDIA card...especially a Geforce 6 series card e.g.
6800GT (PCI-Express or AGP???)...is that still the recommended one or
should one go for another card e.g. an NVIDIA quadro series card (i.e.
does VMD utilize any of the quadro features; e.g. antialiased points and
lines, logic operations, clip regions, hardware-accelerated clip planes,
two-sided lighting etc.)????

I would very much appreciate any help on these issues, since I'm
completely inexperienced regarding all this 3D equipment!

   Thanks a lot :-) 

-- 
Thomas Hedegaard Pedersen
 
----------------------------------------
MEMPHYS - Center for Biomembrane Physics
Physical and Biophysical Chemistry Group
Department of Chemistry
Kemitorvet
Building 206, room 243 
Technical University of Denmark
DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby
DENMARK
Phone number: +45 4525 2018
Email       : thp_at_kemi.dtu.dk
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