VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 29 2006 - 10:19:06 CST

Hi,
  Unless you have one of the newer Macs, you can't do stereo except in
fullscreen mode as far as I know. The "nanosaurus" demo you tried
was a full screen application right? Windowed stereo requires that you
have a Quadro graphics board and the latest MacOS X OpenGL drivers, as
far as I know.

The Linux situation is a little different. In that case there are some
additional complications in that the currently shipping nVidia drivers
can do either multisample antialiasing OR stereo, but not both at the same
time. Since only a small percentage of VMD users have the CrystalEyes hardware
on Linux, the default VMD behavior is to use multisample antialiasing on these
cards that can only do one or the other. You can set an environment variable
VMDPREFERSTEREO which will cause VMD to use stereo and sacrifice antialiasing
on these particular video cards. SGI and Sun machines don't have these kinds
of limitations, so the necessity to choose between antialiasing and stereo
is only an issue with these PC graphics cards.

  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 08:53:56AM +0300, Peter Engelhardt wrote:
> Hi all 3D experts,
>
> It has been announced that MacOS X is now able to
> show 3D presentations like the good old SGI has
> been performing elegantly for years.
>
> We have recently got the hardware equipment:
> "CrystallEyes" emitter, high frequence and CRT
> monitor etc parts for our MacG5 (single
> processor, no additional graphics cards installed
> yet).
>
> NOTE: We experienced a positive test using
> Nanosaurus 2 (demo version, able to show the
> presentations in 3D, with "CrystallEyes") that
> worked perfectly with stunning scenarios.
>
> Further, we have noticed that the emitter does
> not seem to give any response with other
> softwares that we have tested so far.
>
> Now, we would be very happy to know what is wrong
> and how to get the 3D stereo working in e.g. VMD
> using our MacG5 and if there is someone who can
> tell us, as well, how to get the same 3D working
> e.g. in Chimera UCSF, and in many other
> visualizing softwares in use,.
>
> We have experienced the same analogous troubles
> with has been reported earlier using Linux:
>
> At 12:32 +0100 07.01.2003, Karsten Suhre wrote:
> >However, when I try to switch to "CrystallEyes" in the Display pull-Down
> >menu,
> >I only obtain two separate pictures of my molecule (one above the other, as
> >without a stereo board).
> >
> >Am I missing something (e.g. setting some environment variable)???
>
> We are most interested to know also if the 3D
> stereo problems has been solved for VMD (and for
> other softwares) using Linux.
>
> Many thanks in advance
>
> Cheers
> Peter
> --
> ___________________________________________________________
> Peter Engelhardt, PhD, docent
> Assistant Professor in Molecular Genetics
> Unit of Molecular Electron Tomography
> Department of Pathology and Virology
> Haartman Institute
> P.O.Box 21, FI-00014 Univ. of Helsinki, Finland
> Visiting Address: Haartmaninkatu 3, Helsinki
> Office Tel: (+358-9)-19126431 (direct)
> Laboratory Tel: (+358-9)-19126442
> EM facilities, Tel: (+358-9)-19126885
> Digilab: (+358-9)-19126886
> Fax: (+358-9)-19126700
> FI-00014 Univ. of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
>
> LCE, Laboratory of Computational Engineering,
> Research Center for Computational Science and Engineering
> Helsinki University of Technology (TKK),
> P.O.Box 9203, FI-02015 TKK, FINLAND
> Visiting Address: Innopolis 2, Tekniikantie 14, Espoo
> Office Tel: (+358-9)-4514843 (direct)
>
> Home address:
> Lindstedstvägen 1 B 7
> FI-02700 Grankulla,
> Finland
> Tel: (+358-9)-5091381
>
> Mobil Phone: +358-(0)41 561 0171
> Email: Peter.Engelhardt_at_Helsinki.Fi
> URL: http://www.lce.hut.fi/~engelhar/
> 

-- 
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
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078