[Chimera-users] Feature suggestions - based on risk of loss of sequential stereo options

Tue Dec 1 17:48:21 PST 2015

Hi David,

  Only being able to do full-screen stereo is a pain in Chimera because you need a second display for the Chimera dialogs like Model Panel.  Stereo-in-a-window allows the Chimera main window to be 3d with shutter glasses and the dialogs can be on the same display.  The problem is that stereo-in-a-window is only supported on professional graphics cards as far as I know, such as the Nvidia Quadro series or AMD FirePro series.  These are expensive cards.  A year ago we tried an Nvidia Quadro K4000 ($800) and an AMD FirePro W7000 ($600).  Both do stereo-in-a-window on Windows 7 on our lab stereo projector.  We returned the K4000 because of some driver bug that effected Chimera.  The AMD also does stereo-in-a-window on Linux, although it is pretty flakey (eyes swapped) and difficult to use with dual displays on Linux.

  The common consumer cards only do full-screen stereo such as the Nvidia Geforce series or AMD Radeon series.  No graphics cards provided in Apple computers support stereo-in-a-window to my knowledge.  We had a very old (2007) Mac Pro with an Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 that did stereo-in-a-window, but that is the last Mac I saw that could do it.

  Given all this we use professional graphics cards and Windows 7 for our stereo systems.

  I think all of this is independent of whether the display uses side-by-side format (SBS typical of 3d TVs) or sequential format (typical of stereo-capable computer displays).  Both can do stereo-in-a-window with pro graphics, but only full-screen stereo with consumer graphics cards.  I’m not completely sure that stereo-in-a-window works on the SBS and we will test that on Thursday.  For the side-by-side format, even if the graphics driver does not support any stereo, Chimera can render the left and right eye images side-by-side and can be used on SBS displays — this mode is called DTI stereo in Chimera, each eye image is uses only half the screen width so resolution is not as good as sequential format stereo.  Displays that take SBS format generally take full-width images for both eyes — so the a 1920x1080 display would really get a 3840x1080 image.  But that requires graphics driver support for the graphics card to output a 3840x1080 image to a display device that says it is 1920x1080 in size.

  We haven’t done anything to make dual display Chimera where the graphics is full-screen on one display work smoothly.  So for instance the Chimera command-line cannot be detached from the graphics window.  Also I doubt Chimera will automatically put the dialog windows on the non-fullscreen display.  Also the mouse cursor is handled by the operating system and it lines up with different objects in the left eye and the right eye which is annoying — Chimera uses the left eye alignment for selecting objects (ctrl-click).  Mouse rotation considers the mouse position relative to the center of the screen.

  In summary, the stereo options are all expensive (stereo-in-a-window) or difficult to use (full-screen stereo) and restrict your choice of operating system (no stereo-in-a-window on Mac).  The consumer uses of stereo to view 3-d movies or play 3-d video games are all full-screen so we can expect only full-screen to have decent support from the graphics card manufacturers.

	Tom

> On Dec 1, 2015, at 12:23 AM, David Bhella  wrote:
> 
> Further to Matt’s comment, SBS works very well for rendering/display in 3D but it is difficult to work with for interactive visualisation because you must work full screen and chimera doesn’t completely understand that the left and right halves of the screen are now superimposed.
> Firstly accessing menus and the command line is problematic because you must move your mouse to the left eye view, so you need to mouse across the screen and off the left hand side. This is a relatively trivial irritation however.
> What is more challenging is interacting with the model/volume to select rotate/pan etc. 
> 
> So, to work with SBS 3D you must have a second monitor to handle all of the floating windows and non-3D stuff. It would be good to be able to float the display window and tear-off the drop-down menus and command line to view separately on the 2D monitor (perhaps you can already?).
> Currently mouse selection tools are focussed on the left hand view, while the rotation control seems to focus on the centre of the display, so sometimes when you intend to rotate the model you end up just rotating about z (or vice-versa).
> Perhaps it would be better to have all mouse interactions focus on the left-hand view and to have a visual cue to let you know when your mouse is over the left or right view?
> 
> I have both nVidia sequential stereo (on linux) and SBS (on a 32” 3D samsung TV on my mac), interactive work is so much more straight-forward on the sequential setup.
> 
> Dr David Bhella
> MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research
> Sir Michael Stoker Building
> Garscube Campus
> 464 Bearsden Road
> Glasgow G61 1QH
> Scotland (UK)
> 
> Telephone:  0141-330-3685
> Skype: d.bhella
> 
> Virus structure group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CVRstructure
> Molecular Machines - Images from Virus Research: http://www.molecularmachines.org.uk
> 
> CVR website: http://www.cvr.ac.uk
> CVR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/centreforvirusresearch 
> 
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>> On 1 Dec 2015, at 07:28, Dougherty, Matthew T wrote:
>> 
>> Sequential S3D is vanishing. Zspace uses it for their windows only apps.  Nvidia barely supports S3D as a technology. Not sure if any other chip makers are using sequential anymore.  Chip electronics have outpaced the need for sequential.
>> 
>> 
>> SBS half, the chimera DTI option output as HDMI is your best bet, regardless of the OS.  
>> 
>> Some of the Samsung tv/monitors that do hdmi 2.0 now offer SBS half at 4k.
>> 
>> This resolution is better than bluray S3D framepack under HDMI 1.4, and is probably the best you will get for the foreseeable future (ie, 5-15 years).
>> 
>> Matthew Dougherty
>> National Center for Macromolecular Imaging
>> Baylor College of Medicine
>> =================================================
>> =================================================
>> 
>> 
>> From: chimera-users-bounces at cgl.ucsf.edu <chimera-users-bounces at cgl.ucsf.edu> on behalf of Tom Goddard 
>> Sent: Monday, November 30, 2015 4:26 PM
>> To: Engelhardt, Peter
>> Cc: chimera-users at cgl.ucsf.edu
>> Subject: Re: [Chimera-users] Sequential stereo problems in Chimera in Mac after updating to OSX EL Capitan
>> 
>> Hi Peter,
>> 
>>  If Chimera says "Unable to find hardware stereo support  … “ when you enable sequential stereo it means the graphics driver does not support quad-buffered OpenGL stereo. Unfortunately Apple has not been interested in supporting stereo so I’m surprised you had it working recently.  For several years now no machines Apple sold supported stereo.  We had an ancient (8 year old) Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 in a Mac Pro until about 2 years ago, but the performance became so poor we abandoned it and had to switch to Windows.  The new Mac Pro cylinders did not support stereo.
>> 
>>  Unfortunately Apple also doesn’t seem to provide any information on which systems support stereo.  We used to be able to get this information from the Apple OpenGL Capabilities web page
>> 
>>  https://developer.apple.com/opengl/capabilities/
>> OpenGL version 1.5 - Apple Developer Tools
>> OpenGL Capabilities Tables. The following table lists OpenGL extensions and parameter values reported for each of the OS X versions, graphics adapters, and CPU ...
>> Read more...
>> 
>> 
>> but they stopped updating that two Mac OS versions ago (10.9).  Now the only thing I can find from Apple about OpenGL support is this page
>> 
>> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202823
>> 
>> that lists the OpenGL version supported by each of their computers.  Quad buffered stereo is not a requirement of any OpenGL version so this page does not help find out about stereo support.
>> 
>>  With Mac OS El Capitan (10.11) Apple has talked a lot about “Metal” which is an alternative graphics programming interface.  Chimera does not use it since it is Apple only and we need to support Linux and Windows.
>> 
>>  In summary, I think Apple has dropped support for stereo on your systems.  Could you tell us what graphics card it was working with and which Mac OS version (Mavericks 10.10?).  Also if you use Chimera menu Help / Report a Bug… we will know the configuration that no longer works which will help us advise other Chimera users.
>> 
>> Tom
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Nov 30, 2015, at 12:54 PM, Engelhardt, Peter  wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> No sequential stereo is working in Chimera after updating of our Macs to 
>>> OS X El Capitan -  10.11.1 in the CRTs linked to MacPros
>>> 
>>> Error remarks:
>>> - unable to turn on stereo viewing - "Unable to find hardware stereo support  ... "
>>> 
>>> (see attachment).
>>> 
>>> This problem has not appeared in with earlier OSX updates!
>>> 
>>> We hope this problem will be fixed soon.
>>> 
>>> Cheers
>>> Peter
>>> 
>>> Peter Engelhardt, PhD, docent
>>> Adjunct Professor in Molecular Genetics
>>> Unit of Molecular Electron Tomography
>>> 
>>> Nanomicroscopy Center (NMC),
>>> Department of Applied Physics
>>> Aalto University, School of Science and Technology,
>>> Puumiehenkuja 2, FI02150 Espoo
>>> Finland
>>> 
>>> Department of Pathology
>>> Haartman Institute
>>> P.O.Box 21 (Haartmaninkatu 3)
>>> FIN-00014 University of Helsinki,
>>> Finland
>>> 
>>> Email: Peter.Engelhardt at Helsinki.Fi
>>> Email: Peter.Engelhardt at Aalto.Fi
>>> URL: http://www.lce.hut.fi/~engelhar/
>>> Mobil: +358-400193342
>>> 
>>> Home address:
>>> Lindstedstvägen 1 B 7
>>> FIN-02700 Grankulla,
>>> Finland
>>> Home Tel: +358-505113192
>>> 
>> 
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