[chimerax-users] Oculus quest for chimeraX?

Tue Aug 18 14:37:00 PDT 2020

Hi Jared,

  That graphics card has similar speed to an Nvidia RTX 2070 and is plenty fast.  I'm not sure what you mean by "unstable", could mean ChimeraX VR crashes, does not render at all, or has slow framerate so it flickers badly.  ChimeraX is not like a game where all the scenes have been optimized and suitably simplified to guarantee a minimum rendering rate.  It is easy to load data like molecules or maps that are beyond the capabilities of any graphics card to handle in VR.  But molecules less than 100,000 atoms and map surfaces less than maybe 10 million triangles (say less than 400**3 in size but really depends entirely on threshold and noise)  are usually ok.  Also ambient shadow lighting ("soft" or "full" lighting) which is casting 64 shadows will easily cause VR stutter on the highest end graphics card on modest data, so stick to simple lighting.

  In summary ChimeraX VR isn't going to automatically work smoothly on any science data set you throw at it and it doesn't have tricks to automatically simplify your data.  So it is up to you to see when the complexity of your data makes rendering too slow for VR and then simplify the display (e.g. volume step 2).

	Tom

> On Aug 18, 2020, at 11:58 AM, Jared Adolf-Bryfogle <jadolfbr at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I have tried my quest using the link cable and found it to be pretty unstable.  
> 
> Perhaps I did not meet the requirements, but it was a new PC that I built, with a SAPPHIRE NITRO+ Radeon RX 5700 XT with AMD RYZEN 7 3700X 8-Core 3.6 GHz cpu and 16gb of RAM.   Maybe AMD cards are not optimized for it? 
> 
> I can play all games from Steam on high settings, so it's definitely something else.  
> 
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 12:23 PM Tom Goddard <goddard at sonic.net <mailto:goddard at sonic.net>> wrote:
> Hi Escarlet,
> 
>   The Quest will not be able to run ChimeraX VR connected to a laptop unless it is a very powerful video gaming laptop for instance with nvidia gtx 1060 or faster graphics.   I sometimes use ChimeraX VR with an MSI GS65 Stealth Thin 8RF with Nvidia GTX 1070 MaxQ graphics that works fine but that laptop is expensive (~$3000), noisy, and has short battery life (~2 hours), so I don't recommend using a laptop for VR unless portability is important.  I use the laptop to give VR demonstrations outside the lab.
> 
> 	Tom
> 
> 
>> On Aug 18, 2020, at 10:16 AM, Miriam Díaz Galicia <miriam.diazgalicia at kaust.edu.sa <mailto:miriam.diazgalicia at kaust.edu.sa>> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Tom
>> Thank you very much for you reply. I was hoping it would work without the need of a PC since my laptop is not so good. Anyways, your answer has been very helpful. 
>> Greetings
>> Escarlet
>> 
>> On Tue, 18 Aug 2020, 20:12 Tom Goddard, <goddard at sonic.net <mailto:goddard at sonic.net>> wrote:
>> Hi Escarlet,
>> 
>>   ChimeraX VR will not run standalone on the Oculus Quest but it will probably work with the Quest link cable connected to a PC running Windows 10 with a sufficiently powerful graphics card for PC VR (e.g. Geforce GTX 1060 or faster).  It will not run on the Quest standalone because the Quest uses the Android operating system and ChimeraX only runs on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.  I have not tried ChimeraX VR with a Quest with the link cable because I do not have a Quest, but all headsets that work with SteamVR have worked for me, including HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S, Vive Pro, Samsung Odyssey so I think any SteamVR compatible headset will work.  My preferred ChimeraX VR headset is currently Oculus Rift S.  But if you will be using the VR for entertainment then the Quest is a good choice.  The best performing VR headset for a PC I think is the Valve Index (based on reviews, since I do not have one) but the cost is high ($1000) and it is back-ordered for at least 8 weeks.
>> 
>> 	Tom
>> 
>>> On Aug 18, 2020, at 6:45 AM, Miriam Díaz Galicia <miriam.diazgalicia at kaust.edu.sa <mailto:miriam.diazgalicia at kaust.edu.sa>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Dear chimeraX users
>>> 
>>> I would like to buy my first VR headset to use with ChimeraX. I am considering buying the Oculus quest but I would like to confirm that it will properly work for ChimeraX.
>>> Has anyone used it? or is there a better low-cost VR headset (preferably but not limited to all-in-one devices) that you can recommend to me? 
>>> 
>>> Thank you very much in advance,
>>> Escarlet
>>> 
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