[chimerax-users] Oculus quest for chimeraX?

Tue Aug 18 18:04:45 PDT 2020

Hi Tom,

I would love to know your findings!  Yes, SteamVR games.  Elite Dangerous,
Serious Sam 3, Contractors VR, some other ones. All work well on high or
ultra.  So not sure what it was exactly.

On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 6:43 PM Tom Goddard <goddard at sonic.net> wrote:

> Hi Jared,
>
>   Thanks for the info.  I'll try out a Quest with the link cable when I
> get access to that.  PDB 2J88 is only 5000 atoms and I just tried it in VR
> with my Oculus Rift S and ChimeraX 1.0 and it was perfectly smooth, even
> with the ambient occlusion lighting (soft and full) that I said not to use
> in VR.  I tried ribbon, stick, spheres, molecular surface, and all of them
> together.  The modest 2 year old laptop gtx 1070 MaxQ (the MaxQ part means
> it is run at a lower clock than a real desktop 1070 to keep the laptop from
> overheating) handled it without any flicker.
>
>   I don't know what might be causing the bad flicker (slow rendering) you
> see with Quest.  I'll just have to get a Quest to see what is going on.
>
>   When you say you run Steam games at high settings with no problem, do
> you mean you SteamVR games?  What I am wondering is if you have tried any
> SteamVR  apps (as opposed to Oculus apps) with the Quest and link cable.
>
> Tom
>
>
> On Aug 18, 2020, at 4:01 PM, Jared Adolf-Bryfogle <jadolfbr at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Hey Tom,
>
> Thanks for the detailed reply as always.   I tried loading 2J88 PDB and it
> was just really choppy.  So much that my very strong VR legs couldn't
> handle it.  It seemed like it should work - so I'm thinking that it was
> probably something with the quest + link vs anything else.  Quest+Link is
> usually pretty good, but it definitely reduces framerates as the GPU has to
> stream in addition to handling the graphics.  Most games are super-smooth,
> but it might be something with that.  If you can get your hands on one,
> definitely give it a go.  I just wanted to provide a word of caution as I
> was extremely excited to try it out.  I'll probably be picking up a headset
> just for PC soon like the Rift S or upcoming HP headset and will definitely
> give it another go.
>
> -Jared
>
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 4:37 PM Tom Goddard <goddard at sonic.net> wrote:
>
>> 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> 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> 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> 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> 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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