[chimera-dev] monitor suitable for stereo visualization in Chimera

[Tom Goddard]

Hi Wei,

  Unfortunately stereoscopic visualization is dying out, hardware vendors are not supporting it.  Nvidia 3D Vision which was LCD shutter glasses that worked with many gaming displays (fast refresh displays, e.g. 120 Hz or 144 Hz) was dropped by Nvidia last April, they removed support for it from their graphics drivers.  The Zalman row interleaved displays were discontinued long ago.  Here is old info about Nvidia 3D for Chimera, and also old information about PyMol stereo display

	https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/Outreach/technotes/3dvision.html

	https://pymolwiki.org/index.php/Stereo_3D_Display_Options <https://pymolwiki.org/index.php/Stereo_3D_Display_Options>

  We still have a stereo projector system working with Chimera and ChimeraX that uses RealD CE4S LCD shutter glasses (http://www.colorlinkjapan.com/brand/product/ce4s.html <http://www.colorlinkjapan.com/brand/product/ce4s.html>) and an old StereoGraphics EXXR IR emitter (http://www.ultimate3dheaven.com/crst.html <http://www.ultimate3dheaven.com/crst.html>).  The emitter connects to a 3-pin DIN connector available on some old Nvidia Quadro graphics cards.  We use a P6000 which has a daughter board to provide the 3-pin DIN signal that syncs the glasses with the left and right eye displayed images.  I'm not sure any of this is sold anymore, but maybe you could get it and maybe it would work, but not with 2080Ti graphics.

  We use virtual reality for stereoscopic display in ChimeraX (https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/vr.html <https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/vr.html>).  Here's a YouTube video showing it being used (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCotNi6213w <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCotNi6213w>).  This isn't very similar to the older stereo systems because it blocks your view of everything and requires all new user interface since you can't use the mouse and keyboard easily with VR.  But it does provide even better stereoscopic depth perception than the old systems.

  In short, you can probably do old stereo with lcd or polarized glasses if you are going to go to a great deal of trouble working with unsupported hardware.  Since no one uses this stuff, the graphics drivers also have lots of trouble delivering the images -- we have problems every year keeping our stereo projection system working in the face of updated graphics drivers that no longer work with stereo and 2 displays.

  If you still want to pursue the old stereo, Ken Satuyshur at University of Wisconsin has a few systems working and you could ask him for more info.

	Tom


> On Jan 29, 2020, at 7:57 PM, Wei Zhang <zhangwei at umn.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi Elaine and Tom,
> 
> I am trying to build a GPU workstation that mostly focuses on computation, ie. I want to have 4 2080Ti GPU cards. But I think these GPU cards do not support 3D visualization. One colleague of mine has such a workstation and he uses Zaleman monitor and can display the stereo map using Chimera. Zakeman monitor is out of market for a number of years, I am wondering if you are aware of any other type monitor that can be used for this purpose.
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Wei
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> Chimera-dev at cgl.ucsf.edu
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