[Chimera-users] Sequential stereo problems in Chimera in Mac after updating to OSX EL Capitan

[Tom Goddard]

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/ <https://developer.apple.com/opengl/capabilities/>

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 <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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