[Chimera-users] Sequential stereo

[Greg Couch]

(Forgot to cc the list.)

Chimera already works with NVidia's 3D Vision, in Windows XP/Vista/7 and 
Linux, as long as you have a 3D Vision supported Quadro FX card, see 
<http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_pro_graphics_boards.html> for  
details. Since chimera does stereo within a window, the GeForce cards 
are not supported. FYI, the latest NVidia drivers, version 197.59, have 
a bug that affects chimera stereo, so you'll need to use an earlier 
version of the driver (or presumably a latter version which has the bug 
fixed).

When working with chimera in stereo, you really want a display that 
shows full resolution left and right eye images, and that generally 
means that the display refreshes at 120 Hz for 60Hz per-eye (100Hz would 
work too). If they don't support 120Hz, then the left and right eye 
images are interlaced when transmitted to the display and adjacent 
pixels can end up being shown in opposite eyes. And that makes 2D text, 
like the text in labels or dialogs, very fuzzy until you take the 
glasses off, but that makes the 3D fuzzy.  That is annoying, but if the 
display is cheap enough, you might be able to live with it :-).

For large groups of people, the cost of the active glasses becomes 
significant (and maintaining the batteries is a chore). So for a large 
display, I'd recommend considering a technology with passive glasses, 
like the RealD LP, 
<http://www.reald.com/Content/proProducts.aspx?pageID=122>, and the 
DepthQ Polarization Modulator, <http://www.depthq.com/modulator.html>. 
They are setups for a projector that polarizes the light onto a silver  
screen (that reflects polarized light coherently) and you use cheap 
polarized glasses to view the content (same glasses as a movie theater 
with RealD 3D). And if you use this technology, then you have the option 
of using a NVidia Quadro FX graphics card or an ATI FirePro graphics 
card (only the V8700, V8800, and V8750 have stereo DIN connectors).

     Hope this helps,

     Greg

On 05/05/2010 08:47 AM, Daniel Hitchcock wrote:
 > Howdy,
 >
 > My advisor was interested in setting up a large display (52" screen)
 > with a computer controlling it for viewing and presentation of
 > structures in chimera. I have been commissioned to purchase the
 > hardware, and naturally I want to take it a step further.
 >
 > With new "3D Ready" LG and Samsung displays (as opposed to regular
 > >120Hz displays) they supposedly have an extra chip to properly sync
 > with an incoming 3D signal from a device, be it a bluray player or
 > whatever. Nvidia has begun to work on their system and promises a
 > software update to their 3Dvision line which would allow for the
 > native signal to be sent to the screen as opposed to just sending a
 > sequential 2D signal. My questions (if that all made sense),
 >
 > 1. Is there or will there be support for nvidia's 3d Vision line? We
 > will be running windows 7 and the program itself will be run in
 > windowed mode probably, not always full screen.
 >
 > 2. If that does not work, what would be the best recommendation for
 > some sort of stereoview (prefereably sequential) on a large LCD or
 > plasma display?
 >
 >
 > Thanks for the help!
 > -Daniel Hitchcock