[Chimera-users] Windows 8.1 and nVidia Quadro drivers.. grrr

[Tom Goddard]

Hi Kenward,

  Our lab has setup many stereo computer systems and I’d say half of them were a struggle to get working, and some we could never get working and simply returned the hardware.  Unfortunately 3d stereo is such a niche product — if a particular configuration of graphics card, graphics driver, operating system, display, lcd glasses, IR emitter, display cable has not been shown to work, then you have only a 50/50 chance of it working.  Also there is little information online of configurations that are known to work.

	Tom


> On Jun 23, 2015, at 9:20 PM, Kenward Vaughan  wrote:
> 
> On 06/22/2015 12:36 PM, Tom Goddard wrote:
>> Hi Kenward,
>> 
>>   Here are screenshot images of the two Nvidia control panel sections
>> with 3d settings that we use on one of our 3d vision nvidia Windows
>> machines.  This uses a very old Quadro FX 3700 graphics card, and
>> possibly an older driver than you are using.  We had a Quadro K4000 on a
>> Windows 7 system six months ago and got stereo displaying on it without
>> trouble.  But we returned it because of graphics driver bugs associated
>> causing very slow selection in Chimera.  We reported that problem to
>> Nvidia and we believe it is fixed in recent drivers.
>> 
>> Tom
>> 
> 
> I have tried those settings now, with no success.  If I play with the Stereo Display Mode (switching to one of several choices further down the list) I find that Chimera will recognize *something* and start "sequential stereo," but it is totally useless and does not work properly (it appears to create a low Hz rock in the image--presumably the L/R images but I'm uncertain).
> 
> With the fiddling, it requires two sequential shutdowns (not reboots) of the system to get the card to reset properly so that it works again under Linux.  I do not know if this is an issue with the Windows driver, the OS itself and how it integrates with the driver, the card, the rest of the HW involved, or what.  I cannot get it to work, and my time needs to go elsewhere.
> 
> I think I will forward this to the kind folks who helped us put the system together (they sold us the Windows disks as well), and see if they would be willing to switch out one of the unused disks for Win 7 Pro, just to see if it makes a difference.  If so...
> 
> Thanks very much for your input!
> 
> 
> Kenward
> 
> 
> 
>>> On Jun 19, 2015, at 8:37 PM, Kenward Vaughan wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hello!
>>> 
>>> I have Chimera working wonderfully with sequential stereo under Linux
>>> with our Quadro card (a K4200), but am getting terribly frustrated
>>> with trying to have it work at all under Win 8.1.  The latest non-beta
>>> driver is installed.  It took me a while to find where the nVidia
>>> control panel is located after finding that Chimera didn't recognize
>>> any stereo-capable hardware (including some references to togl and
>>> pixels).
>>> 
>>> Blah.  I started up the "wizard" of 3D, which gave me a nice slide
>>> show, but Chimera didn't see anything.  Interestingly, rebooting
>>> directly into Linux gave the same problem, which had me fuming and
>>> frothing all over the place.  A shutdown followed by fresh start into
>>> Linux reset the card.
>>> 
>>> So the Windows driver touches something inside the card which has to
>>> be reset hard.
>>> 
>>> There are multiple things installed when this driver is put on the
>>> system.  Is it possible that there are things I don't want, which are
>>> slyly strengthening my thoughts about Windoze?
>>> 
>>> Some searching of the archives was inconclusive for this system. I
>>> have played with the settings in the control panel but have found no
>>> combination that gets sequential stereo working.  Does anyone know
>>> what settings should be changed from the defaults to get this working?
>>> 
>>> Many thanks for any help!
> 
> 
> -- 
> In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be
> _teachers_ and the rest of us would have to settle for something less,
> because passing civilization along from one generation to the next
> ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone
> could have.     - Lee Iacocca

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