Changes between Version 19 and Version 20 of NIAID2023

Timestamp:

Aug 24, 2023, 4:39:08 PM (2 years ago)

Author:

pett

Comment:

--

NIAID2023

@@ -43 +43 @@
 == 8/24/2023 ==
 
+Zach, Tom G., Tom F., Eric Kristen, Andi, Darrell, Scooter, Phil, Victor, Elaine, Greg, Bhinnata, Meghan
+
+Meghan & Darrell show off BioViz lab.  13 VR workstations, LED touch-sensitive wall display, snazzy floor.
+
+Lab event went well.  Thursday 2 groups came through; David Chen VR presentation on video wall.  Seen directly by many people in the room but also by others via Zoom and in remote conference rooms.  They have a recording of a practice version of the presentation.  Had 10 people in a VR meeting with separate computer hosting.  All used Quest 2 headsets.  Had to tape cables to the headsets for reliability.  Worked great.  Friday the headsets were used separately, with a lab person helping each.  Felt it was better this way because there were more people in the lab than expected and therefore it was noisy, which made communication in a multi-person meeting difficult.  The lab meeting was part of a conference and known well ahead of time, but the lab was only actually ready the day before!  Now that it’s ready, they will advertise its availability.
+
+DAE files slow to load (2 minutes to get VR set up).  GLB was almost instantaneous, but didn’t work in meeting.  T.G. had determined it was because GLB fails to save in session, and fixed it several days ago now.  Phil(?)/Dave(?) says gzipped DAE/GLB files don’t load despite being documented to do so [worked for me in later testing, maybe missing final .gz suffix?].
+
+Phil has been investigating presets and requests:
+- H-bonds and struts be 16-sided
+- Small-molecule bonds be 32-sided
+- No sharp boundaries on surfaces
+- 16 sides for ribbon cross sections
+
+Tom F. asked if maybe those settings could be printer dependent.  Phil said he just looked at meshes.  Darrell noted that most printers print objects that are a foot cubed or less, so there won’t be a lot of variance in scale.
+
+3D print questions on our mailing lists could be forwarded to Phil.
+
+The NIH folks need to decide among themselves how much they want ChimeraX to do and how much is post-processed, e.g. low-res representations generated directly or via decimation of a high-res rep?  Kristen noted that low-res reps can look good in visualization software due to smoothing from lighting.  There was disagreement between Phil and Kristen as to how crude the preset output was, but Kristen was likely using an older version of the presets than Phil.  Greg mentioned that maybe they just wanted ChimeraX to output ideal primitives and they would work from there, but Darrell said they wouldn’t want to have to deal with tessellation issues.  Scooter mentioned that additional presets would not be hard to add.  Eric added that the main issue is ensuring the NIH and CGL are on the same page about the specifications for such a preset.
+
+Kristen said that there may need to be more small-molecule presets, because that’s the main category where one size definitely does not fit all due to the wide variety of such molecules.
+
+Hundreds of thousands of files need to be rerun with the new workflows.
+
+Dave Chen requested Phong lighting for volumetric rendering.  T.G. noted that that (and many other modes of lighting for volumetric rendering) is covered in the R01.
+
+Phil noted that applying a surface preset repeatedly increases the triangle count (“graphics triangles #1”).
+
+Andi got funding for a hackathon for the Human Reference Atlas in the Biovisualization Lab, 10/18-19, and needs a template for the Statement of Work.  Meghan:  Scooter? LOL.  Scooter noted that the SoW is different for academics.
+
+Tom G. gave an update on OpenXR.  It works, but was harder than anticipated to get going (2 weeks).  OpenXR is very verbose.  The code needs shakedown testing and T.G. is thinking of putting it in the daily build alongside the SteamVR version.  Then he would test it internally and when it seems possibly okay then have the NIH folks test it.  Meghan was excited by the possible additional reliability provided by not having SteamVR be yet another possible point of failure.  There is no information as to whether Apple Vision Pro will work with OpenXR (T.G. rates it unlikely) but it supposedly going to work with Unity.  Kristen’s Pathogen AR app is in Unity.  Meghan noted that T.G.’s LookSee app worked well and is well documented.
+
+Darrell and Meghan will be visiting Rocky Mountain Labs in October and wondered if T.G. was interested in also going.  T.G. seemed possibly amenable and volunteered Zach as well.
+
+Meghan and Phil noted that 5 machines in the lab had bad stuttering in VR and they all had 4070TI graphics cards, and offered to send one such card for testing.  The 4000 series cards are not supported by Quest/Meta.  We have a 4090 card, but it’s on a Linux box and it’s not clear if it can be switched to the Dell Optiplex 7000 due to power issues.  Ultimately decided that NIH would try the OpenXR version to see if that remedied the problem, and if not then ship the card.
+
+Next meeting will be next week, but could be cancelled if no discussion topics emerge.
+
 (8/3,8/17 meetings cancelled)