Computer Hardware for Chimera

Below are links to help choose computer hardware that will run UCSF Chimera well. Emphasis is on graphics cards, graphics driver problems, and stereo display systems.

This information quickly becomes out-of-date so check the dates on the pages.

Graphics Cards

Benchmark results for rendering speed using Chimera with various graphics cards.

​Driver bugs observed running Chimera.

Stereo 3D Displays and Glasses

Chimera's sequential stereo camera mode provides the best fidelity, with full color and spatial resolution. But, to use it, you need to carefully pick your graphics card and display. Often, the displays are coupled with active 3D glasses, i.e., glasses were the left and right eyes alternately turn off and on synchronously with the display, like many 3D TVs, or displays that work with NVIDIA's ​3D Vision glasses.

Working Hardware

In 2018 the two systems we use with Chimera sequential stereo rendering:

• Microsoft Windows 10 with an NVIDIA Quadro P6000 on a Christie Mirage S4K projector and Nvidia driver 391.58 (May 2018).

• Microsoft Windows 7 with an NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 and NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses and emitter and ASUS or Samsung stereo monitors.

Debugging Stereo with Quadro P6000 graphics

The Quadro P6000 uses a 3-pin DIN "stereo" cable to an external device (usually an IR emitter) to signal which eye should be looking at the screen. The connector is on a separate bracket from the P6000 video card. The "stereo connector bracket" can be purchased separately if it did not come with your P6000.

To configure the P6000 for 3D stereo, bring up the NVIDIA Control Panel, and go the the "Manage 3D Settings" section. In there, "Stereo Enabled" must be on, and the "Stereo Type" must be for the 3-pin DIN (not 3-pin DIN for 3D Vision) for our setup. There is a separate "Stereographic 3D" settings section that has no effect for Chimera/ChimeraX -- it is primarily for applications that do fullscreen 3D stereo with Direct3D (e.g., games).

Another critical setting is whether Windows considers the projector or the flat-panel the primary display, an option in Windows Display Settings. For several months it worked only if the projector was the primary display. After moving the machine stereo stopped working and we fixed it by making the flat panel the primary display. We do not know what changed -- perhaps it is important which of the P6000 video outputs is used. The current configuration has the projector using DVI output, and flat-panel using the first (closest to motherboard) Display Port output. The symptom when it is not working is either that 1) only the left eye image is rendered, or 2) both left and right eyes are rendered by there is no IR signal. The following day stereo no longer works unless the flat-panel is unplugged. Although we had it reliably working with the projector as the primary display for 5 months using Nvidia 391.58 driver (May 2018), we are currently not able to reproduce that. This appears to be a graphics driver bug when using two displays where there is no IR output. Possibly it depends on which output Display Port connector on the Quadro P6000 the non-stereo display is connected to.

Tests on Older Hardware

Chimera supports stereo viewing using an OpenGL feature called quad-buffer stereo (also known as "stereo in a window"), which is traditionally supported only by workstation-class graphics cards. We have successfully displayed Chimera in stereo using a variety of equipment, such as:

• Microsoft Windows 10 with an Nvidia Quadro P6000 on a Christie Mirage S4K projector
• Apple MacPro (circa 2010) running Mac OS X 10.8 with an Nvidia Quadro FX 5600 graphics card displaying on a Christie projector,
• Microsoft Windows 7 or Ubuntu 15.04 with an AMD FirePro W7000 on a Christie projector,
• Microsoft Windows 7 with an NVidia Quadro FX 3700 and nVidia 3D Vision glasses and emitter and ASUS or Samsung stereo monitors.

In the past few years, options for stereo viewing have changed. Unfortunately, Apple has chosen not to support stereo. As of Mac OS X 10.11, there appears to be no stereo support in the Apple graphics driver. The Quadro FX 5600 graphics card that works with older Mac OS versions is reported not to work with Mac OS X 10.11.

For Microsoft and consumer-grade graphics cards, there is both good news and bad news. The good news is that ATI released the HD3D in 2013, a feature which enables consumer-grade ATI graphics cards to support quad-buffer stereo. We have successfully used stereo in Chimera on a Windows 8 PC with an ATI HD7950 graphics card and a Samsung 3D TV. The 3D TV uses "frame packing" stereo format, but ATI's graphics driver handles all the details and Chimera can be placed into "sequential stereo" mode just like before and everything "just works". But now for the bad news. When we upgraded to Windows 10, stereo stopped working. (Actually it works a few seconds at a time, but not continuously.)

With an ATI workstation-class graphics card (AMD FirePro W7000), Chimera stereo works on Windows 10 with stereo-capable displays from Dell and Samsung. (Unfortunately, it does NOT work with our Christie projector under Windows 10, even though it does work under Windows 7. That may change as OS and drivers improve.) Chimera stereo also works on Linux using the proprietary ATI driver.

So here's the bottom line:

• Except as noted below, “stereo in a window” (quad-buffer stereo) requires a workstation-class graphics card and a good stereo-capable display.

• We have not found a consumer-class graphics card that does quad-buffer stereo reliably with Windows 10. For using Chimera with stereo glasses and a consumer-grade card, the only configuration we’ve seen work is
  • a Windows 8/8.1 PC,
  • an ATI graphics card supporting HD3D, and
  • a 3D TV.

Links

​Stereo test programs

​Nvidia 3D Vision setup details with stereo-capable LCD display.

​Stereo display options.

​Row-interleaved versus sequential stereo.

​Stereo modes supported by Chimera.

​NVidia 3D Vision glasses.

Stereo 3-d televisions work with Chimera on Mac laptops.

Stereo Projectors

​Projector issues and ​content production by Matt Dougherty.

Memory

​Memory needed for large data display. We suggest using a 64-bit version of Chimera (Linux and Mac available, Windows in Fall 2010) if your machine has more than 4 Gbytes of memory.

Input Devices

​Miscellaneous input devices reviewed: Wii, Space Navigator, web-cam head-tracking, force-feedback.