Stereo

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Revision as of 09:28, 20 January 2015 by Kay (talk | contribs) (Stereo in 2015)
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Stereo on TFT monitors

Question: is someone using Nvidia 3D vision + a compatible 1920x1080 23.5" Desktop Display e.g. ACER GD245HQ 120 Hz LCD display OR Alienware OptX AW2310 120 Hz LCD display? Is it running nicely with Linux + Nvidia's Linux driver? How is the stereo quality compared to Zalman's 3D-LCDs or the old CrystalEyes shutter glasses + CRT monitor?

Answers:

  1. I am using the combination you are asking for with alienware monitor. The driver I am using is 195.30 beta. It works very well. Quality is much much better than Zalman and somewhat better than CRTs.
  2. I have Nvidia 3D vision running on the Samsung SyncMaster 2233. One note of caution, for the Quadra FX3800 if you are using dual monitors I haven't found a way to get TwinView to work with the Nvidia 195.30 beta linux driver. You can configure for 2 X-screens to drive the two screens as a work around. This is most likely a 3800 problem since the 3800 has 1 DVI and 2 HDMI outputs instead of 2 DVI outputs. If you are looking for a new graphics card as well and like dual monitors I would stay away from the Quadro FX1800 and FX3800. The Nvidia 3D vision quality is better than Zalman but the Zalman glasses are much lighter if you do a lot of stereo. Follow up question: Is your Nvidia 3D vision emitter connected via the 3-pin DIN or USB? The Nvidia 3D vision emitter I have only connects via USB and I could not get this working under linux.
  3. To me, the currently (2013) best NVIDIA 3D Vision solution on Linux is to buy one of the monitors with built-in emitter from http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-displays.html (we have the BenQ XL2420TX), and a cheap Quadro, e.g. the FX380. The latter has a Dual-Link DVI and a HDMI/Displayport outlet, so can drive the stereo monitor, and an additional monitor. This solution avoids the USB/3-pin hassle altogether. Make sure to use 'Option "Stereo" "10" ' and 'Section "Extensions" Option "Composite" "Off" EndSection"' in xorg.conf! We found that using a GeForce card instead of Quadro does not work on Linux.
  4. www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-displays.html names Acer GN245HQ, Acer HN274H (DVI, 27", 390€-420€), ASUS VG278H (Asus VG278HR was confirmed on CCP4BB; DVI, 27", 500€), BenQ XL2420TX (see above, DVI and DisplayPort, 24", 500€), and ViewSonic V3D245 as monitors with built-in emitter. The three with prices can be bought in Germany.
  5. cheap Quadro cards with dual-link DVI-D or DisplayPort are: Quadro 310 (75€), 410 (80€) , 400 (116€), 500 (154€) - there are others. Quadro 400 and 600 have been reported to work, on CCP4BB. Make sure the card can do dual-link DVI if your monitor has only DVI input. Any card (including the "Windows only" ones!) listed at http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-pro-requirements.html#Quadro should work if a) it can do dual-link DVI if the monitor has only DVI input, and b) if the monitor has built-in emitter. DisplayPort is fine with the BenQ XL2420TX.

Stereo on conventional CRT monitors

Some of the NVidia Quadro cards support stereo. The cards that have an output called "stereo" under "Display Connectors" listed at Nvidia's Quadro overview page have a 3-pin DIN outlet that fits with NuVision or CrystalEyes stereo glasses.

The cheapest of these used to be the FX1400 (difficult to find these days, around 450 €), but now appears to be the FX3450 (around 750 €). These cards are by far fast enough for protein crystallography or modelling.

For stereo, the xorg.conf might need the following lines 

       Section "Extensions"
         Option     "Composite" "Disable"
       EndSection

if the X log file (e.g. at /var/log/Xorg.0.log) says that stereo is not supported by composite.

Another option that will be required in xorg.conf by programs running stereo is 

    Section "Device"
      Driver      "nvidia"
      Option      "Stereo" "3"

Sometimes it is handy to configure two Desktops: one on a CRT monitor that can do stereo-graphics, and one on an LCD monitor for the more regular work, eg your refinement jobs with CCP4. For Nvidia cards you need to modify the xorg.conf file to have a section more or less like that: 

Section "Monitor"
   Identifier     "Monitor0"
   VendorName     "Iiyama"
   ModelName      "Vision Master Pro 512"
   DisplaySize     450      330
   HorizSync       31.5 - 120.0
   VertRefresh     50.0 - 150.0
   Option         "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
   Identifier     "Monitor1"
   VendorName     "Philips"
   ModelName      "150B"
EndSection
Section "Device"
   Identifier     "Videocard0"
   Driver         "nvidia"
   VendorName     "Videocard vendor"
   BoardName      "NVIDIA Quadro FX (generic)"
   BusId          "PCI:1:0:0"
   Screen         0
EndSection
Section "Device"
   Identifier     "Videocard1"
   Driver         "nvidia"
   VendorName     "Videocard vendor"
   BoardName      "NVIDIA Quadro FX (generic)"
   Option         "Stereo" "3"
   BusId          "PCI:1:0:0"
   Screen         1
EndSection
Section "Screen"
   Identifier     "Screen0"
   Device         "Videocard0"
   Monitor        "Monitor0"
   DefaultDepth    24 
   SubSection     "Display"
       Viewport    0 0
       Depth       24 
       Modes      "1024x768" "800x600"
   EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Screen"
   Identifier     "Screen1"
   Device         "Videocard1"
   Monitor        "Monitor1"
   DefaultDepth    24 
   SubSection     "Display"
       Viewport    0 0
       Depth       24 
       Modes      "1600x1280" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"

Note that one can think this is rather silly to define two card, two monitors, two cards, and two screens. However, that the only way I know that one monitor can be stereo-enabled and the other one not.

Ono

You also need to set the environment variable STEREO for the stereo to work properly in ono: setenv STEREO on (tcsh) STEREO = on; export STEREO (bash) [1]

Mac OS X

The following command needs to be run for Macs to be able to support stereo in X11 programs, such as Coot [2] : 

    defaults write com.apple.x11 enable_stereo -bool true


TFT monitors: update January 2015

Using NVidia's 346.35 driver on RHEL/CentOS/SL 7, I changed /etc/X11/xorg.conf to have 

   Section "Device"
      Driver      "nvidia"
      Option      "Stereo" "10"
   EndSection

but there is no stereo (coot only shows a slightly rotated view), nor is there any hint in /var/log/Xorg.0.log that stereo is disabled. In fact, it is disabled, due to the Composite Extension (see http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/346.35/README/xcompositeextension.html). If this is disabled by 

   Section "Extensions"
      Option     "Composite" "Disable"
   EndSection

then the login screen (gdm) crashes. This is documented at https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/556113/3d-vision-and-composite-option/ . The only way out is to install a different display manager, like documented at e.g. http://jensd.be/?p=125 .

See also

Stereo on TFT: see Coot zalman

http://pymol.sourceforge.net/stereo3d.html

http://pymolwiki.org/index.php/Stereo_3D_Display_Options

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