3D Stereo Graphics for Macs?

goombah99 asks: " I'm trying to view protein molecular models in 3D in my Mac OS X equipped office. I've demo-ed StereoGraphics CrystalEyes glasses and could not get them to work: I tried them with both a G4 (ATI rage 128 pro graphics adapter) and with a 800MHz Powerbook G4 with an external CRT. I've considered the NuVision (AKA MacNaughten) passive display system but it wont work with my preferred Molecular Graphics application PyMOL, which uses a 'blue-line' frame synchronizer rather than an 'over/under' synchronizer or Quad-buffer scheme. PyMOL is hardware accelerated so provides nicely rendered and shaded molecular images. Then there's the question of what graphics card to use--preferably one that does not require special drivers (that could break on an OS upgrade). I've tried several discussion groups but without success. Can anyone provide a success story for viewing molecular graphics in 3D on a Mac? Can anyone discuss the merits of different schema (blue line, quad buffer, stereo-ready card, etc), and suggest other molecular graphics programs for Mac OS X."

Comments

update

[goombah99]

just tried the Gforce 2 from Nvidia. (stock card in the G4 I tested) this also did not activate the CrystalEyes Emitter.

Buy a PC

[foooo]

For $1000-2000 you could have a decently fast computer that you won't have ANY difficulty running 3D applications with 3d goggles.

(This will of course be modded down as troll)

BUT if you are sharing this application with others, it may be worthwhile to set up a "shared" computer that can deal with things that are a pain in the butt at your Mac oriented office.

~foooo

Re:Buy a PC

[presearch]

Without getting too deep into the technical details, the problem with using a PC is that Windows sucks.

Re:Buy a PC

[kwerle]

Without getting too deep into the technical details, the problem with using a PC is that Windows sucks.

Sucks or not - they do the stereo thing perfectly and trivially.

[typed from an ibook]

3d chemistry

[jterry94]

I use mac spartan. It uses the old fashioned red/green glasses but works pretty well.

Jeff

They do have a Mac product

[Orbital Sander]

...but it seems to be a special version of the CrystalEyes product. According to the Q&A page, you need a Radeon or geForce card; Rage is not supported. You also need a plain ole CRT display as opposed to one of the spiffy new LCD ones.

Re:They do have a Mac product

[nomel]

No LCD's is probably because of their low refresh, and slow pixel times.

If you are showing half the frames half of the time, at 75Hz, that's only about 37 Hz per eyeball...that would be awfull. You would need 120 Hz to get 60 per eye...which is watchable...but still pretty awfull.

Try VMD

[mjhsieh]

3D Stereo on VMD should work on Mac. Please visit VMD's website for more information.

Good luck

[Greg Couch]

Having written stereo code for a molecular graphics program, UCSF chimera, I really want quad-buffered stereo in a window so my program can present a modern GUI and a stereo image at the same time. I don't like blue-line stereo because it is for full screen stereo and that screws up the GUI. Unfortunately for the Mac, I know of no graphics cards that support quad-buffered stereo. We have asked Apple about it and they are "considering" it. Please keep pressuring Apple to add quad-buffered stereo support -- it will only happen if Apple does it because Apple writes its own graphics card drivers. In the mean time, check out the micropol displays from Vrex. We have preliminary support for them in chimera and I'm sure you could get Warren Delano to add support to pymol.

Re:Good luck

[Greg Couch]

We still consider the OSX version of chimera to be a beta version primarily because the Aqua version of the Tcl/Tk toolkit (that chimera uses) still needs work. Consequently, we are currently supplying a OSX X11 version that runs well under the Apple X server.

Chimera uses OpenGL, so yes it exploits the graphics accelerators. Apple is using chimera to help debug its graphics drivers, so the performance should only improve.

Quad-buffered stereo is double-buffered for both the left and the right eye images so they always remain in sync. While any stereo technique has to quad-buffer, if the OpenGL driver exposes its quad-buffering API, then the native windowing system has to support stereo in a window.

The VRex is interesting because it makes odd scan lines go to one eye and even to the other. So even though you loose half your vertical resolution for stereo images, mono images (the GUI) are unaltered.

As for for PyMol versus chimera, you'll have to do the comparison yourself. We both have our strengths and weaknesses and both are constantly improving.

Formac ProCyber3D card

[Anonymous Coward]

Came with a set if IR synced LCD shutter glasses, and handled any program which used OpenGL.

www.Formac.com

Old submission?

[PapaZit]

I don't know the first think about working with 3-d molecular apps, but when I went to the PyMOL site listed in the submission, I saw the following on the main page. It seems to answer the question.

(4/18/2003) Accelerated OpenGL Hardware Recommendations (updated 4/30/2003): As we recently updated our development systems, we had a chance to obtain and test some exciting new graphics hardware! Thus, we can now provide the following endorsements:

• For monocular visualization under Windows, we recommend the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (approx. $400). This is by far the fastest OpenGL engine we have ever seen PyMOL run on!
• For stereo visualization under Windows, we are re-evaluting our recommendation of the nVidia Quadro4 750XGL (approx. $500) because we and other users have encountered image stability problems (on Windows only!).
• For monocular visualization under Linux, we recommend the ATI Radeon 8500 (approx. $200). This high-performance card is now supported out-of-the-box with full OpenGL acceleration under RedHat 9.0 (XFree86 4.3) -- no manual configuration is required!
• For stereo visualization under Linux, we recommend the ATI FireGL2 (approx. $600). It is not the fastest card in the world, but IT SIMPLY WORKS. If you need better performance, go with the nVidia Quadro4 750XGL, but be prepared for driver updates.
• For stereo visualization under Mac OSX, we recommend the nVidia GeForce4 Titanium (approx. $400). However, we would expect even better performance from the ATI Radeon 9700 (not yet tested).
• For monocular visualization on a laptop, we recommend the nVidia GeForce4 Go 460 chip running under Windows. However, we also expect excellent performance from the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 chip, which will likely do better with smooth (antialiased) lines.

just get an SGI

[Gizzmonic]

SGI stereo-capable displays are hellacheap on eBay. I got a 20-inch monitor for $189.

SGI is losing ground, but they still own the visualization market...for good reason.

Arr Laddy!

[jellomizer]

Yee must remove thy Eye Patch befor using them "Threee Deee" Glassess.