I was super happy to see that with the Acer and Sony screens, it’s as easy as connecting the screen, installing the drivers, and typing ‘XR on’ in ChimeraX. Everything works nicely in the main window after all your updates.
You’re right it took a lot of fiddling with the older techs. But, the Samsung and older SBS techs may actually still have some advantages, if you can get past the pain of using them.
Btw, you can still actually get a 3D projector and generic shutter glasses, for ~$700 you could have a 3D setup, I will put some example links below.
SBS Mode (e.g. 3D projector or Samsung monitor)
- Works on Mac, Linux, or Windows
- Works with ChimeraX and Chimera
- In ChimeraX, use "camera sbs” command, then “camera mono” to switch back
- In Chimera, set SBS mode from Tolls -> Viewing Controls -> Camera -> camera mode DTI side by side stereo
- Make sure to maximize the main 3D window on the 3D screen
- The cursor is ghost-like because it’s only shown on one side at a time, so only one eye sees it, but you can actually interact with the 3D scene once you get used to it. For selection, you have to first figure out which eye is seeing the cursor, then figure out if the selection is in the right or left side. Helps to close one eye, click to select. If the selection is off, close the other eye and move the mouse to the other side. For rotation, it’s based at the center of the screen, so you have to move the cursor to the edge of what you see with your left eye, then rotate.
- For the 3D projector, you can have multiple viewers, because the projector can send the signal to multiple 3D glasses at once.
- No eye tracking, so the 3D effect is not optimal, but still can be quite comfortable and effective. You have to play with the eye separation and distance to screen most of the time to make it more comfortable. In Chimera, these are in the Tools -> Viewing Controls -> Camera. In ChimeraX, it is via the “camera" command ("help camera” command shows details).
- 3D shutter glasses typically have a button that switch left and right eyes. If you are not seeing the scene in 3D, and eye separation and distance to screen have not helped, press this button to switch, then adjust the parameters again.
XR mode (e.g. Acer and Sony monitors)
- Only Windows Drivers
- Only ChimeraX, works via the command “xr on"
- You interact with your scene in the main window, so you have to look back and forth from the main window to 3D monitor. On the other hand, you don’t have to put on the 3D glasses.
- Rotation and Selection work as usual in the main window.
- Just one viewer at a time, but you could be showing something to someone else, e.g. they would be looking at the 3D monitor, and you are controlling the scene on the main window.
- The eye tracking makes the 3D effect much more comfortable. No need to play with eye separation and distance to screen. (For the Samsung monitor, the eye distance and tracking would not be sent to ChimeraX, so you would have to play with the eye separation and distance to screen parameters as in the SBS mode.)
Also, why even bother with 3D. There is a bit of a cheesy wow factor to it, but does it add any real value? I think it does. One of my advisors who got me hooked on 3D said he used pipe cleaners to build actual models of proteins. There is nothing like seeing a protein structure in real 3D, I would say.
There have been many times I had trouble seeing how things fit together in a cryoEM map, and when you put it in 3D mode, it just literally pops out. Or times when I am looking at a cryoEM map map at the protein backbone level, and the path through the density is not too obvious. Again, put it in 3D and it becomes much easier to see.
3D projector example:
3D generic shutter glasses example:
On May 9, 2025, at 10:47 AM, Tom Goddard <goddard@sonic.net> wrote:
Hi Greg,
I mostly agree with your assessment that the OpenXR Sony and Acer displays offer a better experience because just by moving your head you see the molecule from a different direction -- basically it looks like a floating hologram that you can view from different directions. The Samsung display is the old technology where you move your head and it just skews the 3D view -- not great. But the drawback of the OpenXR screens is that OpenXR is complex and poorly supported -- for instance the Acer display currently is not working without ChimeraX hacks because of two OpenXR bugs in Acer's driver. They say they will fix those bugs but I expect it will take 6 months. So the OpenXR displays have the drawbacks of all bleeding-edge technology, costly and buggy. The Sony display OpenXR works but even displaying nothing in ChimeraX it ramps up to 50% CPU usage on a 12 core i7 CPU with the fan going full-blast, so loud that I am reluctant to use the display Greg loaned me other than for testing. Again bleeding edge, poorly implemented.
Sadly I have yet to see any 3D stereoscopic viewing technology in the last 30 years (shutter glasses, polarized row-interleaved screens, red-blue glasses, VR headsets, glasses-free lenticular displays, ..., our lab has tried all of them) that wasn't a pain in the neck and only usable by very technically savvy people. Because we are focused on providing capabilities in ChimeraX that are widely used (that's what we get funding for) I can only spend limited time on these fringe 3D devices. My broad view of it is that there are so few good uses of 3D displays outside science that no company can afford the truly massive investment that would be needed to make a display work well. The latest attempt, VR headsets, is a prime example with Meta throwing more than $50 billion at it to produce something that is too painful (1 pound brick worn on your face? really?) for anything but niche uses (like molecular biology).
Tom
On May 8, 2025, at 7:49 PM, Greg Pintilie via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
I’d like to chime in here because I’ve been an avid user of many 3D displays over the years.
The Samsung monitor here sounds old school, in that it doesn’t track the user’s eyes, like the older technologies that were in retrospect uncomfortable by comparison. I have used SBS mode with these older techs, and it is a pain, I doubt it is worth doing more with it.
Tracking the eyes and rendering the image based on eye position and distance to the screen makes the 3D effect a lot more comfortable and natural. As Tom says this takes more computation and is more like VR. It is worth it.
I highly recommend the Sony or Acer displays that Tom mentioned, and small side note, I am the proud hand-deliverer of the Sony display to Tom. He has made ChimeraX interface to these displays work really well. I am more optimistic than Tom that these will be used a lot once people experience them and hopefully prices come down some more. They have decreased in price already substantially.
See here for more info:
Greg
On May 9, 2025, at 3:13 AM, Tom Goddard via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
Thanks Gökhan! I missed that the price was in Australian dollars. $2000 is more reasonable but still pricey. I could contact Samsung and ask for a free display, but I give it about 5% chance of success. Also busy with features thousands of people will use (Boltz structure prediction) so it is hard to spend the time to make a display work that a handful of people might use. Sorry about that. Acer asked me to make their display work and brought the display to my desk, and my Sony display was also hand delivered from Stanford university. I think I was a sucker to accept those displays given the few people who will use them, but if someone delivers a display to my desk I am weak and curious and prone to making it work!
Tom
On May 8, 2025, at 7:01 PM, <tolung.bio@gmail.com> <tolung.bio@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Tom,
Since I am located in Australia (and the browser automatically detects location), that page shows the prices in AUD, not USD; looks like you missed that.
Here’s the US link:
So, the USD price is $2K.
Can’t you contact Samsung directly and ask for a sample/unit for scientific software development?
Cheers,
Gökhan
From: Tom Goddard <goddard@sonic.net>
Sent: Friday, 9 May 2025 7:33 AM
To: tolung.bio@gmail.com
Cc: ChimeraX Users Help <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu>
Subject: Re: [chimerax-users] Samsung 27" Odyssey 3D G90XF 4K 165Hz Monitor
The Samsung web page you referenced says the monitor is $3000, the same price as the Acer 27", and the Samsung also uses eye-tracking so it will probably only work for one person. The Sony and Acer displays both use OpenXR and eye tracking. This is good and bad. The good part is as you move your head to the side you see the side of the rendered objects. The bad is that most 3D applications do not support OpenXR unless they are VR applications. In contrast the Samsung uses side-by-side video input. That allows it to work with any 3D application that supports that common 3D format. Here's a description on Reddit talking about side-by-side input with the Samsung. (Unfortunately the Samsung manual does not say much.)
The drawback of the Samsung approach is that the monitor has no way to tell the application (e.g. ChimeraX) that your head has moved to the side (that is what OpenXR does). So when you move your head to the side you just see the same view direction of the 3D object only skewed. It's not a disaster, you can rotate the molecule if you want to see it from the side. The Samsung manual says only Windows is supported since they include some crappy software that runs on your Windows machine. I'm not sure if it is needed to handle side-by-side input.
I'd love to see the Samsung display. It uses a 4K panel like the Sony and Acer. Like those displays it must be using a lenticular grating to send some pixels to your left eye and some to your right eye so the actual resolution in 3D is more like HD (2K). Still that is pretty good. (With old technology LCD shutter glasses you would get full 4K resolution since the two eye images use all screen pixels and just alternate in time.)
If I had one of these displays I think I could make ChimeraX render full-screen side-by-side. Since you can't drag the ChimeraX graphics into a separate window I would try to add code to create a separate window and render to it as an option. My lab does not have money to spare to buy such a display (NIH funding problems), so don't expect to work on this.
This Samsung is less than half the price (27” for 2K USD) compared to the SONY in the review.
Let me know if you can score one of these to test/develop for :)
There is no ChimeraX capability to make the graphics pane full screen, so it will not work with a 3D display that wants full-screen side-by-side stereo format. The graphics pane is not a docked panel like the other ChimeraX tools. The ChimeraX main window is a Qt QMainWindow which treats that center area specially and it cannot be detached into a floating window. I'm not sure how hard it would be to allow that.
We are also working on glasses-free eye-tracked 3D displays such as the Sony Spatial Reality and Acer SpatialLabs displays. They use OpenXR and only work on Windows and only with 1 person viewing, and costly $3000-5000, so they have some limitations. Here's a description of trying the Sony 3D display with ChimeraX
Hello ChimeraX team and users,
Does ChimeraX support this monitor?
I read a very positive review about this monitor and may consider buying one if it works with ChimeraX.
The review says that this monitor needs a full-screen side-by-side output. Just as many of the sub-windows of ChimeraX can be docked and undocked (e.g., log, Models, etc.), is there way to ‘undock’ the main graphics window to make it full screen? Or, is there a way to display the graphics window on a secondary monitor as a full-screen output?
_______________________________________________
ChimeraX-users mailing list -- chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu
To unsubscribe send an email to chimerax-users-leave@cgl.ucsf.edu
Archives: https://mail.cgl.ucsf.edu/mailman/archives/list/chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu/