VMD-L Mailing List

From: McGuire, Kelly (mcg05004_at_byui.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 31 2018 - 15:40:27 CDT

Actually, that would be very helpful if you could give some direction on setting up VMD for HMDs. Thanks Philip!

Kelly L. McGuire

PhD Scholar

Biophysics

Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology

Brigham Young University

LSB 3050

Provo, UT 84602

________________________________
From: Philip Loche <ploche_at_physik.fu-berlin.de>
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2018 2:24:46 PM
To: John Stone
Cc: McGuire, Kelly; VMD Mailing LIst
Subject: Re: vmd-l: VR

Dear all,

I’m currently using the VR code of VMD with the Rift CV1 and the Vive (not pro) on a machine with two GTX1080 without any problems. I know that the OpenHMD guys are working on the positional tracking and they already have some experimental code for the Rift [1]. Currently I am not following their developer chat but I think there is still an interest to implement positional tracking.

@Kelly: If you need a hand for building VMD for HMDs you can just write.

Best,
Philip

[1] https://github.com/OpenHMD/OpenHMD-RiftPlayground

On 31. Jul 2018, at 21:24, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu<mailto:johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu>> wrote:

Great. I would love for others to do this experiment also with other
hardware and OS versions. Since I've already got some OpenHMD code in VMD
which was used for a research paper a couple of years ago, the effort required
to update it shouldn't be too onerous if it turns out that its support for
the Vive/Vive Pro are usable for at least 3 degrees of freedom head orientation.

Best,
 John

On Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 07:06:36PM +0000, McGuire, Kelly wrote:
  Sounds good, I will see if I can figure out how to use the test codes and
  test OpenMD on the new Vive Pro.

  Kelly L. McGuire

  PhD Scholar

  Biophysics

  Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology

  Brigham Young University

  LSB 3050

  Provo, UT 84602

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------

  From: John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu<mailto:johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu>>
  Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2018 1:03:29 PM
  To: McGuire, Kelly
  Cc: VMD Mailing LIst
  Subject: Re: vmd-l: VR

  Hi,
    As I noted in a few previous emails to VMD-L, the main thing we're
  waiting on for VR in VMD is for the first release of the new
  Khronos OpenXR multi-vendor VR APIs to be released. I'm going to
  Siggraph in Vancouver in 11 days, and one of the major items I'm going
  to be pursuing while I'm there is getting in contact with the leader
  of the OpenXR working group to get either access to a pre-1.0 API (ideal)
  or (more likely) an update on a release timeline and roadmap.

  If OpenXR takes too much longer, then it may be that OpenHMD
  might become a reasonable short-term candidate. I already have some
  early code for OpenHMD in VMD now, but the last time I used it OpenHMD
  didn't have support for anything other than the Oculus DK[12]. Checking
  the latest page, it seems that they have some very preliminary support for
  the HTC Vive now (no position data, no distortion correction):
    [1]https://github.com/OpenHMD/OpenHMD/wiki/Support-List

  If people want to contribute right now, it'd be great if people could try
  running OpenHMD on whatever hardware they have, using the little test
  codes it
  comes with, and report back what the results were and what OS and hardware
  you tried it on. If it turns out that OpenHMD is quasi-usable on recent
  HMD
  hardware like the Vive and Vive-Pro, then I might be convinced to go ahead
  and add the necessary updates and new code into VMD rather than continuing
  to wait for OpenXR to get an initial release.

  Best,
    John

  On Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 12:38:07AM +0000, McGuire, Kelly wrote:
  I just received my Vive Pro VR set. I would be more than happy to
  help or
  test any progress made with VMD and VR systems. I can't really help
  with
  any of the programming per se, but if there are any updates to VMD
  that
  include interfacing with VR, it would be fun to try it.

  Kelly L. McGuire
  PhD Scholar
  Biophysics
  Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology
  Brigham Young University
  LSB 3050
  Provo, UT 84602

  --
  NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
  Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
  University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
  [2]http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Phone: 217-244-3349
  [3]http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/

References

  Visible links
  1. https://github.com/OpenHMD/OpenHMD/wiki/Support-List
  2. http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/
  3. http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/ 

--
NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/           Phone: 217-244-3349
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/