nvidia, kepler, stereo et al.

[Al Matthews]

Hello list.

Sluggishly perhaps, I've been reading in on NVIDIA VGX technology and discover that, as if by magic, the Kepler architecture has spawned a lot of expensive graphics cards.

Supposing we take it as granted that GPGPUs have lots of interesting use cases and that Field benefits from this, in stereo for example, and I recall OpenCL bindings, 

is there anyone on-list with a moment to graciously offer up a primer, on

1) The state of stereo in Field on NVIDIA since July of 2011 -- anything changed?

2) The implications for Field of NVIDIA's virtualizing direction as described for example here 

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/nvidias-vgx-cards-bring-big-graphics-performance-to-virtual-machines/

Thanks much.

--
Al Matthews

http://fatmilktv.com

[Marc Downie]

1) The state of stereo in Field on NVIDIA since July of 2011 -- anything changed?

 

On OS X nothing's changed. With "home made" usb drivers Nvidia USB "3d vision" works splendidly with active stereo canvases (-stereo 1) --- see openendedgroup.com/field/ActiveStereoWorkingGroup. We do multiprojector active stereo pieces on AMD hardware this way. On Linux active stereo works well on Quadro cards, and not at all on non-Quadro cards. Rather, for stereo on Linux, we've been "faking" HDMI 1.4a frame-packed resolutions and hoping that the projectors & monitors do the right thing. Some models do, some don't. 

Absolutely no idea about how VGX is impacting us --- presumably from our place in the stack it just means that OpenGL in a VM is a usable proposition.

Our first GeForce Titan purchase is on it's way, but we don't do anything inside VM's.

Marc.