Stereo HMD and experimenter's monitor

[craigpet]

I have an nVisor ST50, a PC with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti, and a single Dell monitor. What I'd like is to have the HMD display in stereo with the monitor essentially cloning that output, for the experimenter to be able to view. However, the only situation I can get stereo to work on the HMD is when I use NVIDIA's "surround display" to span across the two eyes, and disable the monitor. If I enable the monitor, no matter how I mess with NVIDIA or Vizard's settings, it screws everything up. I'm able to get essentially what I want by just making the two eyes and the monitor clones of each other, but I'd like what's being displayed on the HMD to be in stereo. Is there any way to have stereoscopic vision on my nVisor without making the experimenter blind to what the participant is viewing?

[Jeff]

The setup is slightly different in Vizconnect depending on whether you have an Enterprise or Development license. In both cases you'll add two displays, a custom window and a nvis display.

With Enterprise, you have the option to run a local cluster and two instances of Vizard, one instance for each display. Press the 'Visibility' button for each display to specify which client should render it.

With Development, everything is setup using a single Vizard application window. This window will span the entire width of the NVIS and external monitor. Using subwindows, one covers the width of the NVIS and the other covers the width of the external monitor. If your monitor is not the same resolution as the NVIS, you'll need to figure out exactly how to size and position your sub windows. You also need to take into consideration where the external monitor is relative to the NVIS (e.g. left or right). Press the 'Size/Pos' button for each display to configure it's size and position relative to the application window.

[Vaquero]

Hey Jeff!
Could you please explain the process for the Enterprise edition in more detail? I'm currently trying to use Vizconnect to use the optical heading plugin, but I haven't yet figured out how to correctly display the mainview on both monitors of the NVisor ST50 HMD (stereo, of course).
How do I run a local cluster? I can't seem to start multiple instances of Vizard, and I can only run either the Cluster Master or the Cluster client at the same time in the same instance. Else I get this warning:

Vizard Cluster Master cannot run while Vizard Cluster Client is running.
Please shutdown Vizard Cluster Client first.

[Vaquero]

So I opened the Cluster Master application an checked the box beside localhost. Then I entered 2 into Count. In Vizconnect I added the Nvisor ST50 and a custom window, but setting the clients and fullscreen hasn't paid off yet. The view still gets rendered side by side on only one display of the HMD.

[Vaquero]

A word on the setup: there are 2 monitors (1,2) and the ST50 (3,4). I'd like to have one instance displayed on one of the monitors and, well, use the HMD as it should be.

[Vaquero]

Ok, I was able to get it to work by manually changing a line of code in the configuration script that I saved out from Vizconnect. It's not clear to me how the manual setting of the fullscreen monitors should be done in the GUI. There's an input field and I can enter any single integer for a specific monitor, but multiple monitors? So this is what I did:

viz.window.setFullscreenMonitor([4,3])

I changed this line to take a list as an input. Again, I didn't know how to achieve that via the Vizconnect GUI and couldn't find any help.
And I changed the count for the clients back to one. I guess the master is started anyway.

[Jeff]

Thanks for the feedback, this topic deserves a tutorial of it's own. You're right, when localhost is enabled the 'Count' value refers to the number of clients. The total number of application windows is the count + one because there is always a master window.

To specify more than one monitor through the Vizconnect GUI for a display:

• Press the 'Visibility' button for the display to open the 'Cluster index and monitor' dialog.
• In the 'fullscreen on monitor(s)' line press the 'specify manually (advanced)' button.
• Enter the list of monitors with brackets, for example [4,3]

[Vaquero]

Hey! I'm pulling my hair here. After 1 year I picked up the same problem again.
This time I've got one computer, an Oculus DK2 and 2 monitors, and Vizard 5.7 Enterprise. When I start my script, the person wearing the Oculus sees the vr as expected, and there's a window on the monitor that pops up and displays a stereo view of the oculus rendering. Now what I need is an additional window that renders the same scene from a stationary point of view in non-stereo (mono), so I can see the person's avatar from outside.

I tried the Cluster Master, which opens a second window, but it does not display the viewpoint I want. The dk2 is set up to only display on master.
Everytime I try to add a new Custom Window for the monitor (subwindow disabled) for setting it up to be only displayed on client1 in vizconnect, I get asked if I want to replace the dk2 with this one. Well, obviously I don't want that, because the dk2 just disappears.
From the documentation I get this: »Co-presence is a feature that allows multiple users to share the same virtual environment.« »Note: Co-presence is not supported on a local cluster.«

So how do I render the same scene in an additional window on the monitor from another point of view?

[Jeff]

Try the following:

• Run the cluster master, enable local host with count of 1. You should have two application windows when running vizard or vizconnect.
• In vizconnect, add the custom window display for the monitor and leave subWindow enabled
• Press the visibility window for the custom window, set monitor(s) to fullscreen on, and set to visible only on client 1
• Create a group tracker in the trackers tab, press the Offsets button for the tracker, and give it a position by setting the postTrans values
• Parent the custom window to the group tracker. The custom window viewpoint will be set to the position of the group tracker

[Vaquero]

Thanks Jeff, with your help I managed to get the second window to show up and made the stationary view follow a tracker. However, there's a problem with the live character. While it's correctly shown in the view of the oculus rift, the character just stands in its T-pose in the other client window as you can see in the attached picture.
What's the workaround for that? Do I need to load a another Live Characters Device instance into MotionBuilder and set another port or something?
Or is what's happening in one client simply not shared by the others (»Note: Co-presence is not supported on a local cluster.«)?
So I would need to connect another machine to the network and start a vizard client to have 2 different windows into the same shared world?

[Jeff]

Are you adding the avatar and applying the Live Characters animator in vizconnect? If so, try adding the avatar and apply the Live Characters data to it in the script that imports the configuration file.

[Vaquero]

I'm adding the live character in script with this line:

live_char = vizmocap.LiveCharacter('localhost', 8050, 8055, model=avatar)

I have to switch the avatar model in the experiment, so I didn't use vizconnect for that. I simply do this with

live_char.removeModel(avatar)
avatar.remove()
avatar = get_avatar_by_type(objective.avatar_type, participant.height) #own function
live_char.addModel(avatar)

But well, I guess, the switch wouldn't have anything to do with the synchronization problem between the 2 windows, because it's not working even before the switch.
When I get to book the lab again, I'll try the client on an extra laptop and change 'localhost' to the address of the machine where the live characters plugin is running.