TeraRecon, Inc. Real Time Visualization June-19-2001 ======================= This document provides the information needed to install the VolumePro500 V2.10 Beta software on to a Windows NT 4.0 system. You must be "administrator" to install the software. This version of VolumePro 500 software comes as 2 separate installations. 1) VolumePro 500 Install - This will install the driver and the library files on to your system. Follow the install instructions below. 2) VolumePro 500_SDK (Software Development Kit) - This will install the sample applications with source code (Revliand GfxSanity), sample datasets, documentation and other example files for software development with VolumePro 500. Double click CD\Windows_SDK\setup.exe SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ==================== The following are the NT system minimum hardware and software requirements : * Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 6 * 300 MHz Pentium class processor or faster * Minimum of 256Mb RAM memory * Minimum of 10 MB free disk space to install the VolumePro 500 software * 3D Graphics Accelerator Cards Compatible with VolumePro 500 (http://support.rtviz.com/support/documents/VolumePro 500 Release Notes) CHANGES IN THIS SOFTWARE ======================== 1. New settings for SW. (See SETTINGS below.) 2. Fixed bugs listed at the end of this document. 3. New file save, Threaded, and 7th point features are added. (See NEW FEATURES below.) 4. Serial number requires installing the SDK software. The serial number is "Real_SDK1" (Without the quotes). INSTALLING THE VOLUMEPRO 500 BOARD =================================== Turn the system power off and install the VolumePro board directly into the PCI slot. INSTALLING VOLUMEPRO SOFTWARE ============================= 1. Uninstall old version of the software from Start > Settings > Add and Remove Programs. Select VolumePro click on Change/Remove button. Select Remove in the dialog box. Restart the computer. 2. Insert CD to CD CD-DRIVE, in Windows Explorer navigate to CD drive\NT, double click setup.exe. Reboot your system. 3. To install Software Development Kit, navigate to CD drive\Windows_SDK, double click Setup.exe. The serial number is "Real_SDK1" (Without the quotes). It is not necessary to reboot after SDK software installation finishes. REMOVING VOLUMEPRO SOFTWARE =========================== Uninstall old VolumePro version s/w: - go to Start>Settings>Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs - choose VolumePro - click on Change/Remove button - uninstall by choosing 'Remove' SETTINGS ========== 1. Change Max Angle Deviation settings Start>run...>regedt32>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE > RTViz> VolumePro500> DEFAULT_MAX_ANGLE_BEHAVIOR in right pane. Change the value 0 and 1. If the value is 0, VLI will return kVLIErrMaxAngleDeviation error (VLI 2.0 behavior). If the value is 1, VLI will adjust the value of the angle to avoid the Max Angle Deviation. (VLI 1.2 behavior). Note: Max Angle settings also controllable from Revli or GfxSanity. See New Features below. 2. Set True size False to get better performance Start>run...>regedt32>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE > RTViz> VolumePro500> true_size in right pain. set the value false = 00 (Performance get faster, VLI 1.2 behavior). This setting allows VLI to skip rendering small and very small sub-volumes of a large volume when rendering. When the large volume is split into sub-volumes for rendering, sub-volumes with one or more dimensions less than 32 voxels will be skipped. For example, a 512x512x512 volume will be rendered as eight 256x256x256 sub-volumes, with subvolumes with sizes of 256x256x6, 256x6x6 and 6x6x6 skipped. (This curious arithmetic is caused by the requirement of a three voxel overlap when splitting a volume into sub-volumes.) set the value true = 01 (Default setting, VLI 2.0 behavior). This setting asks VLI to render the full size of the volume, even when this requires rendering a number of small and very small sub-volumes. VLItrue_size only makes a difference when one or more dimensions of the volume are greater than 509. LIST OF THE FIXED BUGS ======================= 1. Opacity issue Opacity correction for Super sampling is fixed. 2. Lighting did not follow the volume rotation with Emissive 0. Lighting direction is now corrected to follow the camera. 3. Memory leak issues The Memory leaks in VLI are corrected. 4. Max Angle Behavior on and off switch. The switch to select either display next possible lender angle or return error. 5. VLItrue_size on and off swith. Now you can set VLItrue size values. (See SETTINGS above) 6. Large Volume Load Software changed to load volume over 512x512x512~. 7. Performance improvement. 8. Revli, Animate Cut Plane distance problem corrected. 9. GfxSanity menu item changed. Remove routines associated with printing. Remove VLI Options for render done callbacks. Add VLI Options: "Use true size" and "Allow slight adjustment to size". These set "MaxIgnoredVoxels" to 0 and 31 respectively. 10. Revli menu item changed. Remove routines associated with printing. NEW FEATURES ============ 1. Revli, File save as XXXX.clut file also saves XXXX.set file "File->Save As...", this version of Revli will save a .set file in addition to the .clut file. (Note: Must use same file name as .vox file.) Any volume, which has a .set file with the same base file name as the .vox file, will save the following settings: Box Crop (min and max for X,Y, and Z). Window and Level Lights On/Off: TopLeft, BottomLeft, TopRight, BottomRight, HeadLight. Lighting Slider Positions: Intensity, Contrast, Diffuse, Specular, Emissive, Shininess Modulate Opacity On/Off Modulate Lighting On/Off 2. VLIThreaded control (see Threaded_Render.txt in CD\Docs or our web site). Threaded Render control from Options menu in Revli or VLIOptions in GfxSanity 3. 7th point feature (see 7th_point.txt in CD\Docs or our web site). 4. Max Angle settings controlled from Options Menu in Revli or VLIOptions in GfxSanity. The menu selection over rides the Registry setting. 5. Windows Software Postwarp using the VLIPlus library. (This library is not included in the CD. The package is available from our download site: http://support.rtviz.com/support/VolumePro Post Warp Software and Instructions. ) KNOWN ISSUES / LIMITATIONS ========================== 1. User Guide / documentation are not updated with the latest version. NOTES ===== 1. REGISTRY KEYS ================ Our immediate customers may want to choose registry values different than the defaults to ensure the best operation of their product. We do not anticipate the final end user adjusting these registry values.They are under the hive HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/vgb/parameters. The keys are: KernelMemoryMB DWORD This key tells the device driver how much contiguous kernel memory to allocate when it starts up, in units of MB. The default value that we install is 16MB. This contiguous kernel memory is used for loading volumes into the VP500, and for holding the rendered texture maps. LogFileName String This key gives the name of a text file that the device driver may write logging information to. The key should be a fully qualified path name, that is: drive:path\filename. The default value that we install is "c:\vg500log.txt". If this key is not set then the device driver will default to "c:\vg500log.txt" . ice driver will default to "c:\vg500log.txt". 2. HANG DURING BOOT =================== Some system BIOSes have a bug that can cause the system to hard hang as it switches into hi-resolution mode during boot. The screen would blank as normal but never recover. To date this problem has been noted only on SGI 550 Visual Workstations, although it may apply to other BIOSes. To overcome this, enable the jumper on the VolumePro 500 board. This will then allow the boot to continue normally. Note with this jumper(Jumper J1 - related document in VolumePro 500 User's Guide Chapter2, 2-5) enabled it is not possible for an application to directly map voxel memory. This is a system BIOS bug relating to PCI configuration and is beyond our control. Please let us know if you see this behavior on machines other than the SGI 550. 3. DRIVERS REFUSES TO LOAD ========================== Some system BIOSes have a 'feature' to disable PCI bus mastering and may ship with that as the default. The VolumePro 500 requires bus mastering and can not function with this disabled. If this situation is detected the driver will refuse to load and log an error. To determine if this problem exists, look for the driver log file (typically c:\vp500log.txt or c:\winnt\vp500log.txt.) If it exists and contains the line: Bus Mastering for this device is disabled. The VP500 can not run without this. If this error is found, look in the system BIOS for a PCI bus mastering option. Enable it for at least the slot the VolumePro 500 is in. If no BIOS option is found, you can try setting the registry flag: HKLM\\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\vgb\Parameters\PCICommandOverride to 1 and rebooting. Note that this should be used with care since it is overriding the BIOS settings and should be avoided in a production environment. This problem has been seen on HP Kayak machines as well as some older Dell models.