Additions:
- Linux: There is full support for the ""GNU/Linux"" operating system on Intel compatible PCs in combination with both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Mathworks Matlab 7.x and the free and open-source ""GNU/Octave 3.2.x"". Psychtoolbox should run well on any recent Linux distribution. However, due to our limited resources, we currently only actively test and optimize for recent versions of Ubuntu Linux and its variants and derivatives. Ubuntu 10.04 and later are known to work, 10.10 and 11.10 are actively tested. For that reason we can only provide support for those distributions should you run into problems or have questions. We recommend staying up to date with the latest Ubuntu versions for optimal performance. However, we do have user reports of successfull use on recent Debian, Fedora Core, and Slackware distributions. A top priority is to further improve Linux support in the future to make it the platform of choice for psychophysics with Psychtoolbox. The [[http://neuro.debian.net NeuroDebian project]] is an effort to provide especially easy access to neuroscience related software on the Debian and Ubuntu Linux distributions. A Psychtoolbox for use with ""GNU/Octave"" is included in the NeuroDebian project. Therefore, ""NeuroDebian"" provides the most simple way of installing and running Psychtoolbox on Linux. We recommend Linux as the operating system of choice for demanding experimental setups which require the highest timing precision, precision for color or luminance displays, general performance and flexibility.
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is also developed and tested under Apple Mac OSX. Exhaustive compatibility tests have been run on 10.4.11, 10.5.8 and 10.6.2, but no testing by the developers has been performed on 10.7 yet. Frequent testing currently only happens on 10.4.11 and 10.5.8, but most OSX versions should work reasonably well for many tasks, according to user reports. The current toolbox releases are not supported under OSX 10.3 or earlier anymore. The last version that worked on 10.3 can be downloaded by specifying the special 'flavor' parameter ""'Psychtoolbox-3.0.8-PreTiger'"" in our downloader script. As the ""PowerPC"" platform is no longer supported by Apple and many other software and hardware vendors, e.g., Mathworks, we will reduce our level of support as well. Basic functionality of Psychtoolbox will continue to work as long as we have access to ""PowerPC"" machines for testing and maintenance. Many new features which would require extensive extra work on our side for the ""PowerPC"" platform are not supported on ""PowerPC"" in current and future Psychtoolbox releases. In general, operating system versions 10.4 "Tiger" and 10.6 "Snow Leopard" seem to be relatively unproblematic for use, i.e., most of the operating system bugs we found have workarounds implemented in Psychtoolbox. 10.5 "Leopard" was a rather buggy operating system, especially for multi-display stimulus presentation and stereoscopic stimulus presentation. 10.7 "Lion" mostly has restrictions in the precision for visual stimulus timestamping due to various bugs in the operating system. Some of our workarounds are no longer fully effective or easy to apply on 10.7, so you may want to stick to 10.6 or earlier if you have the choice.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX or Linux. As of 1. December 2009, Windows Vista and Windows-7 have been tested for basic compatibility with PTB-3. Precision of sound presentation hasn't been tested at all due to lack of suitable testing equipment. Test of visual stimulus presentation on 3 test setups showed somewhat mixed results, especially dual display presentation and presentation timing were rather disappointing. We are aware that many people do run the toolbox under Vista or Windows-7 and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, but we can't recommend it at all for dual-display stereo stimulus presentation or for tasks with a need for high visual timing precision. For some caveats wrt. Vista and later see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista and Windows-7.]] All in all you are off worse with Vista or Windows-7 instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. Vista et al. seem to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] or the latest 32 bit version of the 3.2.x series of [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]]. On Linux we also support 64 bit versions of Matlab or Octave. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as with our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We currently only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Matlab versions prior to V6.5 are no longer supported by current PTB versions. Our installer will redirect you to an old and outdated version of PTB (from December 2010) whose basic functions may still work with older versions if you use a pre-V6.5 Matlab, but in case of any trouble or bugs, you will be on your own with such an ancient Matlab version.
- Mac OS: **Matlab version R2010b and later will not work with the current 32-bit Psychtoolbox! R2010b and later are pure 64-bit applications which can't run any 32-bit toolboxes anymore. There is no known workaround, except sticking to older versions of Matlab. ** Parallel installation of multiple versions of Matlab along each other is easy, so this should be mostly an inconvenience for now, not a major showstopper. Another option is using Matlab for code editing and 32 Bit Octave for running the code.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 6.5 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of relatively old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though. We will remove support for Matlab Version 7.3 and earlier in the near future, so we recommend you update to a more recent version as soon as possible.
- Linux: Currently Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, but other Matlab versions of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not yet supported on MS-Windows or OSX, but fully supported on Linux. If neccessary, a 64-bit Matlab installation with installed 32-bit compatibility support can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not immediately functional on your 64 bit system. We hope to provide 64-bit Matlab / Octave support for Psychtoolbox by the end of 2012. This is a time-consuming effort and some operating system platforms may have (at least partially) working support earlier, but we can't make any guarantees about the progress of 64 bit support. Unfortunately the Apple OS is the most painful platform to port to 64-bit, so it will likely take the longest of all supported systems, potentially beyond 2012. This is due to some questionable, mostly "politically" motivated technical design decisions of Apple's management, thanks for that!
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX for movie playback, movie creation and video capture and recording. Quicktime is installed on any OSX system by default. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons. On Windows you can either install Apple Quicktime 7 or the [[http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/ free software / open-source GStreamer Multimedia framework]]. On Linux you need GStreamer for these operations, but GStreamer is usually a default component of any modern Linux distribution. Type ""help GStreamer"" for GStreamer installation instructions for the different systems. We intend to switch completely to GStreamer in the future and abandon Quicktime, so Windows users are encouraged to give GStreamer a try while it is still optional. There have been so far two reports that the most recent Quicktime versions don't work well - or at all - with 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. Quicktime version 7.1.6 is known to work without trouble on 64-bit Windows though. At least on 32-bit versions of Windows-7, Quicktime version 7.6.5 is known to work correctly.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft ""Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows-7"" or 32/64 bit GNU/Linux.
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel-based Macintosh computer. Matlab V7.4 (Release 2007a) and later fully support Intel Macs. The current PTB-3 works flawlessly with it, so we recommend this for productive use.
- Old Matlab 7.x versions for Power PC based Macintosh computers are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., ""GetChar"") are disabled.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later. However, Power-Macs are a dying platform which will go extinct eventually, so we won't add fancy and complex new features for Power-Macs anymore if doing so would require us to do extra work. Basic functionality will continue to work as long as we have access to Power-Mac computers for basic development and testing.
If you want to use all Psychtoolbox features at full performance and precision, make sure to get a recent ""Direct3D-10/11"" capable (also known as ""OpenGL-3/4"" capable, or ""ShaderModel 4/5"" compliant) graphics card from NVidia or AMD/ATI. Almost all cards of the NVidia ""GeForce"" 8 series and later (e.g., 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 280 etc.), as well as all cards of the ATI Radeon HD series and later (HD 2400, 2600, 3000 series, 4000 series etc.) and their corresponding counterparts from the NVidia Quadro series and ATI ""FireGL / FirePro"" line of cards are technically state of the art and Psychtoolbox can take full advantage of their features.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we strongly recommend using dual-head or multi-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two or more output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual/multi-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. While separate cards may work, we do not guarantee this and do not provide any support for troubleshooting. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by some of the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards. We also recommend mostly avoiding Mac OSX for dual display realtime stimulus presentation, as Apple seems to be mostly incapable of and uninterested in implementing decent support for high performance, tear-free dual display support. For rather static stimuli or use as a control monitor, OSX may be good enough.
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is also developed and tested under Apple Mac OSX. Exhaustive compatibility tests have been run on 10.4.11, 10.5.8 and 10.6.2, but no testing by the developers has been performed on 10.7 yet. Frequent testing currently only happens on 10.4.11 and 10.5.8, but most OSX versions should work reasonably well for many tasks, according to user reports. The current toolbox releases are not supported under OSX 10.3 or earlier anymore. The last version that worked on 10.3 can be downloaded by specifying the special 'flavor' parameter ""'Psychtoolbox-3.0.8-PreTiger'"" in our downloader script. As the ""PowerPC"" platform is no longer supported by Apple and many other software and hardware vendors, e.g., Mathworks, we will reduce our level of support as well. Basic functionality of Psychtoolbox will continue to work as long as we have access to ""PowerPC"" machines for testing and maintenance. Many new features which would require extensive extra work on our side for the ""PowerPC"" platform are not supported on ""PowerPC"" in current and future Psychtoolbox releases. In general, operating system versions 10.4 "Tiger" and 10.6 "Snow Leopard" seem to be relatively unproblematic for use, i.e., most of the operating system bugs we found have workarounds implemented in Psychtoolbox. 10.5 "Leopard" was a rather buggy operating system, especially for multi-display stimulus presentation and stereoscopic stimulus presentation. 10.7 "Lion" mostly has restrictions in the precision for visual stimulus timestamping due to various bugs in the operating system. Some of our workarounds are no longer fully effective or easy to apply on 10.7, so you may want to stick to 10.6 or earlier if you have the choice.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX or Linux. As of 1. December 2009, Windows Vista and Windows-7 have been tested for basic compatibility with PTB-3. Precision of sound presentation hasn't been tested at all due to lack of suitable testing equipment. Test of visual stimulus presentation on 3 test setups showed somewhat mixed results, especially dual display presentation and presentation timing were rather disappointing. We are aware that many people do run the toolbox under Vista or Windows-7 and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, but we can't recommend it at all for dual-display stereo stimulus presentation or for tasks with a need for high visual timing precision. For some caveats wrt. Vista and later see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista and Windows-7.]] All in all you are off worse with Vista or Windows-7 instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. Vista et al. seem to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] or the latest 32 bit version of the 3.2.x series of [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]]. On Linux we also support 64 bit versions of Matlab or Octave. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as with our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We currently only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Matlab versions prior to V6.5 are no longer supported by current PTB versions. Our installer will redirect you to an old and outdated version of PTB (from December 2010) whose basic functions may still work with older versions if you use a pre-V6.5 Matlab, but in case of any trouble or bugs, you will be on your own with such an ancient Matlab version.
- Mac OS: **Matlab version R2010b and later will not work with the current 32-bit Psychtoolbox! R2010b and later are pure 64-bit applications which can't run any 32-bit toolboxes anymore. There is no known workaround, except sticking to older versions of Matlab. ** Parallel installation of multiple versions of Matlab along each other is easy, so this should be mostly an inconvenience for now, not a major showstopper. Another option is using Matlab for code editing and 32 Bit Octave for running the code.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 6.5 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of relatively old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though. We will remove support for Matlab Version 7.3 and earlier in the near future, so we recommend you update to a more recent version as soon as possible.
- Linux: Currently Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, but other Matlab versions of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not yet supported on MS-Windows or OSX, but fully supported on Linux. If neccessary, a 64-bit Matlab installation with installed 32-bit compatibility support can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not immediately functional on your 64 bit system. We hope to provide 64-bit Matlab / Octave support for Psychtoolbox by the end of 2012. This is a time-consuming effort and some operating system platforms may have (at least partially) working support earlier, but we can't make any guarantees about the progress of 64 bit support. Unfortunately the Apple OS is the most painful platform to port to 64-bit, so it will likely take the longest of all supported systems, potentially beyond 2012. This is due to some questionable, mostly "politically" motivated technical design decisions of Apple's management, thanks for that!
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX for movie playback, movie creation and video capture and recording. Quicktime is installed on any OSX system by default. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons. On Windows you can either install Apple Quicktime 7 or the [[http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/ free software / open-source GStreamer Multimedia framework]]. On Linux you need GStreamer for these operations, but GStreamer is usually a default component of any modern Linux distribution. Type ""help GStreamer"" for GStreamer installation instructions for the different systems. We intend to switch completely to GStreamer in the future and abandon Quicktime, so Windows users are encouraged to give GStreamer a try while it is still optional. There have been so far two reports that the most recent Quicktime versions don't work well - or at all - with 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. Quicktime version 7.1.6 is known to work without trouble on 64-bit Windows though. At least on 32-bit versions of Windows-7, Quicktime version 7.6.5 is known to work correctly.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft ""Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows-7"" or 32/64 bit GNU/Linux.
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel-based Macintosh computer. Matlab V7.4 (Release 2007a) and later fully support Intel Macs. The current PTB-3 works flawlessly with it, so we recommend this for productive use.
- Old Matlab 7.x versions for Power PC based Macintosh computers are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., ""GetChar"") are disabled.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later. However, Power-Macs are a dying platform which will go extinct eventually, so we won't add fancy and complex new features for Power-Macs anymore if doing so would require us to do extra work. Basic functionality will continue to work as long as we have access to Power-Mac computers for basic development and testing.
If you want to use all Psychtoolbox features at full performance and precision, make sure to get a recent ""Direct3D-10/11"" capable (also known as ""OpenGL-3/4"" capable, or ""ShaderModel 4/5"" compliant) graphics card from NVidia or AMD/ATI. Almost all cards of the NVidia ""GeForce"" 8 series and later (e.g., 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 280 etc.), as well as all cards of the ATI Radeon HD series and later (HD 2400, 2600, 3000 series, 4000 series etc.) and their corresponding counterparts from the NVidia Quadro series and ATI ""FireGL / FirePro"" line of cards are technically state of the art and Psychtoolbox can take full advantage of their features.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we strongly recommend using dual-head or multi-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two or more output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual/multi-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. While separate cards may work, we do not guarantee this and do not provide any support for troubleshooting. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by some of the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards. We also recommend mostly avoiding Mac OSX for dual display realtime stimulus presentation, as Apple seems to be mostly incapable of and uninterested in implementing decent support for high performance, tear-free dual display support. For rather static stimuli or use as a control monitor, OSX may be good enough.
Deletions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX or Linux. As of 1. December 2009, Windows Vista and Windows-7 have been tested for basic compatibility with PTB-3. Precision of sound presentation hasn't been tested at all due to lack of suitable testing equipment. Test of visual stimulus presentation on 3 test setups showed somewhat mixed results, especially dual display presentation and presentation timing were rather disappointing. We are aware that over 1300 people do run the toolbox under Vista or Windows-7 and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, but we can't recommend it at all for dual-display stereo stimulus presentation or for tasks with a need for high visual timing precision. For some caveats wrt. Vista and later see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista and Windows-7.]] All in all you are off worse with Vista or Windows-7 instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. Vista et al. seem to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also full support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel compatible PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 3.2.x. Psychtoolbox should run well on any recent Linux distribution. However, due to our limited resources, we currently only actively test and optimize for recent versions of Ubuntu Linux and its variants. Ubuntu 10.04 and later are known to work, 10.10 or 11.04 are actively tested. For that reason we can only provide support for that distribution should you run into problems or have questions. We recommend staying up to date with the latest Ubuntu versions for optimal performance. Our top priority is to improve Linux support in the future to make it the platform of choice for psychophysics with Psychtoolbox. Significant improvements are to be expected in 2011 and 2012. The [[http://neuro.debian.net NeuroDebian project]] is an effort to provide especially easy access to neur0-science related software on the Debian and Ubuntu Linux distributions and a Psychtoolbox for Octave is included in the NeuroDebian project. In fact, NeuroDebian provides the most simple way of installing and running Psychtoolbox on Linux.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] or the latest 32 bit version of the 3.2.x series of [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]]. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as with our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Matlab versions prior to V6.5 are no longer supported by current PTB versions. Our installer will redirect you to an old and outdated version of PTB (from December 2010) whose basic functions may still work with older versions if you use a pre-V6.5 Matlab, but in case of any trouble or bugs, you will be on your own with such an ancient Matlab version.
- Mac OS: **Matlab version R2010b and later will not work with the current 32-bit Psychtoolbox! R2010b and later are pure 64-bit Matlab's which can't run any 32-bit toolboxes anymore. There is no known workaround, except sticking to older versions of Matlab. ** Parallel installation of multiple versions of Matlab along each other is easy, so this should be mostly an inconvenience for now, not a major showstopper. Another option is using Matlab for code editing and 32 Bit Octave for running the code.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 6.5 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of relatively old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though. We will remove support for V7.3 and earlier in the foreseeable future, so we recommend you update to a more recent version as soon as possible.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, but other Matlab versions of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not yet supported on MS-Windows or OSX, but fully supported on Linux. If neccessary, a 64-bit Matlab installation with installed 32-bit compatibility support can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not immediately functional on your 64 bit system. We aim to provide 64-bit Matlab / Octave support for Psychtoolbox by the end of 2012. This is a time-consuming effort and some operating system platforms may have (at least partially) working support earlier, but we can't make any guarantees about the progress of 64 bit support. Unfortunately the Apple OS is the most painful platform to port to 64-bit, so it will likely take the longest of all supported systems. This is due to some questionable, mostly "politically" motivated technical design decisions of Apple's management, thanks for that!
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX for movie playback, movie creation and video capture and recording. Quicktime is installed on any OSX system by default. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons. On Windows you can either install Apple Quicktime 7 or the [[http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/ free software / open-source GStreamer Multimedia framework]]. On Linux you need GStreamer for these operations. Type ""help GStreamer"" for GStreamer installation instructions for the different systems. We intend to switch completely to GStreamer in the future and abandon Quicktime, so Windows users are encouraged to give GStreamer a try while it is still optional. There have been so far two reports that the most recent Quicktime versions don't work well - or at all - with 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. Quicktime version 7.1.6 is known to work without trouble on 64-bit Windows though. At least on 32-bit versions of Windows-7, Quicktime version 7.6.5 is known to work correctly.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later. However, as Power-Macs are a dying platform which will go extinct eventually, so we won't add fancy and complex new features for Power-Macs anymore if doing so would require us to do significant extra work. Basic functionality will continue to work as long as we have access to Power-Mac computers for basic development and testing.
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel-based Macintosh computer. [[IntelMacCurrentState For the most up to date infos on Intel Macintosh support, click this link.]]
~- Matlab V7.4 (Release 2007a) and later fully support Intel Macs. The current PTB-3 works flawlessly with it, so we recommend this for productive use.
~- Old Matlab 7.x versions for Power PC based Macintosh computers are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., ""GetChar"") are disabled.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft ""Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows7"" or GNU/Linux.
If you buy a new computer and want to be on the safe side, make sure to get a recent ""Direct3D-10"" or ""Direct3D-11"" capable (also known as ""OpenGL-3"" capable, or ""ShaderModel 4"" compliant) graphics card from NVidia or AMD/ATI. Almost all cards of the NVidia ""GeForce"" 8 series and later (e.g., 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 280 etc.), as well as all cards of the ATI Radeon HD series and later (HD 2400, 2600, 3000 series, 4000 series etc.) and their corresponding counterparts from the NVidia Quadro series and ATI ""FireGL / FirePro"" line of cards are technically state of the art and Psychtoolbox can take full advantage of their features.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we strongly recommend using dual-head or multi-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two or more output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. While separate cards may work, we do not guarantee this and do not provide any support for troubleshooting. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by some of the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards. We also recommend mostly avoiding Mac OSX for dual display realtime stimulus presentation, as Apple seems to be mostly incapable of and uninterested in implementing decent support for high performance, tear-free dual display support. For rather static stimuli or use as a control monitor, OSX may be good enough.
Additions:
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX for movie playback, movie creation and video capture and recording. Quicktime is installed on any OSX system by default. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons. On Windows you can either install Apple Quicktime 7 or the [[http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/ free software / open-source GStreamer Multimedia framework]]. On Linux you need GStreamer for these operations. Type ""help GStreamer"" for GStreamer installation instructions for the different systems. We intend to switch completely to GStreamer in the future and abandon Quicktime, so Windows users are encouraged to give GStreamer a try while it is still optional. There have been so far two reports that the most recent Quicktime versions don't work well - or at all - with 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. Quicktime version 7.1.6 is known to work without trouble on 64-bit Windows though. At least on 32-bit versions of Windows-7, Quicktime version 7.6.5 is known to work correctly.
Deletions:
Revision [1705]
Edited on 2011-10-03 13:23:03 by MarioKleiner [Update: Support added for 64 bit Linux, GStreamer.]Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest versions of Mac OSX. Exhaustive compatibility tests have been run on 10.4.11, 10.5.8 and 10.6.2. Frequent testing happens currently on 10.4.11 and 10.5.8, but all OSX versions work reasonably well, according to user reports. We encourage users to use a recent version of OSX (** Exception: Owners of a NVidia Geforce 8xxx series and later graphics cards that want to do dual-display stereo work or use frame-sequential stereo presentation should avoid Mac OS 10.5.3 to 10.5.8! These systems suffer serious graphics related bugs in that modes of operation and are not recommended! **). The current toolbox releases are not supported under OSX 10.3 or earlier anymore. The last version that worked on that OS can be downloaded by specifying the special 'flavor' parameter ""'Psychtoolbox-3.0.8-PreTiger'"" in our downloader script. As the ""PowerPC"" platform is no longer supported by Apple and many other software and hardware vendors, e.g., Mathworks, we will reduce our level of support as well. Basic functionality of Psychtoolbox will continue to work as long as we have access to ""PowerPC"" machines for testing and maintenance. New features which would require extensive extra work on our side for the ""PowerPC"" platform will not be supported on ""PowerPC"" in future Psychtoolbox releases.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX or Linux. As of 1. December 2009, Windows Vista and Windows-7 have been tested for basic compatibility with PTB-3. Precision of sound presentation hasn't been tested at all due to lack of suitable testing equipment. Test of visual stimulus presentation on 3 test setups showed somewhat mixed results, especially dual display presentation and presentation timing were rather disappointing. We are aware that over 1300 people do run the toolbox under Vista or Windows-7 and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, but we can't recommend it at all for dual-display stereo stimulus presentation or for tasks with a need for high visual timing precision. For some caveats wrt. Vista and later see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista and Windows-7.]] All in all you are off worse with Vista or Windows-7 instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. Vista et al. seem to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also full support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel compatible PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 3.2.x. Psychtoolbox should run well on any recent Linux distribution. However, due to our limited resources, we currently only actively test and optimize for recent versions of Ubuntu Linux and its variants. Ubuntu 10.04 and later are known to work, 10.10 or 11.04 are actively tested. For that reason we can only provide support for that distribution should you run into problems or have questions. We recommend staying up to date with the latest Ubuntu versions for optimal performance. Our top priority is to improve Linux support in the future to make it the platform of choice for psychophysics with Psychtoolbox. Significant improvements are to be expected in 2011 and 2012. The [[http://neuro.debian.net NeuroDebian project]] is an effort to provide especially easy access to neur0-science related software on the Debian and Ubuntu Linux distributions and a Psychtoolbox for Octave is included in the NeuroDebian project. In fact, NeuroDebian provides the most simple way of installing and running Psychtoolbox on Linux.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] or the latest 32 bit version of the 3.2.x series of [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]]. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as with our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Matlab versions prior to V6.5 are no longer supported by current PTB versions. Our installer will redirect you to an old and outdated version of PTB (from December 2010) whose basic functions may still work with older versions if you use a pre-V6.5 Matlab, but in case of any trouble or bugs, you will be on your own with such an ancient Matlab version.
- Mac OS: **Matlab version R2010b and later will not work with the current 32-bit Psychtoolbox! R2010b and later are pure 64-bit Matlab's which can't run any 32-bit toolboxes anymore. There is no known workaround, except sticking to older versions of Matlab. ** Parallel installation of multiple versions of Matlab along each other is easy, so this should be mostly an inconvenience for now, not a major showstopper. Another option is using Matlab for code editing and 32 Bit Octave for running the code.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 6.5 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of relatively old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though. We will remove support for V7.3 and earlier in the foreseeable future, so we recommend you update to a more recent version as soon as possible.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, but other Matlab versions of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not yet supported on MS-Windows or OSX, but fully supported on Linux. If neccessary, a 64-bit Matlab installation with installed 32-bit compatibility support can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not immediately functional on your 64 bit system. We aim to provide 64-bit Matlab / Octave support for Psychtoolbox by the end of 2012. This is a time-consuming effort and some operating system platforms may have (at least partially) working support earlier, but we can't make any guarantees about the progress of 64 bit support. Unfortunately the Apple OS is the most painful platform to port to 64-bit, so it will likely take the longest of all supported systems. This is due to some questionable, mostly "politically" motivated technical design decisions of Apple's management, thanks for that!
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX for movie playback, movie creation and video capture and recording. Quicktime is installed on any OSX system by default. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons. On Windows you can either install Apple Quicktime 7 or the free software / open-source GStreamer Multimedia framework. On Linux you need GStreamer for these operations. Type ""help GStreamer"" for GStreamer installation instructions for the different systems. We intend to switch completely to GStreamer in the future and abandon Quicktime, so Windows users are encouraged to give GStreamer a try while it is still optional. There have been so far two reports that the most recent Quicktime versions don't work well - or at all - with 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. Quicktime version 7.1.6 is known to work without trouble on 64-bit Windows though. At least on 32-bit versions of Windows-7, Quicktime version 7.6.5 is known to work correctly.
- For video capture support on Windows you'll normally use the GStreamer video capture engine, after installing GStreamer (see above). This should provide reasonably well working video capture with most video devices on Windows. On Linux, GStreamer is used as well for excellent video capture support. On OSX, Apple's Quicktime is currently used, but we intend to replace it with GStreamer in the future.
- For video capture support on Windows with the alternative, Mac OS compatible Quicktime Sequencegrabber engine, you'd need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free [[http://www.eden.net.nz/7/20071008/ WinVDIG]] is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connectors and Psychtoolbox has been tested with some version of that plugin. Another (untested) option is the [[http://www.abstractplane.com/products/vdig.jsp VDIG from AbstractPlane]], which costs a small bit of money, but presumably comes with commercial support. Please note that Quicktime video capture capabilities on MS-Windows are very basic and limited, probably only useable for projects with low demands, so there isn't any real reason to prefer this over use of GStreamer. This option will likely get removed when we cancel Quicktime support for Windows.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later. However, as Power-Macs are a dying platform which will go extinct eventually, so we won't add fancy and complex new features for Power-Macs anymore if doing so would require us to do significant extra work. Basic functionality will continue to work as long as we have access to Power-Mac computers for basic development and testing.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we strongly recommend using dual-head or multi-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two or more output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. While separate cards may work, we do not guarantee this and do not provide any support for troubleshooting. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by some of the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards. We also recommend mostly avoiding Mac OSX for dual display realtime stimulus presentation, as Apple seems to be mostly incapable of and uninterested in implementing decent support for high performance, tear-free dual display support. For rather static stimuli or use as a control monitor, OSX may be good enough.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX or Linux. As of 1. December 2009, Windows Vista and Windows-7 have been tested for basic compatibility with PTB-3. Precision of sound presentation hasn't been tested at all due to lack of suitable testing equipment. Test of visual stimulus presentation on 3 test setups showed somewhat mixed results, especially dual display presentation and presentation timing were rather disappointing. We are aware that over 1300 people do run the toolbox under Vista or Windows-7 and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, but we can't recommend it at all for dual-display stereo stimulus presentation or for tasks with a need for high visual timing precision. For some caveats wrt. Vista and later see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista and Windows-7.]] All in all you are off worse with Vista or Windows-7 instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. Vista et al. seem to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also full support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel compatible PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 3.2.x. Psychtoolbox should run well on any recent Linux distribution. However, due to our limited resources, we currently only actively test and optimize for recent versions of Ubuntu Linux and its variants. Ubuntu 10.04 and later are known to work, 10.10 or 11.04 are actively tested. For that reason we can only provide support for that distribution should you run into problems or have questions. We recommend staying up to date with the latest Ubuntu versions for optimal performance. Our top priority is to improve Linux support in the future to make it the platform of choice for psychophysics with Psychtoolbox. Significant improvements are to be expected in 2011 and 2012. The [[http://neuro.debian.net NeuroDebian project]] is an effort to provide especially easy access to neur0-science related software on the Debian and Ubuntu Linux distributions and a Psychtoolbox for Octave is included in the NeuroDebian project. In fact, NeuroDebian provides the most simple way of installing and running Psychtoolbox on Linux.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] or the latest 32 bit version of the 3.2.x series of [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]]. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as with our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Matlab versions prior to V6.5 are no longer supported by current PTB versions. Our installer will redirect you to an old and outdated version of PTB (from December 2010) whose basic functions may still work with older versions if you use a pre-V6.5 Matlab, but in case of any trouble or bugs, you will be on your own with such an ancient Matlab version.
- Mac OS: **Matlab version R2010b and later will not work with the current 32-bit Psychtoolbox! R2010b and later are pure 64-bit Matlab's which can't run any 32-bit toolboxes anymore. There is no known workaround, except sticking to older versions of Matlab. ** Parallel installation of multiple versions of Matlab along each other is easy, so this should be mostly an inconvenience for now, not a major showstopper. Another option is using Matlab for code editing and 32 Bit Octave for running the code.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 6.5 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of relatively old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though. We will remove support for V7.3 and earlier in the foreseeable future, so we recommend you update to a more recent version as soon as possible.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, but other Matlab versions of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not yet supported on MS-Windows or OSX, but fully supported on Linux. If neccessary, a 64-bit Matlab installation with installed 32-bit compatibility support can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not immediately functional on your 64 bit system. We aim to provide 64-bit Matlab / Octave support for Psychtoolbox by the end of 2012. This is a time-consuming effort and some operating system platforms may have (at least partially) working support earlier, but we can't make any guarantees about the progress of 64 bit support. Unfortunately the Apple OS is the most painful platform to port to 64-bit, so it will likely take the longest of all supported systems. This is due to some questionable, mostly "politically" motivated technical design decisions of Apple's management, thanks for that!
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX for movie playback, movie creation and video capture and recording. Quicktime is installed on any OSX system by default. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons. On Windows you can either install Apple Quicktime 7 or the free software / open-source GStreamer Multimedia framework. On Linux you need GStreamer for these operations. Type ""help GStreamer"" for GStreamer installation instructions for the different systems. We intend to switch completely to GStreamer in the future and abandon Quicktime, so Windows users are encouraged to give GStreamer a try while it is still optional. There have been so far two reports that the most recent Quicktime versions don't work well - or at all - with 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. Quicktime version 7.1.6 is known to work without trouble on 64-bit Windows though. At least on 32-bit versions of Windows-7, Quicktime version 7.6.5 is known to work correctly.
- For video capture support on Windows you'll normally use the GStreamer video capture engine, after installing GStreamer (see above). This should provide reasonably well working video capture with most video devices on Windows. On Linux, GStreamer is used as well for excellent video capture support. On OSX, Apple's Quicktime is currently used, but we intend to replace it with GStreamer in the future.
- For video capture support on Windows with the alternative, Mac OS compatible Quicktime Sequencegrabber engine, you'd need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free [[http://www.eden.net.nz/7/20071008/ WinVDIG]] is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connectors and Psychtoolbox has been tested with some version of that plugin. Another (untested) option is the [[http://www.abstractplane.com/products/vdig.jsp VDIG from AbstractPlane]], which costs a small bit of money, but presumably comes with commercial support. Please note that Quicktime video capture capabilities on MS-Windows are very basic and limited, probably only useable for projects with low demands, so there isn't any real reason to prefer this over use of GStreamer. This option will likely get removed when we cancel Quicktime support for Windows.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later. However, as Power-Macs are a dying platform which will go extinct eventually, so we won't add fancy and complex new features for Power-Macs anymore if doing so would require us to do significant extra work. Basic functionality will continue to work as long as we have access to Power-Mac computers for basic development and testing.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we strongly recommend using dual-head or multi-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two or more output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. While separate cards may work, we do not guarantee this and do not provide any support for troubleshooting. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by some of the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards. We also recommend mostly avoiding Mac OSX for dual display realtime stimulus presentation, as Apple seems to be mostly incapable of and uninterested in implementing decent support for high performance, tear-free dual display support. For rather static stimuli or use as a control monitor, OSX may be good enough.
Deletions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. December 2009, Windows Vista and Windows-7 have been tested for basic compatibility with PTB-3. Precision of sound presentation hasn't been tested at all due to lack of suitable testing equipment. Test of visual stimulus presentation on 3 test setups showed somewhat mixed results, especially dual display presentation and presentation timing were rather disappointing. We are aware that over 1300 people do run the toolbox under Vista or Windows-7 and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, but we can't recommend it at all for dual-display stereo stimulus presentation or for tasks with a need for high visual timing precision. For some caveats wrt. Vista and later see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista and Windows-7.]] All in all you are off worse with Vista or Windows-7 instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. Vista et al. seem to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 3.2.x. Due to our limited resources, we currently can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version. We aim to improve Linux support in the future to make it the platform of choice for psychophysics with Psychtoolbox. Significant improvements are to be expected in 2011. Currently Psychtoolbox is tested for compatibility with Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS and 10.10, so this - or any compatible derivative - is the platform of choice if you want to start as a newbie and search for a painless first-contact with Psychtoolbox on Linux. The [[http://neuro.debian.net NeuroDebian project]] is an effort to provide especially easy access to neur0-science related software on the Debian and Ubuntu Linux distributions and Psychtoolbox will be included into this project soon.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] or [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]]. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as with our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Matlab versions prior to V6.5 are no longer supported by current PTB versions. Our installer will redirect you to an old and outdated version of PTB (from December 2010) whose basic functions may still work with older versions if you use a pre-V6.5 Matlab, but in case of any trouble or bugs, you will be on your own with such an ancient Matlab version.
- Mac OS: **Matlab version R2010b and later will not work with the current 32-bit Psychtoolbox! R2010b and later are pure 64-bit Matlab's which can't run any 32-bit toolboxes anymore. There is no known workaround, except sticking to older versions of Matlab. ** Parallel installation of multiple versions of Matlab along each other is easy, so this should be mostly an inconvenience for now, not a major showstopper.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 6.5 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of relatively old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, but other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not yet supported. A 64-bit Matlab installation can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not immediately functional on your 64 bit system. We aim to provide 64-bit Matlab / Octave support for Psychtoolbox by the end of 2011. This is a time-consuming effort and some operating system platforms may have (at least partially) working support earlier, but we can't make any guarantees about the progress of 64 bit support. Unfortunately the Apple OS is the most painful platform to port to 64-bit, so it will likely take the longest of all supported systems. This is due to some questionable, mostly "politically" motivated technical design decisions of Apple's management, thanks for that!
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX and on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons. There have been so far two reports that the most recent Quicktime versions don't work well - or at all - with 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. Quicktime version 7.1.6 is known to work without trouble on 64-bit Windows though. At least on 32-bit versions of Windows-7, Quicktime version 7.6.5 is known to work correctly.
- For video capture support on Windows you'll normally use the builtin ""ARVideo"" capture engine, which uses Windows ""DirectShow"" videocapture framework for well working video capture with most video devices on Windows.
- For video capture support on Windows with the alternative, Mac OS compatible Quicktime Sequencegrabber engine, you'd need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free [[http://www.eden.net.nz/7/20071008/ WinVDIG]] is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connectors and Psychtoolbox has been tested with some version of that plugin. Another (untested) option is the [[http://www.abstractplane.com/products/vdig.jsp VDIG from AbstractPlane]], which costs a small bit of money, but presumably comes with commercial support. Please note that Quicktime video capture capabilities on MS-Windows are very basic and limited, probably only useable for projects with low demands, so you'll usually go for the ""DirectShow"" option instead.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later. However, as Power-Macs are a dying platform which will go extinct eventually, we won't add fancy and complex new features for Power-Macs anymore if doing so would require us to do significant extra work. Basic functionality will continue to work as long as we have access to Power-Mac computers for basic development and testing.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards. We also recommend mostly avoiding Mac OSX for dual display realtime stimulus presentation, as Apple seems to be mostly incapable of and uninterested in implementing decent support for high performance, tear-free dual display support. For rather static stimuli or use as a control monitor, OSX may be good enough.
Revision [1668]
Edited on 2011-02-22 16:10:20 by DavidJones [Update: Support added for 64 bit Linux, GStreamer.]Additions:
- Mac OS: If you installed Matlab R2010a with support for both 32-bit (maci) and 64-bit (maci64) architectures, you can launch Matlab in 32-bit mode from the command line using: '% matlab -maci'. You can also select the Matlab application icon, use command-I to open the Get Info dialog box, and select "Open in 32-bit mode".
Deletions:
Revision [1667]
Edited on 2011-02-22 16:05:15 by DavidJones [Update: Support added for 64 bit Linux, GStreamer.]Additions:
- Mac OS: If you installed Matlab R2010a with support for both 32-bit (maci) and 64-bit (maci64) architectures, you can launch Matlab in 32-bit mode from the command line using: '% matlab -maci'
Revision [1638]
Edited on 2010-12-27 21:04:29 by MarioKleiner [Add update about Linux + NeuroDebian]Additions:
- Linux: There is also support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 3.2.x. Due to our limited resources, we currently can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version. We aim to improve Linux support in the future to make it the platform of choice for psychophysics with Psychtoolbox. Significant improvements are to be expected in 2011. Currently Psychtoolbox is tested for compatibility with Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS and 10.10, so this - or any compatible derivative - is the platform of choice if you want to start as a newbie and search for a painless first-contact with Psychtoolbox on Linux. The [[http://neuro.debian.net NeuroDebian project]] is an effort to provide especially easy access to neur0-science related software on the Debian and Ubuntu Linux distributions and Psychtoolbox will be included into this project soon.
Deletions:
Revision [1637]
Edited on 2010-12-27 20:54:36 by MarioKleiner [Update about supported Matlab versions and 64-bit.]Additions:
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] or [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]]. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as with our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Matlab versions prior to V6.5 are no longer supported by current PTB versions. Our installer will redirect you to an old and outdated version of PTB (from December 2010) whose basic functions may still work with older versions if you use a pre-V6.5 Matlab, but in case of any trouble or bugs, you will be on your own with such an ancient Matlab version.
- Mac OS: **Matlab version R2010b and later will not work with the current 32-bit Psychtoolbox! R2010b and later are pure 64-bit Matlab's which can't run any 32-bit toolboxes anymore. There is no known workaround, except sticking to older versions of Matlab. ** Parallel installation of multiple versions of Matlab along each other is easy, so this should be mostly an inconvenience for now, not a major showstopper.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 6.5 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of relatively old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, but other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not yet supported. A 64-bit Matlab installation can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not immediately functional on your 64 bit system. We aim to provide 64-bit Matlab / Octave support for Psychtoolbox by the end of 2011. This is a time-consuming effort and some operating system platforms may have (at least partially) working support earlier, but we can't make any guarantees about the progress of 64 bit support. Unfortunately the Apple OS is the most painful platform to port to 64-bit, so it will likely take the longest of all supported systems. This is due to some questionable, mostly "politically" motivated technical design decisions of Apple's management, thanks for that!
- Mac OS: **Matlab version R2010b and later will not work with the current 32-bit Psychtoolbox! R2010b and later are pure 64-bit Matlab's which can't run any 32-bit toolboxes anymore. There is no known workaround, except sticking to older versions of Matlab. ** Parallel installation of multiple versions of Matlab along each other is easy, so this should be mostly an inconvenience for now, not a major showstopper.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 6.5 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of relatively old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, but other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not yet supported. A 64-bit Matlab installation can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not immediately functional on your 64 bit system. We aim to provide 64-bit Matlab / Octave support for Psychtoolbox by the end of 2011. This is a time-consuming effort and some operating system platforms may have (at least partially) working support earlier, but we can't make any guarantees about the progress of 64 bit support. Unfortunately the Apple OS is the most painful platform to port to 64-bit, so it will likely take the longest of all supported systems. This is due to some questionable, mostly "politically" motivated technical design decisions of Apple's management, thanks for that!
Deletions:
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 5.1 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of very old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not supported. But 64-bit Matlab can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not functional on your 64 bit system.
Revision [1587]
Edited on 2010-06-02 09:39:49 by BenjaminOakes [Update about supported Matlab versions and 64-bit.]Additions:
Users of Intel-based Macs should be aware that some Macs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. The gfx-cards of the ""GMA-950"" series are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information. While the Intel ""GMA X3100"" series and later are also ""Direct3D-10"" compliant in theory, in practice they suffer from a few limitations, and the quality and performance of their driver support is unclear and untested by us. They may or may not work well for your purpose, but chosing a ""NVidia"" or ATI part has historically proven to be a safer bet.
Deletions:
Revision [1585]
Edited on 2010-05-26 22:00:00 by MarioKleiner [Update about supported Matlab versions and 64-bit.]Additions:
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B072-9112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 5.1 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of very old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
Deletions:
Revision [1584]
Edited on 2010-05-26 21:59:03 by MarioKleiner [Add link to vcredist_x86.exe for Windows.]Additions:
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some [[http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766A6AF7-EC73-40FF-B0729112BAB119C2&displaylang=en#filelist Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, specifically the vcredist_x86.exe]] but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 5.1 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of very old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
Deletions:
Revision [1560]
Edited on 2010-01-08 23:51:19 by MarioKleiner [Add info about suitable QT versions on 32bit Win-7]Additions:
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX and on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons. There have been so far two reports that the most recent Quicktime versions don't work well - or at all - with 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. Quicktime version 7.1.6 is known to work without trouble on 64-bit Windows though. At least on 32-bit versions of Windows-7, Quicktime version 7.6.5 is known to work correctly.
Deletions:
Revision [1557]
Edited on 2009-12-06 14:32:29 by MarioKleiner [Add info about suitable QT versions on 32bit Win-7]Additions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. December 2009, Windows Vista and Windows-7 have been tested for basic compatibility with PTB-3. Precision of sound presentation hasn't been tested at all due to lack of suitable testing equipment. Test of visual stimulus presentation on 3 test setups showed somewhat mixed results, especially dual display presentation and presentation timing were rather disappointing. We are aware that over 1300 people do run the toolbox under Vista or Windows-7 and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, but we can't recommend it at all for dual-display stereo stimulus presentation or for tasks with a need for high visual timing precision. For some caveats wrt. Vista and later see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista and Windows-7.]] All in all you are off worse with Vista or Windows-7 instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. Vista et al. seem to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
Deletions:
Revision [1554]
Edited on 2009-12-05 17:45:03 by MarioKleiner [PowerPC is dying and Win-7/Vista are troublesome.]Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest versions of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.11, resp. 10.5.8, resp. 10.6.2). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX (** Exception: Owners of a NVidia Geforce 8xxx series and later graphics cards that want to do dual-display stereo work or use frame-sequential stereo presentation should avoid Mac OS 10.5.3 to 10.5.8! These systems suffer serious graphics related bugs in that modes of operation and are not recommended! **). Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the latest OS provides better performance. The current toolbox releases are not supported under OSX 10.3 or earlier anymore! The last version that worked on that OS can be downloaded by specifying the special 'flavor' parameter ""'Psychtoolbox-3.0.8-PreTiger'"" in our downloader script. As the ""PowerPC"" platform is no longer supported by Apple and many other software and hardware vendors, e.g., Mathworks, we will reduce our level of support as well. Basic functionality of Psychtoolbox will continue to work as long as we have access to ""PowerPC"" machines for testing and maintenance. New exotic features which would require extensive extra work on our side for the ""PowerPC"" platform will not be supported on ""PowerPC"" in future Psychtoolbox releases.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. December 2009, Windows Vista and Windows-7 have been tested for basic compatibility with PTB-3. Precision of sound presentation hasn't been tested at all due to lack of suitable testing equipment. Test of visual stimulus presentation on 3 test setups showed somewhat mixed results, especially dual display presentation and presentation timing were rather disappointing. We are aware that over 1300 people do run the toolbox under Vista or Windows-7 and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, but we can't recommend it at all for dual-display stereo stimulus presentation or for tasks with a need for high visual timing precision. For some caveats wrt. Vista see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista.]] All in all you are off worse with Vista or Windows-7 instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. Vista et al. seem to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 3.2.x. Due to our limited resources, we currently can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version. There are long-term plans though to improve Linux support in the future to make it the platform of choice for psychophysics with Psychtoolbox.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later. However, as Power-Macs are a dying platform which will go extinct eventually, we won't add fancy and complex new features for Power-Macs anymore if doing so would require us to do significant extra work. Basic functionality will continue to work as long as we have access to Power-Mac computers for basic development and testing.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. December 2009, Windows Vista and Windows-7 have been tested for basic compatibility with PTB-3. Precision of sound presentation hasn't been tested at all due to lack of suitable testing equipment. Test of visual stimulus presentation on 3 test setups showed somewhat mixed results, especially dual display presentation and presentation timing were rather disappointing. We are aware that over 1300 people do run the toolbox under Vista or Windows-7 and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, but we can't recommend it at all for dual-display stereo stimulus presentation or for tasks with a need for high visual timing precision. For some caveats wrt. Vista see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista.]] All in all you are off worse with Vista or Windows-7 instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. Vista et al. seem to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 3.2.x. Due to our limited resources, we currently can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version. There are long-term plans though to improve Linux support in the future to make it the platform of choice for psychophysics with Psychtoolbox.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later. However, as Power-Macs are a dying platform which will go extinct eventually, we won't add fancy and complex new features for Power-Macs anymore if doing so would require us to do significant extra work. Basic functionality will continue to work as long as we have access to Power-Mac computers for basic development and testing.
Deletions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. March 2009, Windows Vista has not been extensively tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that about 1000 people do run the toolbox under Vista and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no serious problems with it. For some caveats wrt. Vista see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista.]] There is no known benefit of running Vista instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. To the contrary, Vista seems to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 3.2.x. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later.
Revision [1553]
Edited on 2009-12-05 17:14:42 by MarioKleiner [Add info about suitable QT versions on 64bit Win.]Additions:
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX and on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons. There have been so far two reports that the most recent Quicktime versions don't work well - or at all - with 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system. Quicktime version 7.1.6 is known to work without trouble on 64-bit Windows though.
Deletions:
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest versions of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.11, resp. 10.5.8, resp. 10.6.1). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX (** Exception: Owners of a NVidia Geforce 8xxx series and later graphics cards that want to do dual-display stereo work or use frame-sequential stereo presentation should avoid Mac OS 10.5.3 to 10.5.8! These systems suffer serious graphics related bugs in that modes of operation and are not recommended! **). Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the latest OS provides better performance. The current toolbox releases are not supported under OSX 10.3 or earlier anymore! The last version that worked on that OS can be downloaded by specifying the special 'flavor' parameter ""'Psychtoolbox-3.0.8-PreTiger'"" in our downloader script.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. March 2009, Windows Vista has not been extensively tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that about 1000 people do run the toolbox under Vista and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no serious problems with it. For some caveats wrt. Vista see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista.]] There is no known benefit of running Vista instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. To the contrary, Vista seems to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX and on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards. We also recommend mostly avoiding Mac OSX for dual display realtime stimulus presentation, as Apple seems to be mostly incapable of and uninterested in implementing decent support for high performance, tear-free dual display support. For rather static stimuli or use as a control monitor, OSX may be good enough.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista and Windows-7. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. March 2009, Windows Vista has not been extensively tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that about 1000 people do run the toolbox under Vista and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no serious problems with it. For some caveats wrt. Vista see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista.]] There is no known benefit of running Vista instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. To the contrary, Vista seems to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX and on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards. We also recommend mostly avoiding Mac OSX for dual display realtime stimulus presentation, as Apple seems to be mostly incapable of and uninterested in implementing decent support for high performance, tear-free dual display support. For rather static stimuli or use as a control monitor, OSX may be good enough.
Deletions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. March 2009, Windows Vista has not been extensively tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that about 900 people do run the toolbox under Vista and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no serious problems with it. For some caveats wrt. Vista see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista.]] There is no known benefit of running Vista instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. To the contrary, Vista seems to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX or Quicktime 6 or preferrably 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards.
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest versions of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.11, resp. 10.5.7). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX (** Exception: Owners of a NVidia Geforce 8xxx series and later graphics cards that want to do dual-display stereo work or use frame-sequential stereo presentation should avoid Mac OS 10.5.3 to 10.5.7! These systems suffer serious graphics related bugs in that modes of operation and are not recommended! **). Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the latest OS provides better performance. The current toolbox releases are not supported under OSX 10.3 or earlier anymore! The last version that worked on that OS can be downloaded by specifying the special 'flavor' parameter ""'Psychtoolbox-3.0.8-PreTiger'"" in our downloader script.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. March 2009, Windows Vista has not been extensively tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that about 900 people do run the toolbox under Vista and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no serious problems with it. For some caveats wrt. Vista see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista.]] There is no known benefit of running Vista instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. To the contrary, Vista seems to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 3.2.x. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] or [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]]. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as with our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Some basic functions even work in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows, although advanced features are restricted to Matlab 7.x.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not supported. But 64-bit Matlab can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not functional on your 64 bit system.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX or Quicktime 6 or preferrably 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons.
- For video capture support on Windows you'll normally use the builtin ""ARVideo"" capture engine, which uses Windows ""DirectShow"" videocapture framework for well working video capture with most video devices on Windows.
- For video capture support on Windows with the alternative, Mac OS compatible Quicktime Sequencegrabber engine, you'd need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free [[http://www.eden.net.nz/7/20071008/ WinVDIG]] is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connectors and Psychtoolbox has been tested with some version of that plugin. Another (untested) option is the [[http://www.abstractplane.com/products/vdig.jsp VDIG from AbstractPlane]], which costs a small bit of money, but presumably comes with commercial support. Please note that Quicktime video capture capabilities on MS-Windows are very basic and limited, probably only useable for projects with low demands, so you'll usually go for the ""DirectShow"" option instead.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft ""Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows7"" or GNU/Linux.
If you buy a new computer and want to be on the safe side, make sure to get a recent ""Direct3D-10"" or ""Direct3D-11"" capable (also known as ""OpenGL-3"" capable, or ""ShaderModel 4"" compliant) graphics card from NVidia or AMD/ATI. Almost all cards of the NVidia ""GeForce"" 8 series and later (e.g., 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 280 etc.), as well as all cards of the ATI Radeon HD series and later (HD 2400, 2600, 3000 series, 4000 series etc.) and their corresponding counterparts from the NVidia Quadro series and ATI ""FireGL / FirePro"" line of cards are technically state of the art and Psychtoolbox can take full advantage of their features.
Users of Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. The gfx-cards of the ""GMA-950"" series are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information. While the Intel ""GMA X3100"" series and later are also ""Direct3D-10"" compliant in theory, in practice they suffer from a few limitations, and the quality and performance of their driver support is unclear and untested by us. They may or may not work well for your purpose, but chosing a ""NVidia"" or ATI part has historically proven to be a safer bet.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. March 2009, Windows Vista has not been extensively tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that about 900 people do run the toolbox under Vista and we didn't receive many reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no serious problems with it. For some caveats wrt. Vista see [[FaqVista our FAQ entry about Vista.]] There is no known benefit of running Vista instead of XP with Psychtoolbox, so there is no reason to switch to it. To the contrary, Vista seems to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 3.2.x. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] or [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]]. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as with our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Some basic functions even work in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows, although advanced features are restricted to Matlab 7.x.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 3.2.x are supported, other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit support: Running under Matlab or Octave in 64 bit mode is not supported. But 64-bit Matlab can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit Matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit Matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not functional on your 64 bit system.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX or Quicktime 6 or preferrably 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and for security reasons.
- For video capture support on Windows you'll normally use the builtin ""ARVideo"" capture engine, which uses Windows ""DirectShow"" videocapture framework for well working video capture with most video devices on Windows.
- For video capture support on Windows with the alternative, Mac OS compatible Quicktime Sequencegrabber engine, you'd need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free [[http://www.eden.net.nz/7/20071008/ WinVDIG]] is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connectors and Psychtoolbox has been tested with some version of that plugin. Another (untested) option is the [[http://www.abstractplane.com/products/vdig.jsp VDIG from AbstractPlane]], which costs a small bit of money, but presumably comes with commercial support. Please note that Quicktime video capture capabilities on MS-Windows are very basic and limited, probably only useable for projects with low demands, so you'll usually go for the ""DirectShow"" option instead.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.4 or later.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft ""Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows7"" or GNU/Linux.
If you buy a new computer and want to be on the safe side, make sure to get a recent ""Direct3D-10"" or ""Direct3D-11"" capable (also known as ""OpenGL-3"" capable, or ""ShaderModel 4"" compliant) graphics card from NVidia or AMD/ATI. Almost all cards of the NVidia ""GeForce"" 8 series and later (e.g., 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 280 etc.), as well as all cards of the ATI Radeon HD series and later (HD 2400, 2600, 3000 series, 4000 series etc.) and their corresponding counterparts from the NVidia Quadro series and ATI ""FireGL / FirePro"" line of cards are technically state of the art and Psychtoolbox can take full advantage of their features.
Users of Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. The gfx-cards of the ""GMA-950"" series are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information. While the Intel ""GMA X3100"" series and later are also ""Direct3D-10"" compliant in theory, in practice they suffer from a few limitations, and the quality and performance of their driver support is unclear and untested by us. They may or may not work well for your purpose, but chosing a ""NVidia"" or ATI part has historically proven to be a safer bet.
Deletions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. March 2009, Windows Vista has not been extensively tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that about 400 people do run the toolbox under Vista and we didn't receive any reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no serious problems with it. Apart from that, there is no known benefit of running Vista over XP, so there is no reason to switch to it. To the contrary, Vista seems to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 2.1.73. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]]. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as for our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Some basic functions even work in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows, although advanced features are restricted to Matlab 7.x.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported, other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit Matlab: Running under Matlab in 64 bit mode is not supported. But 64-bit Matlab can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not functional on your 64 bit system.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and security reasons.
- For video capture support on Windows, you need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free [[http://www.eden.net.nz/7/20071008/ WinVDIG]] is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connectors and Psychtoolbox has been tested with some version of that plugin. Another (untested) option is the [[http://www.abstractplane.com/products/vdig.jsp VDIG from AbstractPlane]], which costs a small bit of money, but presumably comes with commercial support. Please note that video capture capabilities on MS-Windows are very basic and limited, probably only useable for projects with low demands.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.3.9 or later.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista or GNU/Linux.
If you buy a new computer and want to be on the safe side, make sure to get a recent ""Direct3D-10"" capable (also known as ""OpenGL-3"" capable, or ""ShaderModel 4"" compliant) graphics card from NVidia or AMD/ATI. Almost all cards of the NVidia ""GeForce"" 8 series and later (e.g., 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 280 etc.), as well as all cards of the ATI Radeon HD series and later (HD 2400, 2600, 3000 series, 4000 series etc.) and their corresponding counterparts from the NVidia Quadro series and ATI ""FireGL / FirePro"" line of cards are technically state of the art and Psychtoolbox can take full advantage of their features.
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. The gfx-cards of the ""GMA-950"" series are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information. While the Intel ""GMA X3100"" series and later are also ""Direct3D-10"" compliant in theory, in practice they suffer from a few limitations, and the quality and performance of their driver support is unclear and untested by us. They may or may not work well for your purpose, but chosing a ""NVidia"" or ATI part has historically proven to be a safer bet.
Revision [1514]
Edited on 2009-03-22 14:19:40 by MarioKleiner [Update system requirements to current state.]Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest versions of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.11, resp. 10.5.6). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX (** Exception: Owners of a NVidia Geforce 8xxx series graphics cards that want to do dual-display stereo work or use frame-sequential stereo presentation should avoid Mac OS 10.5.3 to 10.5.6! These systems suffer serious graphics related bugs in that modes of operation and are not recommended! **). Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the latest OS provides better performance. Intel Macs are fully supported, as explained below. Although the toolbox continues to work (for the most part) under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. March 2009, Windows Vista has not been extensively tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that about 400 people do run the toolbox under Vista and we didn't receive any reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no serious problems with it. Apart from that, there is no known benefit of running Vista over XP, so there is no reason to switch to it. To the contrary, Vista seems to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]]. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as for our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Some basic functions even work in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows, although advanced features are restricted to Matlab 7.x.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 5.1 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of very old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported, other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit Matlab: Running under Matlab in 64 bit mode is not supported. But 64-bit Matlab can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not functional on your 64 bit system.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and security reasons.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista or GNU/Linux.
Basic Psychtoolbox functions should work on any ""OpenGL"" 1.2 capable graphics card with at least 16 MB of video ram (VRAM). Fast stimulus drawing and use of the more advanced features requires recent graphics hardware. In general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script and the types of stimuli you can create with ease will depend much more on the horsepower and features of your gfx-adapter than on the horsepower of your cpu.
If you buy a new computer and want to be on the safe side, make sure to get a recent ""Direct3D-10"" capable (also known as ""OpenGL-3"" capable, or ""ShaderModel 4"" compliant) graphics card from NVidia or AMD/ATI. Almost all cards of the NVidia ""GeForce"" 8 series and later (e.g., 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 280 etc.), as well as all cards of the ATI Radeon HD series and later (HD 2400, 2600, 3000 series, 4000 series etc.) and their corresponding counterparts from the NVidia Quadro series and ATI ""FireGL / FirePro"" line of cards are technically state of the art and Psychtoolbox can take full advantage of their features.
[[GraphicsHardwareRequirements Follow this link to our graphics hardware requirements page for more detailed information and recommendations for graphics hardware.]]
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. The gfx-cards of the ""GMA-950"" series are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information. While the Intel ""GMA X3100"" series and later are also ""Direct3D-10"" compliant in theory, in practice they suffer from a few limitations, and the quality and performance of their driver support is unclear and untested by us. They may or may not work well for your purpose, but chosing a ""NVidia"" or ATI part has historically proven to be a safer bet.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox and S3. As Matrox and S3 seem to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" , non PTB etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP as well as Windows Vista. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these and future versions of Windows, but full support for all features is a lower priority for us than OSX as OSX is our main development and testing platform. As of 1. March 2009, Windows Vista has not been extensively tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that about 400 people do run the toolbox under Vista and we didn't receive any reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no serious problems with it. Apart from that, there is no known benefit of running Vista over XP, so there is no reason to switch to it. To the contrary, Vista seems to provide less performance than XP while at the same time posing higher hardware requirements.
- Recommended: The latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]]. PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab, as well as for our main development platform V7.4 (R2007a). We normally only fix bugs that affect running with version 7.4 or later. Even so, most functions still work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and Windows. Some basic functions even work in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows, although advanced features are restricted to Matlab 7.x.
- Windows: If you use Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) or later, you may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 5.1 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of very old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and later, as well as [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported, other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit Matlab: Running under Matlab in 64 bit mode is not supported. But 64-bit Matlab can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit matlab on Linux. Installation of a 32 bit Matlab in parallel to a 64 bit Matlab is optional, so you may need to run your Matlab installation disk again if the 32 bit mode is not functional on your 64 bit system.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases for best performance and security reasons.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista or GNU/Linux.
Basic Psychtoolbox functions should work on any ""OpenGL"" 1.2 capable graphics card with at least 16 MB of video ram (VRAM). Fast stimulus drawing and use of the more advanced features requires recent graphics hardware. In general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script and the types of stimuli you can create with ease will depend much more on the horsepower and features of your gfx-adapter than on the horsepower of your cpu.
If you buy a new computer and want to be on the safe side, make sure to get a recent ""Direct3D-10"" capable (also known as ""OpenGL-3"" capable, or ""ShaderModel 4"" compliant) graphics card from NVidia or AMD/ATI. Almost all cards of the NVidia ""GeForce"" 8 series and later (e.g., 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 280 etc.), as well as all cards of the ATI Radeon HD series and later (HD 2400, 2600, 3000 series, 4000 series etc.) and their corresponding counterparts from the NVidia Quadro series and ATI ""FireGL / FirePro"" line of cards are technically state of the art and Psychtoolbox can take full advantage of their features.
[[GraphicsHardwareRequirements Follow this link to our graphics hardware requirements page for more detailed information and recommendations for graphics hardware.]]
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. The gfx-cards of the ""GMA-950"" series are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information. While the Intel ""GMA X3100"" series and later are also ""Direct3D-10"" compliant in theory, in practice they suffer from a few limitations, and the quality and performance of their driver support is unclear and untested by us. They may or may not work well for your purpose, but chosing a ""NVidia"" or ATI part has historically proven to be a safer bet.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox and S3. As Matrox and S3 seem to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" , non PTB etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
For dual display work (e.g, binocular stereo stimulation), we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards.
Deletions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX. As of 1. January 2008, Windows Vista is not tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that some people do run the toolbox under Vista and didn't receive any reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no apparent problems with it. Apart from that, there is no known benefit of running Vista over XP, so there is no reason to switch to it.
- Recommended: the latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.5). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab. We normally only fix bugs that affect running with the current Matlab. Even so, most functions work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) and later are mostly supported. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 5.1 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of very old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported, other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
- 64-bit Matlab: Running under Matlab in 64 bit mode is not supported. But 64-bit Matlab can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit matlab on Linux.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP or GNU/Linux.
Basic Psychtoolbox functions should work on any ""OpenGL"" 1.2 capable graphics card with at least 16 MB of video ram (VRAM). Fast stimulus drawing and use of the more advanced features requires recent graphics hardware. In general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script may depend much more on the horsepower of your gfx-adapter than on the horsepower of your cpu.
[[GraphicsHardwareRequirements Follow this link to our graphics hardware requirements page for detailed information about requirements for graphics hardware.]]
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. The PTB evolves to use new ""OpenGL"" features as they appear in graphics cards. If you want to use these features or just want high performance graphics we recommend buying computers and cards that contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox ans S3. As Matrox and S3 seem to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" , non PTB etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
For the impatient, the following is a rough classification of gfx hardware by its suitability for PTB-3.
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL]] 1.2 with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM) and good (high quality) driver support from its manufacturers.
- Reasonable minimum configuration: A graphics card that supports the GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT and (on Mac OSX if you make use of Quicktime movie playback) GL_UNPACK_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE extensions. All gfx-cards on OS-X except the ATI Rage (128/Pro/M) series do support these extensions. On MS-Windows, NVidia Geforce-2 and later are known to support these extensions as well. We recommend at least 32 MB, better 64-128 MB of VRAM if you want to run a dual-display setup or make use of textures or offscreen windows.
- Recommended configuration: The more recent, the better! Recent gfx cards improved continously in the following areas:
- Drawing performance: For example, state of the art gfx can draw more than 500,000 points per frame at a refresh rate of more than 100 Hz.
- Anti-aliasing: Automatic high quality anti-aliasing and subpixel accurate positioning of drawing primitives is supported on recent gfx-adapters.
- Programmability: Psychtoolbox takes advantage of modern programmable pixel shaders for features like built-in stereo presentation algorithms, on-the-fly image processing, or support for special purpose output devices like, e.g., high dynamic range displays.
- For dual display, we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. Multiple cards may work equally well, but PTB has only been tested with single card, dual-head configurations. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards.
Revision [1401]
Edited on 2008-07-19 12:06:53 by MarioKleiner [Add a warning against use of 10.5.3 and 10.5.4]Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest version of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.11, resp. 10.5.2). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX (** Exception: Mac OS 10.5.3 and 10.5.4 suffer serious graphics related bugs and are not recomended! **). Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Intel Macs are fully supported, as explained below. Although the toolbox continues to work (for the most part) under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
Deletions:
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest version of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.11, resp. 10.5.2). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX. Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Intel Macs are fully supported, as explained below. Although the toolbox continues to work (for the most part) under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) and later are mostly supported. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 5.1 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of very old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) and later are mostly supported. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore. Matlab versions 5.1 to 7.3 should also mostly work, although use of very old Matlabs will probably cause some of our M files to abort if they make use of features only present in Matlab 7.x. This is often fixable by a bit of hacking though.
Deletions:
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) and later are mostly supported. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore.
Additions:
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 7.x or GNU/Octave 2.1.73. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported, other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox ans S3. As Matrox and S3 seem to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" , non PTB etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 7.4 and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported, other Matlabs of the 7.x series may work as well.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox ans S3. As Matrox and S3 seem to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" , non PTB etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
Deletions:
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox ans S3. As Matrox and S3 seem to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest version of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.11, resp. 10.5.1). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX. Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Intel Macs are fully supported, as explained below. Although the toolbox continues to work (for the most part) under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX. As of 1. January 2008, Windows Vista is not tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that some people do run the toolbox under Vista and didn't receive any reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no apparent problems with it. Apart from that, there is no known benefit of running Vista over XP, so there is no reason to switch to it.
- Recommended: the latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.5). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab. We normally only fix bugs that affect running with the current Matlab. Even so, most functions work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) and later are mostly supported. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox ans S3. As Matrox and S3 seem to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL]] 1.2 with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM) and good (high quality) driver support from its manufacturers.
- Reasonable minimum configuration: A graphics card that supports the GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT and (on Mac OSX if you make use of Quicktime movie playback) GL_UNPACK_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE extensions. All gfx-cards on OS-X except the ATI Rage (128/Pro/M) series do support these extensions. On MS-Windows, NVidia Geforce-2 and later are known to support these extensions as well. We recommend at least 32 MB, better 64-128 MB of VRAM if you want to run a dual-display setup or make use of textures or offscreen windows.
- Programmability: Psychtoolbox takes advantage of modern programmable pixel shaders for features like built-in stereo presentation algorithms, on-the-fly image processing, or support for special purpose output devices like, e.g., high dynamic range displays.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX. As of 1. January 2008, Windows Vista is not tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that some people do run the toolbox under Vista and didn't receive any reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no apparent problems with it. Apart from that, there is no known benefit of running Vista over XP, so there is no reason to switch to it.
- Recommended: the latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.5). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab. We normally only fix bugs that affect running with the current Matlab. Even so, most functions work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) and later are mostly supported. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary. Some old and rather obscure / obsolete MEX files that used to be bundled for Matlab releases prior to 7.4 are no longer supported - they are not really needed anymore.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox ans S3. As Matrox and S3 seem to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL]] 1.2 with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM) and good (high quality) driver support from its manufacturers.
- Reasonable minimum configuration: A graphics card that supports the GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT and (on Mac OSX if you make use of Quicktime movie playback) GL_UNPACK_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE extensions. All gfx-cards on OS-X except the ATI Rage (128/Pro/M) series do support these extensions. On MS-Windows, NVidia Geforce-2 and later are known to support these extensions as well. We recommend at least 32 MB, better 64-128 MB of VRAM if you want to run a dual-display setup or make use of textures or offscreen windows.
- Programmability: Psychtoolbox takes advantage of modern programmable pixel shaders for features like built-in stereo presentation algorithms, on-the-fly image processing, or support for special purpose output devices like, e.g., high dynamic range displays.
Deletions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX. As of 1. July 2007, Windows Vista is not tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that some people do run the toolbox under Vista and didn't receive any reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no apparent problems with it. Apart from that, there is no known benefit of running Vista over XP, so there is no reason to switch to it.
- Recommended: the latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.4). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab. We normally only fix bugs that affect running with the current Matlab. Even so, most functions work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) is partially supported. Support for ""PsychSerial"" and TCP/UDP/IP networking is not yet implemented. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox. As Matrox seems to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL]] 1.2 with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
- Reasonable minimum configuration: A graphics card that supports the GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT and (on Mac OSX if you make use of Quicktime movie playback) GL_UNPACK_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE extensions. All gfx-cards on OS-X except the ATI Rage (128/Pro/M) series do support these extensions. On M$-Windows, NVidia Geforce-2 and later are known to support these extensions as well. We recommend at least 32 MB, better 64-128 MB of VRAM if you want to run a dual-display setup or make use of textures or offscreen windows.
- Programmability: In the future, PTB will likely take advantage of modern programmable pixel shaders for features like built-in stereo presentation algorithms, on-the-fly image processing, or support for special purpose output devices like, e.g., high dynamic range displays.
Revision [1298]
Edited on 2007-12-13 12:58:20 by MarioKleiner [Update broken link to WinVDIG, add link to AbstractPlane, give some additional warnings.]Additions:
- For video capture support on Windows, you need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free [[http://www.eden.net.nz/7/20071008/ WinVDIG]] is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connectors and Psychtoolbox has been tested with some version of that plugin. Another (untested) option is the [[http://www.abstractplane.com/products/vdig.jsp VDIG from AbstractPlane]], which costs a small bit of money, but presumably comes with commercial support. Please note that video capture capabilities on MS-Windows are very basic and limited, probably only useable for projects with low demands.
Deletions:
Revision [1289]
Edited on 2007-11-29 15:30:07 by MarioKleiner [Update broken link to WinVDIG, add link to AbstractPlane, give some additional warnings.]Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest version of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.11). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX. Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Intel Macs are fully supported, as explained below. Although the toolbox continues to work (for the most part) under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
Deletions:
Revision [1288]
Edited on 2007-11-29 15:29:46 by MarioKleiner [Add a disclaimer that Matrox gfx is rather troublesome with PTB.]Additions:
Basic Psychtoolbox functions should work on any ""OpenGL"" 1.2 capable graphics card with at least 16 MB of video ram (VRAM). Fast stimulus drawing and use of the more advanced features requires recent graphics hardware. In general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script may depend much more on the horsepower of your gfx-adapter than on the horsepower of your cpu.
The same holds true for most products of Matrox. As Matrox seems to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL]] 1.2 with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
The same holds true for most products of Matrox. As Matrox seems to have mostly retreated from the 3D graphics market, most of their products are not a good choice for ""OpenGL"" based applications like Psychtoolbox. Even the products that nominally claim to support hardware accelerated ""OpenGL"", have a pretty limited feature set and performance, and the quality of their 3D drivers leaves something to be desired. If you're searching for a good graphics card for pure 2D imaging (non ""OpenGL"" etc.), multi-display office work or medical imaging, they are a good choice though.
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL]] 1.2 with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
Deletions:
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL]] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
Revision [1265]
Edited on 2007-09-28 20:29:59 by MarioKleiner [Add tip about running 64 bit Matlab in 32 bit emulation mode.]Additions:
- 64-bit Matlab: Running under Matlab in 64 bit mode is not supported. But 64-bit Matlab can be run in a 32-bit mode by starting it with a command line switch: //matlab.exe -win32// will start 32 bit matlab on Windows, //matlab -glnx86// will start 32 bit matlab on Linux.
Revision [1184]
Edited on 2007-07-26 17:06:33 by MarioKleiner [Remove warning about Vista, replace by a "useless but not harmful" ;-)]Additions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX. As of 1. July 2007, Windows Vista is not tested for compatibility with PTB-3 by the developers, but we are aware that some people do run the toolbox under Vista and didn't receive any reports of trouble so far, so there are probably no apparent problems with it. Apart from that, there is no known benefit of running Vista over XP, so there is no reason to switch to it.
Deletions:
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest version of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.10). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX. Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Intel Macs are fully supported, as explained below. Although the toolbox continues to work (for the most part) under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 6.x or GNU/Octave 2.1.73. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) is partially supported. Support for ""PsychSerial"" and TCP/UDP/IP networking is not yet implemented. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported.
~- Matlab V7.4 (Release 2007a) and later fully support Intel Macs. The current PTB-3 works flawlessly with it, so we recommend this for productive use.
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 6.x or GNU/Octave 2.1.73. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) is partially supported. Support for ""PsychSerial"" and TCP/UDP/IP networking is not yet implemented. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported.
~- Matlab V7.4 (Release 2007a) and later fully support Intel Macs. The current PTB-3 works flawlessly with it, so we recommend this for productive use.
Deletions:
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 6.x or GNU/Octave 2.1.74. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) is partially supported. Support for Eyelink, ""OpenAL"" and ""PsychSerial"" is not yet implemented. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.74 are supported.
~- Matlab V7.4 (Release 2007a) and later fully support Intel Macs. The current PTB-3 seems to work flawlessly with it, so we recommend this for productive use.
Revision [1153]
Edited on 2007-05-22 15:43:57 by MarioKleiner [Update: R2007a on Windoze partially supported.]Additions:
- Recommended: the latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.4). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab. We normally only fix bugs that affect running with the current Matlab. Even so, most functions work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) is partially supported. Support for Eyelink, ""OpenAL"" and ""PsychSerial"" is not yet implemented. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary.
- Windows: Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) is partially supported. Support for Eyelink, ""OpenAL"" and ""PsychSerial"" is not yet implemented. You may need to install some Microsoft Visual C runtime libraries to make it work, but our installer should give you instructions on how to do that if neccessary.
Deletions:
- Windows: ** Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) is not yet supported! Psychtoolbox will not work on it. Stay tuned and stick with 7.3 (Release 2006b) for now. **
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest version of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.9). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX. Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Intel Macs will be fully supported, as explained below. Although the toolbox continues to work (for the most part) under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
Deletions:
Revision [1030]
Edited on 2007-03-27 11:03:22 by MarioKleiner [Clarification: We support 32-bit Matlab,not 64-bit Matlab!]Additions:
- Recommended: the latest 32 bit version of [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.3). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest 32-bit version of Matlab. We normally only fix bugs that affect running with the current Matlab. Even so, most functions work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
Deletions:
Revision [1022]
Edited on 2007-03-14 10:58:53 by MarioKleiner [IntelMac: Recommend Matlab 2007a for productive use.]Additions:
~- Matlab V7.4 (Release 2007a) and later fully support Intel Macs. The current PTB-3 seems to work flawlessly with it, so we recommend this for productive use.
Deletions:
Revision [1019]
Edited on 2007-03-05 20:05:37 by MarioKleiner [Warning about non-working WinPTB on R2007a added.]Additions:
- Recommended: the latest [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.3). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest version of Matlab. We normally only fix bugs that affect running with the current Matlab. Even so, most functions work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
- Windows: ** Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) is not yet supported! Psychtoolbox will not work on it. Stay tuned and stick with 7.3 (Release 2006b) for now. **
- Windows: ** Matlab version 7.4 (Release 2007a) is not yet supported! Psychtoolbox will not work on it. Stay tuned and stick with 7.3 (Release 2006b) for now. **
Deletions:
Revision [748]
Edited on 2007-02-11 11:32:29 by MarioKleiner [Warning about non-working WinPTB on R2007a added.]Additions:
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32/64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP or GNU/Linux.
Basic Psychtoolbox functions should work on any ""OpenGL"" capable graphics card with at least 16 MB of video ram (VRAM). Fast stimulus drawing and use of the more advanced features requires recent graphics hardware. In general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script may depend much more on the horsepower of your gfx-adapter than on the horsepower of your cpu.
[[GraphicsHardwareRequirements Follow this link to our graphics hardware requirements page for detailed information about requirements for graphics hardware.]]
For the impatient, the following is a rough classification of gfx hardware by its suitability for PTB-3.
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL]] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
Basic Psychtoolbox functions should work on any ""OpenGL"" capable graphics card with at least 16 MB of video ram (VRAM). Fast stimulus drawing and use of the more advanced features requires recent graphics hardware. In general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script may depend much more on the horsepower of your gfx-adapter than on the horsepower of your cpu.
[[GraphicsHardwareRequirements Follow this link to our graphics hardware requirements page for detailed information about requirements for graphics hardware.]]
For the impatient, the following is a rough classification of gfx hardware by its suitability for PTB-3.
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ OpenGL]] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
Deletions:
Specific recommendations are difficult, as the required feature set is highly dependent on the kind of stimuli that you use. But in general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script may depend much more on the horsepower of your gfx-adapter than on the horsepower of your cpu.
The following is a rough classification of gfx hardware by its suitability for PTB-3. For detailed information, [[GraphicsHardwareRequirements follow this link to our graphics hardware requirements page for more detailed information about requirements for graphics hardware.]]
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ ""OpenGL""]] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
Revision [743]
Edited on 2007-02-04 18:33:09 by MarioKleiner [Warning about non-working WinPTB on R2007a added.]Additions:
The following is a rough classification of gfx hardware by its suitability for PTB-3. For detailed information, [[GraphicsHardwareRequirements follow this link to our graphics hardware requirements page for more detailed information about requirements for graphics hardware.]]
Deletions:
Revision [723]
Edited on 2007-02-02 19:46:59 by MarioKleiner [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
The following is a rough classification of gfx hardware by its suitability for PTB-3. [[GraphicsHardwareRequirements Go to our graphics hardware requirements page for more detailed information about requirements for graphics hardware.]]
Revision [722]
Edited on 2007-02-02 19:36:36 by MarioKleiner [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX. As of 1. February 2007, Windows Vista is not tested for compatibility with PTB-3, but 3rd party tests of ""OpenGL"" graphics hardware performance on Vista suggest that PTB-3 would only run suboptimal or with problems. We expect 3D driver support on Vista to mature during the next couple of weeks and months with successive driver releases. Therefore its recommended to wait a bit before switching to Vista, if possible.
Deletions:
Revision [721]
Edited on 2007-02-02 18:27:02 by MarioKleiner [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
~- There is a beta release of a native Matlab for Intel Macs. The current beta flavor of PTB-3 seems to work flawlessly with this Matlab beta, so we recommend this for productive use.
~- Old Matlab 7.x versions for Power PC based Macintosh computers are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., ""GetChar"") are disabled.
~- Old Matlab 7.x versions for Power PC based Macintosh computers are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., ""GetChar"") are disabled.
Deletions:
~- There is a beta release of a native Matlab for Intel Macs. We are making good progress towards extending PTB-3 to run with this version.
Revision [574]
Edited on 2006-11-11 19:33:23 by DavidBrainard [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
=== [[http://psychtoolbox.org Psychtoolbox-3]] - System Requirements ===
Deletions:
Revision [565]
Edited on 2006-11-11 07:22:14 by DenisPelli [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
- Recommended: the latest [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.x). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest version of Matlab. We normally only fix bugs that affect running with the current Matlab. Even so, most functions work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
Deletions:
Revision [564]
Edited on 2006-11-11 07:15:04 by DenisPelli [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.74 are supported.
Deletions:
Revision [563]
Edited on 2006-11-11 07:13:57 by DenisPelli [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
- Drawing performance: For example, state of the art gfx can draw more than 500,000 points per frame at a refresh rate of more than 100 Hz.
- For dual display, we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. Multiple cards may work equally well, but PTB has only been tested with single card, dual-head configurations. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards.
- For dual display, we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. Multiple cards may work equally well, but PTB has only been tested with single card, dual-head configurations. We expect dual-head single-card performance to be higher and the likelihood of gfx-driver bugs to be lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards. Synchrony is usually hard to achieve with separate cards.
Deletions:
- For dual display setups, we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. Although the latter may work as well, PTB has only been tested with single card, dual-head configurations. For technical reasons, performance is expected to be higher and the potential of gfx-driver bugs is lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards, which is usually hard to achieve with separate cards.
Revision [562]
Edited on 2006-11-11 07:05:57 by DenisPelli [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. The PTB evolves to use new ""OpenGL"" features as they appear in graphics cards. If you want to use these features or just want high performance graphics we recommend buying computers and cards that contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
Deletions:
Revision [561]
Edited on 2006-11-11 07:02:55 by DenisPelli [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. The PTB evolves to use new ""OpenGL"" features as they appear in graphics cards. If you want to use these features or just want high performance graphics we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
Deletions:
Revision [560]
Edited on 2006-11-11 07:00:24 by DenisPelli [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC that is capable of running the 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP or GNU/Linux.
Specific recommendations are difficult, as the required feature set is highly dependent on the kind of stimuli that you use. But in general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script may depend much more on the horsepower of your gfx-adapter than on the horsepower of your cpu.
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. The PTB evolves to use new OpenGL features as they appear in graphics cards. If you want to use these features or just want high performance graphics we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ ""OpenGL""]] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
- Anti-aliasing: Automatic high quality anti-aliasing and subpixel accurate positioning of drawing primitives is supported on recent gfx-adapters.
- For dual display setups, we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. Although the latter may work as well, PTB has only been tested with single card, dual-head configurations. For technical reasons, performance is expected to be higher and the potential of gfx-driver bugs is lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards, which is usually hard to achieve with separate cards.
Specific recommendations are difficult, as the required feature set is highly dependent on the kind of stimuli that you use. But in general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script may depend much more on the horsepower of your gfx-adapter than on the horsepower of your cpu.
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. The PTB evolves to use new OpenGL features as they appear in graphics cards. If you want to use these features or just want high performance graphics we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
- Absolute minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ ""OpenGL""]] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
- Anti-aliasing: Automatic high quality anti-aliasing and subpixel accurate positioning of drawing primitives is supported on recent gfx-adapters.
- For dual display setups, we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. Although the latter may work as well, PTB has only been tested with single card, dual-head configurations. For technical reasons, performance is expected to be higher and the potential of gfx-driver bugs is lower. Note, too, that stereo work may benefit from the display synchrony provided by the dual-head cards, which is usually hard to achieve with separate cards.
Deletions:
Specific recommendations are difficult, as the required feature set is highly dependent on the kind of stimuli that you use. But in general you should not try to save money on the gfx-adapter, as performance of your stimulus script may depend much more on the horsepower of your gfx-adapter then on the horsepower of your cpu.
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have a //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. The PTB evolves to use new OpenGL features as they appear in graphics cards. If you want to use these features or just want high performance graphics we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
- Absolute Minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ ""OpenGL""]] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
- Anti-Aliasing: Automatic high quality anti-aliasing and subpixel accurate positioning of drawing primitives is supported on recent gfx-adapters.
- For dual display setups, we recommend using dual-head gfx-adapters (i.e. //one// card with two output connectors) instead of multiple separate adapters. Although the latter may work as well, PTB has only be tested with single card, dual-head configurations. For technical reasons, performance is expected to be higher and the potential of gfx-driver bugs is lower.
Revision [559]
Edited on 2006-11-11 06:52:35 by DenisPelli [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
- Recommended: the latest [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.x). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest version of Matlab. Generally speaking, we will not fix bugs that only affect Matlab versions that are not current. Most functions should work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel-based Macintosh computer. [[IntelMacCurrentState For the most up to date infos on Intel Macintosh support, click this link.]]
~- At this writing, there is no full-fledged release of Matlab that runs natively on Intel-Macs. Current Matlab 7.x versions are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., ""GetChar"") are disabled.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC which is capable of running the 32 bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP or GNU/Linux.
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel-based Macintosh computer. [[IntelMacCurrentState For the most up to date infos on Intel Macintosh support, click this link.]]
~- At this writing, there is no full-fledged release of Matlab that runs natively on Intel-Macs. Current Matlab 7.x versions are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., ""GetChar"") are disabled.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel-compatible PC which is capable of running the 32 bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP or GNU/Linux.
Deletions:
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel based Macintosh computer. [[IntelMacCurrentState For the most up to date infos on Intel Macintosh support, click this link.]]
~- There is no released version of Matlab that runs natively on Intel-Macs. Current Matlab 7.x versions are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., ""GetChar"") are disabled.
- Intel PCs: Any Intel compatible PC which is capable of running the 32 bit versions of Microsoft Windows 2000/XP or GNU/Linux.
Revision [558]
Edited on 2006-11-11 06:44:19 by DenisPelli [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
**Operating system:**
**Basic hardware requirements:**
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have a //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. The PTB evolves to use new OpenGL features as they appear in graphics cards. If you want to use these features or just want high performance graphics we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
**Basic hardware requirements:**
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have a //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. The PTB evolves to use new OpenGL features as they appear in graphics cards. If you want to use these features or just want high performance graphics we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
Deletions:
**Basic Hardware requirements:**
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have a //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. If you like to take advantage of future advanced PTB features or want high performance we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
Revision [362]
Edited on 2006-11-02 18:37:28 by MarioKleiner [Info about IntelMacs and Windows Vista updated, gfx-hw recommendations refined.]Additions:
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel based Macintosh computer. [[IntelMacCurrentState For the most up to date infos on Intel Macintosh support, click this link.]]
Deletions:
Additions:
- Absolute Minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org/ ""OpenGL""]] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
Deletions:
Additions:
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX.
Deletions:
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest version of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.8). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX. Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Intel Macs will be fully supported, as explained below. Although the toolbox continues to work (for the most part) under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX.
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 6.x or GNU/Octave 2.1.74. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Recommended: the latest [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.x). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest version of Matlab. Generally speaking, we will not fix bugs that arise for Matlab versions that are not current. Most basic functionality should work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
- Windows: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX.
- Linux: There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 6.x or GNU/Octave 2.1.74. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Recommended: the latest [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] (currently 7.x). PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with the latest version of Matlab. Generally speaking, we will not fix bugs that arise for Matlab versions that are not current. Most basic functionality should work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
Deletions:
- Intel PC: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX.
- There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 6.x or GNU/Octave 2.1.74. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Recommended: [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] 7.x PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with this version of Matlab. Generally speaking, we will not fix bugs that arise for Matlab versions that are not current. Most basic functionality should work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest version of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.8). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX. Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Although the toolbox continues, for the most part, to work under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it. Intel Macs will be fully supported, as explained below.
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have a //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. If you like to take advantage of future advanced PTB features or want high performance we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
Users of the new Intel-based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have a //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. If you like to take advantage of future advanced PTB features or want high performance we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
Deletions:
Users of the new Intel based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have a //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. If you like to take advantage of future advanced PTB features or want high performance we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest version of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.8). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX. Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Although the toolbox continues, for the most part, to work under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it. Intel Macs will be fully supported. The Mathworks has released a beta version of MATLAB that runs native on the Intel Macs, and we have begun the conversion of the Psychtoolbox mex files from ".mex" to ".mexi??" format. So far the conversion appears easy and straightforward.
- Intel PC: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX.
- Intel PC: Psychtoolbox-3 runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX.
Deletions:
- Intel PC: Psychtoolbox-3 is known to run under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX.
Additions:
- Recommended: [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] 7.x PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with this version of Matlab. Generally speaking, we will not fix bugs that arise for Matlab versions that are not current. Most basic functionality should work in Matlab 6.5 and later under Mac OSX and in Matlab 5.x and later under Windows.
Deletions:
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest versions of Mac OSX (currently 10.4.7 and 10.4.8). We encourage users to use the latest version of OSX (currently 10.4.x.) Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Although the toolbox continues, for the most part, to work under OSX 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
- Intel PC: Psychtoolbox-3 is known to run under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.3.9 or later.
- Reasonable minimum configuration: A graphics card that supports the GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT and (on Mac OSX if you make use of Quicktime movie playback) GL_UNPACK_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE extensions. All gfx-cards on OS-X except the ATI Rage (128/Pro/M) series do support these extensions. On M$-Windows, NVidia Geforce-2 and later are known to support these extensions as well. We recommend at least 32 MB, better 64-128 MB of VRAM if you want to run a dual-display setup or make use of textures or offscreen windows.
- Intel PC: Psychtoolbox-3 is known to run under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OSX.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OSX or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OSX 10.3.9 or later.
- Reasonable minimum configuration: A graphics card that supports the GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT and (on Mac OSX if you make use of Quicktime movie playback) GL_UNPACK_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE extensions. All gfx-cards on OS-X except the ATI Rage (128/Pro/M) series do support these extensions. On M$-Windows, NVidia Geforce-2 and later are known to support these extensions as well. We recommend at least 32 MB, better 64-128 MB of VRAM if you want to run a dual-display setup or make use of textures or offscreen windows.
Deletions:
- Intel PC: Psychtoolbox-3 is known to run under Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Other Microsoft OSs are untested up to now. We do aim to keep the toolbox working under these versions of Windows, but this is a lower priority than OS/X.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OS/X or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OS/X 10.3.9 or later.
- Reasonable minimum configuration: A graphics card that supports the GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT and (on Mac OS/X if you make use of Quicktime movie playback) GL_UNPACK_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE extensions. All gfx-cards on OS-X except the ATI Rage (128/Pro/M) series do support these extensions. On M$-Windows, NVidia Geforce-2 and later are known to support these extensions as well. We recommend at least 32 MB, better 64-128 MB of VRAM if you want to run a dual-display setup or make use of textures or offscreen windows.
Additions:
- Apple Macintosh: Psychtoolbox is developed and tested under the latest versions of Mac OS/X (currently 10.4.7 and 10.4.8). We encourage users to use the latest version of OS/X (currently 10.4.x.) Generally, we have found that keeping up to date with the OS provides better performance. Although the toolbox continues, for the most part, to work under OS/X 10.3.9, we no longer test for compatibility with that OS and don't plan to fix bugs or other issues related to it.
Deletions:
Additions:
=== [[http://psychtoolbox.org Psychtoolbox-3]] System Requirements ===
Deletions:
Additions:
- There is also experimental support for the GNU/Linux operating system on Intel PCs in combination with Matlab 6.x or GNU/Octave 2.1.74. Due to our limited resources, we can only provide very limited support for this version. We are interested in feedback, and would welcome contributions from someone who wants to help develop this version.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.74 are supported for now.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.74 are supported for now.
Deletions:
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported for now.
Revision [59]
Edited on 2006-10-10 19:42:53 by DavidBrainard [Moved to its own page. Cosmetic edits.]Additions:
- Recommended: [[http://www.mathworks.com Matlab]] 7.x PTB-3 is developed and tested for compatibility with this version of Matlab. Generally speaking, we will not fix bugs that arise for Matlab versions that are not current. Most basic functionality should work under Matlab 6.5 and later on Mac OS/X and under Matlab 5.x and later on Windows.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported for now.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OS/X or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases.
- For video capture support on Windows, you need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free [[http://www.vdig.com/ WinVDIG]] is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connectors.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OS/X 10.3.9 or later.
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel based Macintosh computer.
~- There is no released version of Matlab that runs natively on Intel-Macs. Current Matlab 7.x versions are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., ""GetChar"") are disabled.
~- There is a beta release of a native Matlab for Intel Macs. We are making good progress towards extending PTB-3 to run with this version.
Users of the new Intel based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have a //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. If you like to take advantage of future advanced PTB features or want high performance we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
- Absolute Minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org ""OpenGL""] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
- Reasonable minimum configuration: A graphics card that supports the GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT and (on Mac OS/X if you make use of Quicktime movie playback) GL_UNPACK_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE extensions. All gfx-cards on OS-X except the ATI Rage (128/Pro/M) series do support these extensions. On M$-Windows, NVidia Geforce-2 and later are known to support these extensions as well. We recommend at least 32 MB, better 64-128 MB of VRAM if you want to run a dual-display setup or make use of textures or offscreen windows.
- Linux: Currently only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported for now.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OS/X or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest releases.
- For video capture support on Windows, you need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free [[http://www.vdig.com/ WinVDIG]] is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connectors.
- Power-Macs: Any ""PowerPC"" based Macintosh computer capable of running Mac OS/X 10.3.9 or later.
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel based Macintosh computer.
~- There is no released version of Matlab that runs natively on Intel-Macs. Current Matlab 7.x versions are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface, however, and any Java based functions (e.g., ""GetChar"") are disabled.
~- There is a beta release of a native Matlab for Intel Macs. We are making good progress towards extending PTB-3 to run with this version.
Users of the new Intel based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel ""MacBook"") use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have a //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. If you like to take advantage of future advanced PTB features or want high performance we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
- Absolute Minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org ""OpenGL""] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
- Reasonable minimum configuration: A graphics card that supports the GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT and (on Mac OS/X if you make use of Quicktime movie playback) GL_UNPACK_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE extensions. All gfx-cards on OS-X except the ATI Rage (128/Pro/M) series do support these extensions. On M$-Windows, NVidia Geforce-2 and later are known to support these extensions as well. We recommend at least 32 MB, better 64-128 MB of VRAM if you want to run a dual-display setup or make use of textures or offscreen windows.
Deletions:
- Minimum configuration Matlab 5.x on Microsoft Windows, Matlab 6.5 on MacOS-X (Most basic functionality should work, but we do not test for or guarantee compatibility)
- On Linux, only Matlab 6.x and [[http://www.octave.org GNU/Octave]] 2.1.73 are supported for now.
- Apple Quicktime: Psychtoolbox needs Quicktime 7 on OS-X or Quicktime 6 or 7 on Windows for movie playback. We recommend staying up to date with the latest V7 releases of Apple.
- For video capture support on Windows, you need to install a Quicktime video digitizer component. The free [[http://www.vdig.com/ WinVDIG]] is known to work for USB webcams and standard consumer DV cameras with Firewire connector.
- Power-Macs: Any PowerPC based Macintosh computer capable of running MacOS-X 10.3.9 or later.
- Intel-Macs: Any Intel based Macintosh computer. As of now, there doesn't exist any official version of Matlab that runs natively on Intel-Macs. However, current Matlab 7.x versions are known to run successfully in the Rosetta software emulation mode when started from a terminal window with the //matlab -nojvm// switch. They will run without any graphical user interface though, and any Java based functions (e.g., GetChar) are disabled. There also exists a beta release of a native Matlab for Intel Macs. Psychtoolbox doesn't run with this beta yet, but we are making good progress in preparing a compatible PTB.
Users of the new Intel based Macs should be aware that some iMacs (e.g., Intel MacBook) use a //built-in Intel GMA// graphics adaptor. These gfx-cards are known to have a //very low graphics performance// and a //very restricted feature set//. They are cheap and sub-standard by any definition. If you like to take advantage of future advanced PTB features or want high performance we strongly recommend against buying anything that doesn't contain recent gfx-hardware from ATI or NVidia. See e.g., [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMA_950 this Wikipedia article]] for further information.
- Absolute Minimum configuration: Any graphics card capable of basic support for hardware accelerated [[http://www.opengl.org OpenGL] with at least 16 MB of video RAM (VRAM).
- Reasonable minimum configuration: A graphics card that supports the GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_EXT and (on MacOS-X if you make use of Quicktime movie playback) GL_UNPACK_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE extensions. All gfx-cards on OS-X except the ATI Rage (128/Pro/M) series do support these extensions. On M$-Windows, NVidia Geforce-2 and later are known to support these extensions as well. We recommend at least 32 MB, better 64-128 MB of VRAM if you want to run a dual-display setup or make use of textures or offscreen windows.
