I’m experiencing difficulty with running 3D Slicer. The program launches but the Slicer window is completely blank, as seen in the attached picture. This has been a consistent and repeatable error without any useful error message from the program. Could you please let me know if you have any thoughts on how to troubleshoot and resolve this issue?
I am running a Windows 10 computer on the university network. Is it possible I’m missing a Windows file the program depends on? I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling and checking compatibility settings.
Also, could using the program through remote access be complicating the way it runs? We’ve done some preliminary trouble-shooting along this line of thinking. Initially, I assumed this was an issue with the remote-access software but my research colleague is able to remotely access and successfully use Slicer. We have the same user permissions and are using the same remote access software.
Remote desktop client, server, and graphics card driver must all support the minimum required OpenGL version.
Until recently, Windows remote desktop’s OpenGL support was insufficient, but recently it got upgraded, so Slicer runs fine via Windows RDP. VNC and TeamViewer known to work well, so it is surprising that it seems to struggle on your computer.
You can try these:
upgrade your graphics card and TeamViewer versions
check if there are any 3D acceleration settings in TeamViewer that you can change
launch Slicer (locally) before connecting to the computer from a remote computer
change OpenGL profile settings by setting SLICER_OPENGL_PROFILE environment variable no, core or compatibility
use a different graphics card
use a different remote desktop software (RealVNC, TightVNC, Chrome Remote Desktop, etc.)
use a software renderer, such as Mesa (see details here)
Windows RDP requires careful configuration to allow hardware graphics acceleration. Your IT support people should be able to set everything up for you (see how it is done for example in Azure).
If they have trouble setting this up then you can switch to a software renderer. This is simple and you can still use RDP but it will slow down the rendering.
You may also use a different remote desktop solution. Most remote desktop software (VNC, TeamViewer, Chrome remote desktop, etc.) uses full graphics capabilities of the host system, so if you switch to any of those then everything will work.
