I added IDF files in the data folder but they don't show in the viewer!

After data addition/change/removal, you have to regenerate the index cache.

To do so, simply delete the index.fb file in the SEAScope workspace (or at the location you specified in the configuration file) and restart SEAScope to regenerate an index file.

I installed SEAScope in a Virtual Machine but it does not work

SEAScope requires direct access to a real GPU, not an emulated one – which is what most hypervisors (Qemu, VirtualBox, Parallel, etc..) provide by default.

The only way to run SEAScope in a VM with good performance is to configure PCI-passthrough and pass a physical GPU to the virtual machine (which is only possible on Windows Server 2016 with Hyper-V 2016 and ... on Linux). So it is strongly discouraged to run SEAScope in a VM at the moment and no support will be provided for this use case.

How much data can SEAScope handle?

In short: it mostly depends on how much RAM you have.

SEAScope is a hungry beast: it consumes more RAM everytime new data (i.e. data that were not already present in memory) are loaded for visualisation purposes and only releases this memory when the application shuts down.

So it is possible to saturate your RAM by loading too much data, when you visualise high-resolution data, many variables or many datetimes without restarting SEAScope.

You can somehow circumvent this limitation by extending the size of the swap on your system: it will virtually have more memory available so SEAScope should be able to load more data but its performance might suffer from the transfers between disk and RAM caused by the swap mechanism.

This lack of memory management is a major problem in the current version and fixing this issue is our top priority for the next release.

I moved the data folder to another location and SEAScope does not work anymore!

The index still contains the old path of your data, so SEAScope cannot load them: you have to regenerate the index cache.

To do so, simply delete the index.fb file in the SEAScope workspace (or at the location you specified in the configuration file) and restart SEAScope to regenerate an index file.

My graphics card supports OpenGL 3.3 but SEAScope complains about it and refuses to start

SEAScope relies on the MESA library to retrieve the version of OpenGL supported by your system.

Some drivers report a wrong version number which leads to an error during SEAScope startup: it refuses to start because the erroneous reported version is lower than the one it requires.

To bypass this issue you can define the MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE and MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE environment variables to change the OpenGL version publicized by the driver.

Using OpenGL version 3.3 is a sensible choice. For example, in bash, you can use:

export MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.3
  export MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=330
  

How do I enable debug mode?

Debug mode can be activated by calling SEAScope with the -f debug argument on the command line.

./seascope -f debug

I don't have the permissions to write to /Applications

We recommend that SEAScope be placed in /Applications or ~/Applications. But it normally works fine if placed somewhere else on your computer.

I get a warning message when trying to open SEAScope

You are getting this message because SEAScope hasn't been notarized by Apple (which would require paying them).

Do the following in order:

1. See "How to open an app that hasn’t been notarized or is from an unidentified developer" section of Safely open apps on your Mac.
2. If SEAScope is still not opening, place the SEAScope application on your Desktop and double-click on it to try to open it.
3. If SEAScope is still not opening, open the Terminal, and run the following command:

   xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine Desktop/SEAScope.app

   Then double-click on SEAScope to try to open it.
4. If SEAScope is still not opening
   1. Open System Settings, click Privacy & Security, then scroll down
   2. Under "Allow applications downloaded from", select the Anywhere option
   3. Double-click on SEAScope to try to open it
   4. You can reselect the option that you prefer under "Allow applications downloaded from"
5. If SEAScope is still not opening, contact us.

Where is SEAScope workspace?

• The default workspace is created in your home directory at ~/SEAScope-workspace
• SEAScope locates the default config by following the symlink ~/Library/Application Support/com.oceandatalab.SEAScope/config.ini
• The workspace folder can be put wherever you like on your machine, just remember to update the config.ini symlink (see previous point)

How do I enable debug mode?

SEAScope can be launched in debug mode from the command line with the -f debug option:

• open -a SEAScope --args -f debug (if you have only one SEAScope on your machine) or
• open path/to/SEAScope.app --args -f debug or
• path/to/SEAScope.app/Contents/MacOS/SEAScope -f debug

Where can I find SEAScope log files?

The logs of the last run of SEAScope:

• can be found at ~/Library/Logs/com.oceandatalab.SEAScope/seascope.log
• can be accessed from the Console app (found in /Applications/Utilities) under ~/Library/Logs > com.oceandatalab.SEAScope

How do I enable debug mode?

Debug mode can be activated by calling SEAScope with the -f debug argument on the command line.

.\bin\seascope.exe -f debug

Otherwise you can also edit the SEAScope shortcut (or create a copy) by adding -f debug in the Target field of the shortcut's properties