Optionally enable using GPU for Colmap for much faster processing.

[yanxke]

To enable GPU usage for colmap, must run a GUI'ed terminal and run once on login to enable permissions

xhost +local:docker

Then run

docker run --rm --gpus all --ipc=host \
  --ulimit memlock=-1 --ulimit stack=67108864 \
  -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \
  -e NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=graphics,compute,utility \
  -e QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb \
  -e QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/platforms \
  -e QT_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins \
  -e XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp/runtime-docker \
  -e INSTANTSFM_COLMAP_USE_GPU=1 \
  -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
  -v "$PWD":/workspace/InstantSfM \
  -w /workspace/InstantSfM \
  instantsfm \
  bash -lc '
    set -e
    mkdir -p /tmp/runtime-docker && chmod 700 /tmp/runtime-docker

    if [ -d /usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages/cv2/qt/plugins ]; then
      mv /usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages/cv2/qt \
         /usr/local/lib/python3.12/dist-packages/cv2/qt.disabled
    fi

    ins-feat --data_path examples/kitchen --feature_handler colmap --manual_config_name colmap
    ins-sfm  --data_path examples/kitchen --manual_config_name colmap --export_txt
  '

[cre185]

@zitongzhan is disabling gpu support in colmap the desired behavior? It's reasonable to add gpu support if available. Also, would it be possible to simply add a parameter in the feat.py script and pass it to feature handler, so that extra effort to set environment variable is not required?

[zitongzhan]

@zitongzhan is disabling gpu support in colmap the desired behavior? It's reasonable to add gpu support if available. Also, would it be possible to simply add a parameter in the feat.py script and pass it to feature handler, so that extra effort to set environment variable is not required?

@yanxke was right that colmap relies on GUI to make CUDA acceleration possible. colmap would crash if user attempts to use CUDA on a headless system.
I am thinking of a simpler way to achieve this: instead of adding a new env variable, we could check if the DISPLAY env variable is there or not to see availability of headful GUI