Skip to content

Site Configuration

Configuring Neuroglancer Sites

NGLui defaults to using the spelunker deployment of Neuroglancer, which is the most aligned with CAVE priorities. However, most if not all of the features in NGLui are compatibile across any contemporary deployment of Neuroglancer and you can use any deployment URL you would like. To help manage different Neuroglancer URLs, there are a small number of functions to set and get the default configuration for Neuroglancer sites.

target_site

As a convenience, NGLui keeps a dictionary of Neuroglancer URLs (target_url) with readable names (target_site). You can find the current configuration by running get_neuroglancer_sites(). For example, the default values are:

>>> from nglui.statebuilder import *
>>> get_neuroglancer_sites()
{'spelunker': 'https://spelunker.cave-explorer.org/',
 'google': 'https://neuroglancer-demo.appspot.com/'}

This means that setting target_site='spelunker' in Statebuilder export functions will use the URL https://spelunker.cave-explorer.org/ as the default Neuroglancer site, and likewise for google.

You can add your own sites to this dictionary by using the add_neuroglancer_site function, which takes a target_site and target_url as arguments. You can further set the new site as the default by setting set_default=True.

add_neuroglancer_site(
    'my_neuroglancer',
    'https://my-neuroglancer.example.com',
    set_default=True,
)

And you can always see the current default site by running get_default_neuroglancer_site(), which will return the target_site and target_url of the current default site. For example, by default this will show:

>>> get_default_neuroglancer_site()
{'spelunker': 'https://spelunker.cave-explorer.org/'}

Environment Variables

If you find yourself always using a different Neuroglancer site, you can set the environment variables NGLUI_TARGET_SITE and NGLUI_TARGET_URL to the shortcut name and URL of your preferred Neuroglancer. This will automatically add these values to the site list and set it the default site when you import NGLui, so you don't have to manually set it every time. Note that both variables must be set.