VTK 5.6 Release Planning

Planned Schedule

New features in VTK since the 5.4 release include:

Improved chart support
Classes moved from vtkEdge (vtkGPUVolumeRayCastMapper & associated classes. What else?)
211 new C++ classes.
91 new C++ tests running on most dashboards
17 new C++ examples that demonstrate how to use VTK effectively.
Zhanping
- More robust EnSight reader.
- Addition of Tecplot reader.
- Accurate anti-jagginess streamline integrator
- Incremental / dynamic octree-based point locator for fast point location and insertion of non-uniformly distributed points (3 times faster than the previous version).
- Integration of robust cell location to vector evaluation on complex grids.
- High-performance table-based clipper for various kinds of grids (one to two orders of magnitude faster than the previous version).
- Addition of GPU-based real time Line Integral Convolution (LIC) with enhanced image contrast and LIC+geometry compositing for dense vector field / flow visualization.

the use of vtkMath::Random(), vtkMath::RandomSeed(), vtkMath::GetSeed(), vtkMath::Gaussian() is deprecated (there are error-prone and not deterministic (which is important for reproducibility of regression testing) as they use global static information. Instead, you should create an object of class vtkMinimalStandardRandomSequence to get a sequence of pseudo-random number following a uniform distribution. You should create an object of class vtkBoxMuellerRandomSequence to get a sequence of pseudo-random number following a Gaussian distribution.