[vtk-developers] GL Extension Wrangler library

Michael Halle mhalle at bwh.harvard.edu
Wed Dec 15 10:32:07 EST 2004


We're struggling to support a VTK OpenGL 3D texture-based
volume rendering package because of differences in OpenGL
versions across platforms.  We're happy to "bail out" if the
right extensions aren't supported;  the biggest problem we're
facing is effectively dealing with querying the client and
server to find out if functionality is supported, then using
that functionality without worrying about whether EXT or ARB
is necessary.  Some platforms get this stuff right, others don't.

I recently discovered GLEW, The GL Extension Wrangler library.
It seems to take care of most of these problems, work
cross-platform, be well-maintained, and have a variety of
licenses (including modified BSD).  Does anyone have experience
using it for larger projects?  I'd consider it for just our
work, but it might be a good VTK-wide solution for this
all-too-common VTK problem.  It would much better allow the
selective use of extensions, with simple and understandable
fallback to core OpenGL, and allow us to use the higher
performance features of contemporary graphics hardware.

Thanks.

Michael Halle
mhalle @ bwh.harvard.edu




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