[vtk-developers] GL Extension Wrangler library

[Moreland, Kenneth]

If you are interested, we have an OpenGL extension manager designed to
work with VTK.  Eventually, we would like to add it to VTK proper, but
this needs to be discussed with Kitware and with the VTK community at
large first.

A short white paper is published on the VTK Wiki.  Have a look.

 
http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/images/3/35/VtkOpenGLExtensionManager_Overview.p
df

-Ken


   ****      Kenneth Moreland
    ***      Sandia National Laboratories
***********  
*** *** ***  email: kmorel at sandia.gov
**  ***  **  phone: (505) 844-8919
    ***      fax:   (505) 844-0833


> -----Original Message-----
> From: vtk-developers-bounces at vtk.org 
> [mailto:vtk-developers-bounces at vtk.org] On Behalf Of Michael Halle
> Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 8:32 AM
> To: 'VTK Developers'
> Subject: [vtk-developers] GL Extension Wrangler library
> 
> 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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