[vtk-developers] GL Extension Wrangler library

John Biddiscombe (CSCS) biddisco at cscs.ch
Thu Dec 16 02:39:59 EST 2004


Ken et al,

I read the three docs attached with the Wiki and I have to say I'm 
really impressed. I was a little surprised that the emails of last week 
to the list didn't prokove any response, so for what it's worth I'm in 
favour of all the proposed changes. I have been thinking for some time 
of a vtkPolyDataPointSpriteMapper using ARB_POINT_SPRITE for display of 
particles etc. I experimented with GLEW for getting extensions etc and 
found it to be capable though quite large - but I had mistakenly thought 
it to be GPL (so didn't use it for my test program) - looking at the web 
site again I see that it is not. Either Glew or your extension manager 
would be a great addition - particularly so if we adopt the strategy of 
the painters...

The painters heirarchy is just what we need, both for allowing the kind 
of custom mapper plug in I have in mind, and also for generally 
improving the performance of vtk overall. I had a couple of questions 
regarding how to force the selection of a particular mapper over 
another, but after rereading the doc I se that there is a mechanism in 
place.

What do we need to do to accelerate it's adoption? Are there any 
unsolved issues that need to be worked on etc

JB


Moreland, Kenneth wrote:

>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
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>vtk-developers mailing list
>>vtk-developers at vtk.org
>>http://www.vtk.org/mailman/listinfo/vtk-developers
>>
>>
>>    
>>
>
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>  
>

-- 
John Biddiscombe,                            email:biddisco @ cscs.ch
http://www.cscs.ch/about/BJohn.php
CSCS, Swiss National Supercomputing Centre  | Tel:  +41 (91) 610.82.07
Via Cantonale, 6928 Manno, Switzerland      | Fax:  +41 (91) 610.82.82

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