[vtk-developers] Oracle VM VirtualBox and VTK

[Andrew Maclean]

Hi All,
   I am trying out virtual box on a Dell XPS Laptop running Windows
7, Pentium i7 with 8GB of RAM and NVidia Optimus as the host and Ubuntu
12.04 as the client system.

Installation and setup was really easy, the only thing to watch for was 3D
acceleration.
To fix this I had to run Virtual Box with the High-performance NVIDIA
processor as default. If you don't do this, mouse response is good but
there is a significant keyboard lag!

Multiple cores work nicely and the build happily runs with 8 processors and
2048Kb of memory without affecting the host system too much. It
is incredibly fast compared with a Visual Studio 2010 Express build.

I am pretty sure that my OpenMesa OpenGL setup is Ok as running glxgears
gives
289 frames in 5.0 seconds = 57.650 FPS
294 frames in 5.0 seconds = 58.776 FPS
296 frames in 5.0 seconds = 59.177 FPS
Which I think is quite good for a VM on a laptop!

Running  VTKBenchMark - NOTE: This is a debug build
Building Fractal ... (this may take a minute or two)
Smoothing...
Cutting...
Converting to Triangles...
Computing Normals...
Creating Strips...
Number Of Triangles: 114428
Average Strip Length: 6.10576
Build Rate: 0.168542
OpenGL Warning: No pincher, please call crStateSetCurrentPointers() in your
SPU
Render Rate:                1.07867 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate:           NORM 5.705 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate:      SCAL      3.21426 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate:      SCAL NORM 5.12586 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate: IMED           1.74367 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate: IMED      NORM 2.74953 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate: IMED SCAL      1.74752 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate: IMED SCAL NORM 2.30884 MegaTriangles/Second
Which is not as good as a Windows Release build:
Build Rate: 0.338983
Render Rate:                4.18639 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate:           NORM 5.76948 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate:      SCAL      3.81427 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate:      SCAL NORM 4.06253 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate: IMED           4.45823 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate: IMED      NORM 3.63264 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate: IMED SCAL      4.42947 MegaTriangles/Second
Render Rate: IMED SCAL NORM 4.86928 MegaTriangles/Second
But still excellent - I would think a release build may be as fast as this
in the Ubuntu client.

When it comes to running VTK programs (Python and Native C++) I see some
issues:
1) OpenGL Warning: No pincher, please call crStateSetCurrentPointers() in
your SPU - from a search on the web this is almost certainly a Virtual Box
issue so nothing can be done about it.
2) If you move a window with a VTK object in it then the panel containing
the window lags and will ultimately catch up with the window and reseat
itself. This is an issue because if you open dialogs etc. they stay behind
the main window and thus are obscured. Curiously QtCreator and Eclipse work
normally so I think this may be  VTK issue.

Has anyone any experience with this kind of setup and can give me some
advice?

I must admit that overall I am impressed with the Virtual Machine. I have
usually dual booted my machines.

Regards
   Andrew

-- 
___________________________________________
Andrew J. P. Maclean

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