[vtkusers] experience with VTK and PC?

[Gala'Vi and Liss @ Mainframe Country]

I'm one of the authors of a cross-platform visualization system written
completely in VTK. We've been supporting Linux for quite a while (a few
years), so been there done that.

On Fri, 17 Aug 2001, Michael J. Winckler wrote:

>
> Hi list members,
>
>
> our institute facilities are based mainly on SGI machines (rom O2 to
> Origin 200 to Reality Engine 2). Now we consider extending to Linux-
> based PCs in the graphics department two. As we run VTK (and other
> visualization software), we would be glad for some user experience
> about "graphics power in day-to-day applications".
>
> Questions:
>
> 1. nVidia seems to be the graphics chipset to use. GForce3 looks
>    like it is not good enough to make the cut (considering price
>    and performance). Is GForce2 Ultra or Quattro2 Pro the better
>    choice?
>
>    Key applications include *lots* of triangles in some cases,
>    2D-texture mapping on selected (larger) polygons in other
>    areas.

I've been running with GForce2 Ultra and had a great time. Runs a lot
faster than the RE2 that I have on my Onyx. Haven't had much experience
with GForce3, but knowing how long it takes to get a stable driver for
Linux, I say don't bother with GForce3 and go with GForce2



>
> 2. Is Mesa plus XFree performing well or do we need to buy an XServer
>    plus OpenGL? Is there a "professional" OpenGL for Linux still on
>    the market?
>

Mesa is a software rendering library, so it's noticeably slower than
OpenGL. In my experience using OpenGL + XFree86 worked great. You don't
need to buy XServer, or whatever that is. Actually Mandrake7.2 and Redhat
7.0 are already just about optimally set up for running VTK. I mean, we've
been doing it for a while and no real painful problems.

-- Gala Wind
NCSA, UIUC


> Any help would be greatly appreciated. Personal views and impressions
> are grteat. If you think, this is too off-topic, mail to me dircetly
> (although I am pretty sure information on this point would be valuable
> to all VTK users.
>
>
>            Michael
>
> --
>
>  \\\   Dr. Michael J. Winckler  Michael.Winckler at iwr.uni-heidelberg.de
>  ( o>     http://www.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/%7EMichael.Winckler/
>  /U )            "If swimming is so good for your figure,
> --oo--                how come whales look the way they do?"
>
>
>
>
>
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