[vtkusers] DirectX rendering for VTK

[Lisa Avila]

Kitware may have the opportunity to create a DirectX interface for VTK 
(to mirror the OpenGL interface). I am sending this email to the VTK 
community in order to gather "support" stories that would justify this 
effort.

If you are a long-time VTK user / developer, then you are probably aware 
that VTK has an abstraction layer on top of the underlying graphics 
language in order to support cross-platform operation. In the early 
days, VTK supported not only OpenGL, but also Starbase (for use on HP 
computers) and XGL (for use on Sun computers). In time, HP and Sun 
switched to OpenGL, and support for Starbase and XGL were dropped from 
VTK. Even though VTK now only supports OpenGL, the abstraction layer has 
been maintained to allow us to add another graphics language should the 
need arise. DirectX has been on our radar screen for years; however it 
has been low on our priority list since it would not expand the 
cross-platform reach of VTK.

I'd like to see DirectX support added to VTK because I believe this 
would help us re-validate our "graphics language independent" 
abstraction layer which may have been breached in the years of having 
only OpenGL support. But I'm not sure if that is enough of a reason to 
pursue this effort :-) so I am looking to the user / developer community 
to see if there are additional reasons why DirectX support in VTK would 
be valuable. If you have any supporting arguments for this work, please 
send them directly to me at lisa.avila at kitware.com. If I do receive any, 
I'll be sure to summarize the responses back to this list.

Thank you,

Lisa