[vtkusers] hardware acceleratec OpenGL on Raspberry pi 3/Raspbian?

[Ken Martin]

Very cool Elvis! Amazing what these tiny systems can do.

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 11:01 PM, Elvis Chen <elvis.chen at gmail.com> wrote:

> hi all,
>
> This is a status update on vtk on Raspberry pi, with hardware accelerated
> OpenGL.
>
> After a few days of trial and error, I managed to get VTK working on
> Raspberry Pi 3. I hope my experience can save others some time, as
> information on the web can be misleading.
>
> First of, I am using Raspberry Pi 3.  The DOs and DONTs
>
> DO:
> - make sure you use the official PSU (rated at 2.5A), as there are reports
> that an under-powered PI causes OpenGL driver to fail,
>
> DONTs:
> - don't use the official 7" touch screen. The OpenGL driver apparently is
> very picky on the output format. It won't work with the 7" touch screen
> - don't follow the instruction on
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/another-new-raspbian-release/, in
> particular DO NOT UPGRADE Raspbian.
>
> Here is what I had to do to get hardware accelerated OpenGL to work:
>
> - create a new raspbian/Jessie bootdisk using 2016-03-18 image
> - upon first boot, which boots into X by default, expand the file system
> using Menu->Preference->Raspberry Pi Configuration. Reboot
> - upon 2nd boot, change keyboard/time-zone as desired. Using the same
> configuration utility as the previous step, change the boot option to "To
> CLI" instead of "To Desktop". Reboot.
> - now raspbian will boot into commandline instead of X. Issue the
> following command:
>      sudo raspi-config
>      - under Advanced Options, Enable OpenGL driver, reboot
> - once rebooted, issue "startx"
> - open a terminal, issue the following command
>      sudo apt-get update
>      sudo apt-get install libvtk5-qt4-dev cmake cmake-curses-gui mesa-utils
>
> I choose vtk5 but vtk6 is also available as a pre-compiled package.
>
> - with mesa-utils installed, you can run glxgears to test opengl. I am
> getting 59FPS on RPi3
>
> pi at raspberrypi:~/research/bin/vtkViewPolyDataMesh $ glxgears
> Running synchronized to the vertical refresh.  The framerate should be
> approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
> 293 frames in 5.0 seconds = 58.548 FPS
> 301 frames in 5.0 seconds = 59.994 FPS
> 299 frames in 5.0 seconds = 59.613 FPS
> 290 frames in 5.0 seconds = 57.999 FPS
> 300 frames in 5.0 seconds = 59.807 FPS
> 300 frames in 5.0 seconds = 59.995 FPS
>
>
> - I have compiled my own VTK program that displays a vtkpolydata and it
> runs well. I'll be making a video and post it online in a few days.
>
> Again, please not that while I "updated" the apt packages, I NEVER
> "upgraded" any. I needed to "update" in order to install additional
> programs, but an "upgrade" will brake the OpenGL driver.
>
> Hope this helps
>
> --
> Elvis C.S. Chen, PhD
>
> Imaging, Robarts Research Institute
> Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
> Biomedical Engineering
> Medical Biophysics, Western University
> London, Ontario, Canada
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 8:36 PM, David Gobbi <david.gobbi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Elvis,
>>
>> One way of checking the OpenGL driver is the "glxinfo" command.
>> The "OpenGL renderer" is usually Mesa if it is a software renderer,
>> but if it gives the name of a specific card or chip, then you probably
>> have hardware rendering, e.g. here's what my laptop reports:
>>
>> OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
>> OpenGL renderer string: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M OpenGL Engine
>> OpenGL version string: 2.1 NVIDIA-8.24.17 310.90.9.05f01
>> OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
>>
>> I don't know much about the Raspberry Pi, but google found this
>> page that describes how to enable hardware OpenGL:
>> https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/another-new-raspbian-release/
>>
>>  - David
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 16, 2016 at 6:06 PM, Elvis Chen <elvis.chen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> I've recently acquired a Raspberry Pi 3. To my surprise, the latest
>>> raspbian (Jessie) comes with a complete development environment, including
>>> gcc (4.9), cmake, and vtk (both vtk5 and vtk6).
>>>
>>> I wrote a small program that reads a polydata and display it as a test
>>> bed. The pipeline is:
>>>
>>> vtkpolydatareader->vtkpolydatamapper->vtkactor
>>>
>>> nothing fancy.
>>>
>>> However, the rendering is surprisingly SLOW. It looks if the graphics is
>>> not hardware accelerated.
>>>
>>> My questions are:
>>>
>>> 1) How do I check if the video (which I assume to be OpenGL) is hardware
>>> accelerated?
>>> 2) any suggestion on how to optimize the performance?
>>>
>>> My next step is to comple vtk myself to see if it makes any difference.
>>>
>>> any help is very much appreciated,
>>>
>>
>
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Ken Martin PhD
Chairman & CFO
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