For Frequently Asked Questions on OpenGL Volumizer™ for 32-bit Linux®, please
reference the Linux FAQ.
For Frequently Asked Questions on OpenGL Volumizer™ for the SGI® Visualization System
for Linux, please reference the 64-bit Linux FAQ.
For Frequently Asked Questions on OpenGL Volumizer™ for Microsoft® Windows®, please reference the Windows FAQ
What is OpenGL Volumizer 2.x?
Released at SIGGRAPH 2001, OpenGL Volumizer™ 2.0 was a completely new API which
provided a higher level of abstraction for volume rendering. OpenGL Volumizer is a
high-level volume rendering application programming interface (API) for the energy,
medical, and sciences markets. OpenGL Volumizer is a revolutionary graphics API that
ushers in groundbreaking capabilities for traditional volume visualization
applications and allows standard graphics applications to treat volumetric and surface
data in a similar fashion. OpenGL Volumizer is a high-level, C++, volume-rendering API
that supports visualization of large volumetric datasets. It is designed to scale with
SGI® high-end systems, including systems based on SGI® IRIX® and the SGI Visualization
System for Linux, as well as support 32-bit Linux systems to facilitate easy
application development. It forms the foundation of a powerful suite of tools and
features for creating high quality interactive volume visualization applications on
IRIX & Linux systems. The basic API abstracts volume data management and visualization
into two smaller APIs:
- A volumetric-shape description API, which encapsulates the spatial and visual
attributes of the volume data. This API includes support for reference counting and
deletion notification system that allows sharing volume data among multiple objects.
- A render-action API, which allows application writers to integrate their own
visualization algorithms, along with built-in render actions, which manage all aspects
of rendering including polygonization, system resource management and graphics
optimizations.
The OpenGL Volumizer distribution includes tools that reduce the application
development time and illustrate the use of the API, such as:
- Volview: a volume-viewer application based on OpenGL Volumizer and OpenGL
Multipipe™ SDK. In addition to illustrating application development with OpenGL
Volumizer, this example allows users to scale the application to multiple pipes.
- Simple volume rendering demos to illustrate the use of various built-in render
actions.
- Loaders for loading data sets in DICOM and Plot3d data formats.
- Transfer Function Editor to allow users to perform LUT manipulation, as well as save and load transfer functions.
- Integration libraries with OpenGL Performer™, Open Inventor™ and Visualization Toolkit.
- High-level XML interface for volume data description and rendering.
The OpenGL Volumizer™ 2.9 release contains the following features:
- Scalability enhancements for Silicon Graphics Prism platforms
- Support for OpenGL Shading Language(GLSL)
- Improved build environment for sample code on Windows platforms
- Integration of TFEditor with the XMLViewer MFC application on windows
- Bug fixes and performance enhancements
The OpenGL Volumizer™ 2.8 release contains the following features:
- Support for 32-bit SUSE LINUX based systems
- High Quality Shading Algorithms
- Volgen Synthetic Volumetric Data Generation Tool
- Volview Application Enhancements
- Additional Sample Code
The OpenGL Volumizer™ 2.7 release contains the following features:
- Support for Microsoft Windows based systems
- High Quality Rendering Algorithms
- Render Action Enhancements
- Additional Sample Code
The OpenGL Volumizer™ 2.6 release contains the following features:
- Support for Linux based systems
- Extended support for Silicon Graphics® Onyx4™ systems
- Sample code cleanup and documentation
The OpenGL Volumizer™ 2.5 release contained the following features:
- Support for Silicon Graphics Onyx4 systems
- Direct rendering of Irregular Grids
- Programmable shading interface using OpenGL Shader™
™
- Enhanced DICOM support
- volview enhancements / feature additions
- Bug fixes and enhancements
The OpenGL Volumizer™ 2.4 release contained the following features:
- XML-based interface for volume data description and accompanying runtime API
- Enhancements to 3D clip-texture performance including efficient multi-threading for disk paging
- Optimizations for clip-texture render action providing finer frame rate control and support for rendering shapes with
volume textures
- Optimizations to ClipGen3d including multi-threading and efficient file formats
- Support for diffuse and ambient coefficients in the vzGradientShader
- New sample code for rendering and manipulating shape sets
- Support for run-time plug-in modules in volview
- OpenGL Performer™ 3.0 pfViewer examples
- Web interface for sample code documentation
The OpenGL Volumizer™ 2.3 release contained the following features:
- Large data API for 3D clip-textures
- Geometry class to render arbitrary polygonal geometry
- Custom multipass volumetric shading interface
- Utility application to convert DICOM files to IFL format
- Utility application to generate 3D clip-textures
- Sample code for integration with the Visualization Toolkit
- Sample code for integration with Open Inventor
- Sample code for using 3D clip-textures
- Sample code for rendering multiple 3D clip-textures
- Sample code for generating volume data files using volume writers
- Sample loaders for raw binary and bricked volume data files
How can I leverage OpenGL Volumizer within my application?
OpenGL Volumizer is designed to work as a stand-alone development environment or
within existing applications; thus, developers who rely on their own scene graph or
who make use of scene graph APIs such as Open Inventor or
OpenGL Performer will be able to leverage OpenGL Volumizer.
What platforms does it run on?
OpenGL Volumizer 2.9 supports the following systems -
- Intel® Pentium® processor-based systems with 32-bit Linux.
- Intel® Itanium® 2 processor-based systems with 64-bit Linux.
- Intel® Pentium® processor-based systems with Microsoft Windows.
For more details please see section 1.3 of the OpenGL Volumizer 2.9 Release Notes (PDF 116K)
What hardware support do I need to run OpenGL Volumizer?
OpenGL Volumizer 2.x uses 3D texture mapping in order to substantially improve volume rendering performance. Consult output
of 'hinv' and 'gfxinfo' commands to find out if your machine supports hardware texture mapping. Specific volumetric shaders
might rely on certain OpenGL® extensions to be supported. See the release notes for a detailed list.
How does OpenGL Volumizer Licensing work?
OpenGL Volumizer 2.9 for 32-bit, 64-bit Linux and Microsoft Windows and IRIX uses a node-locked, run-time licensing scheme based upon a FlexLM license key. A demo version of the license can be downloaded from the SGI license web site.
Keys enabling the full functionality of OpenGL Volumizer 2.9 for all supported operating systems are available for purchase
from SGI. See the Sales Contact section of our web site or contact SGI at 1-800-800-SGI-1 (in the US)
for more information.
If you have already purchased a full copy of OpenGL Volumizer, contact SGI to register your purchase and obtain your permanent, full-functionality license key.
Details about the license in OpenGL Volumizer 2.9:
- Purchased licenses are node-locked, run-time licenses. This means one purchased license is valid for one system. A cluster of individual systems would require multiple licenses.
- The demo licenses allow complete operation of the OpenGL Volumizer toolkit -- no features are disabled -- but expire
after a definite amount of time. The first evaluation license will expire after 28 days, followed by the second evaluation
license expiring after 14 days and the final evaluation license expiring after 7 days. Purchased licenses do not expire.
- The license key itself should be stored in /var/flexlm/license.dat file.
- On 32-bit Linux, many of the standard FlexLM end-user tools are included with the OpenGL Volumizer distribution in /usr/share/Volumizer/bin/license.
What's new in this release?
The latest release, OpenGL Volumizer 2.9, is built atop the industry standard OpenGL graphics library, includes a C++ class
interface, and is available for Microsoft Windows, 32-bit and 64-bit Linux. Many other significant enhancements and
updates have been made in this release. Please refer to the OpenGL Volumizer Release Notes (PDF 116K) for highlights.
Does OpenGL Volumizer work with Mesa?
OpenGL Volumizer is only supported on systems with the required hardware accelerated graphics support. It has not been tested with Mesa and might not work with Mesa even if the required OpenGL extensions are supported by the Mesa implementation.
Does OpenGL Volumizer work with indirect rendering?
Using indirect rendering for OpenGL Volumizer applications is not supported. In general, indirect rendering is not recommended for volume rendering applications due to the size of volumetric data sets of most real-world applications. Certain features like shaders requiring certain OpenGL extensions might not work with indirect rendering.
