Wayne Glanfield wrote:
I would be interested to know the details of how the rendering is shared
amongst a cluster of pc's as I am expecting this to be our target platform.
Right now we are doing some evaluations on the available solutions.
There's quite a few different approaches to this space. For example
WireGL works by replacing the local video driver with a controller that
farms out the OpenGL calls to various networked computers that then
render sections of the screen. Another option that we've looked at is a
project by one of the brazillian universities (Name escapes me right now
but I can look it up in the morning) that works as a basic arbiter with
it's own wire protocol. In the first case, it may be possible to slide
it in under the covers of the Java3D OpenGL renderer. However, based on
our experience with the Elumens Dome work, there's some very dodgy stuff
going on in the OGL calls that Java3D makes and so using WireGL not
likely to be successful.
don't quite see how the rendering stage would be performed using Java3D.
Java3D wouldn't be able to handle it without some amount of
rearchitecture work. It is designed for multiple CPU and graphics pipe
setup, but it's another big leap again to go to clustered rendering
solutions. My educated guess is that it would take a significant amount
of work to get J3D running in this space. One of the reasons for the
"inverted" rendering architecture that we have in Aviatrix3D is to deal
with this sort of situation where the architecture taken by J3D and
other similar scene graphs generally has a lot more issues to make it work.
it possible to use multiple graphics cards to render to a single monitor
for example?
If you're looking at the PC space, I've never seen this setup with a
commercial CRT/LCD. I think it would be quite horrible to do as you'd
need to probably use a video mixer to make it happen to get it back into
a single input to the monitor. I had some experience about 3 years ago
working with some multi-input plasma screens, but they aren't exactly
the cheapest thing in the world, nor is the resolution typically as good
as a stock $200 monitor (a 120in screen at the time was barely capable
of 520x1030 at 50Hz as they were more aimed at multiple PAL/NTSC
signals, not digital). They weren't particularly successful blending it
all onto a single screen.
If you didn't want a single PC monitor, there are plenty of solutions
about. You will typically find Linux clusters in a powerwall-style setup
have the sort of solution that you're looking for - taking care of all
rendering distribution and edge blending for you. We are also working
with Elumens on some non-Dome solutions in this space right now, but not
quite sure exactly what we can and cannot say about it currently. I'll
check with Alan tomorrow morning when he comes into work. Maybe we can
contact you offlist with some more details.
--
Justin Couch http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/
Java Architect & Bit Twiddler http://www.yumetech.com/
Author, Java 3D FAQ Maintainer http://www.j3d.org/
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"Look through the lens, and the light breaks down into many lights.
Turn it or move it, and a new set of arrangements appears... is it
a single light or many lights, lights that one must know how to
distinguish, recognise and appreciate? Is it one light with many
frames or one frame for many lights?" -Subcomandante Marcos
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