Equalizer Documentation

0.6

1. Introduction

Welcome to Equalizer, a framework for the development and deployment of parallel, scalable OpenGL applications. Equalizer 0.6 delivers major new features, most notably support for DPlex compounds and automatic load-balancing.

Equalizer 0.6 can be retrieved by downloading the source code.

1.1. Features

Equalizer provides the following major features to facilitate the development and deployment of scalable OpenGL applications. A detailed feature list can be found on the Equalizer website.

Runtime Configurability: An Equalizer application can run on any configuration, from laptops to large-scale visualization clusters, without recompilation. The runtime configuration is externalized from the application to a system-wide resource server.
Runtime Scalability: An Equalizer application can aggregate multiple CPU's, GPU's and computers to increase the rendering performance of a single or multiple views.
Distributed Execution: Equalizer applications can be written to support cluster-based execution. The task of distributing the application data is facilitated by support for versioned, distributed objects.
Support for Stereo and Immersive Environments: Equalizer supports both active and passive stereo rendering, as well as head tracking, used in immersive Virtual Reality installations.

2. New in this release

Equalizer 0.6 contains the following features, enhancements, bug fixes and documentation changes:

2.1. New Features

Automatic 2D and DB load-balancing
Support for DPlex (time-multiplex, SFR) compounds
Statistics Overlay to understand and eliminate bottlenecks in the rendering pipeline
Easy configuration of thread synchronization model
View API to modify the view parameters during rendering
New OSWindow interface to simplify window system integration
New 2D bitmap font to draw text
Support for orthographic projections
Support for OpenGL accumulation buffer and multisample setup
Support for using Paracomp as a compositing backend

2.2. Enhancements

Upgraded GLEW to version 1.5.1
Automatic image compression for 'slow' (< 2GBit) connections
Alpha-blending support in the CPU-based compositor
Support for two-dimensional pixel compound kernels
Support for using multiple clients with the netperf benchmark tool
Support window swap buffer vertical retrace synchronization on WGL
Add show and hide window events

2.3. Optimizations

Improved overall performance by using atomic operations for reference counted objects
Improved performance when using non-threaded pipes
Asynchronous network frame transmission during compositing
Assertions are disabled in release builds
Switch to CriticalSection for Win32 locks

2.4. Examples

eqPly: network-based instead of file-based model distribution
eqPly: added head-tracking emulation
eqPly: implemented event-driven execution

2.5. API Changes

The compound attribute UPDATE_FOV has been removed, since view updates are handled by the application, using the new View API.
Event::RESIZE has been deprecated. Use Event::WINDOW_RESIZE instead.
The new OSWindow interface moved all window system functionality from the eq::Window to different subclasses of OSWindow. Applications integrating with their own windowing code have to implement an OSWindow containing all the window system code, and instantiate this OSWindow in Window::configInitOSWindow. Please refer to the Programming Guide for a detailed description of the Window System Interface.
The OSWindow interface also caused some cleanups in the event handling. Most notably, the classes ChannelEvent and WindowEvent are now unneeded and have been removed. The former base class Event is now used in the appropriate places.
The eqBase, eqNet and eqServer namespaces have been renamed to eq::base, eq::net and eq::server, respectively. Application developers are encouraged to make the necessary changes, but can define EQ_USE_DEPRECATED if these changes are not feasible.

2.6. Documentation

The Programming Guide has been extended to 62 pages and 37 figures.
View API
Statistics Overlay

2.7. Bug Fixes

Equalizer 0.6 includes various bugfixes over the 0.5 release, including the following:

2369549: Crash in wglSwapIntervalEXT
2284482: Head tracking broken with VS release builds
2263716: 5-channel.cave.eqc has wrong top/bottom wall
2166278: eq::net::Object with instance never uses pack/unpack
2149563: WGL: Update region is reset by event handler
2047816: name field in config missing
2033860: frameDrawFinish called too early and too often
2032643: eqHello: process-local server object gets not deleted.
2032631: Nullpointer exception and crash
2032643: process-local server object gets not deleted
2033860: frameDrawFinish called too early and too often
2149563: WGL: Update region is reset by event handler
2026837: swapbarrier calls increase with single-buffered windows
1997751: defines for EQ_BIT17 - EQ_BIT20 are wrong
1996988: AGL reports key press twice
1997579: Important WGL key events not reported
Fixed a big memory leak in the packet handling code, as well as numerous small bug fixes and code cleanups
1994798: Compound::getNode null pointer read
1981854: AGL: PBuffer with Fullscreen broken
1960225: Problems with windows getting focus on mac
1960098: eqPly crashes during rendering

2.8. Known Bugs

2268547: fullscreen windows not always active on Win32
2151376: Irregular Pixel kernels do not work
2003195: Ortho frusta ignore eye offset
2003132: 3-wnd.DB.ds is broken on some ppc machines for eqPly
1997583: eqPly: ortho frustum culling broken
1959418: DB Compositing fails on MacBook with GMA X3100
1854948: eVolve: lighting ignores head transformation
1854929: eqPly GLSL shader has artefacts
1816670: eVolve: binary swap configs don't work

3. About

Equalizer is a cross-platform toolkit, designed to run on any modern operating system, including all Unix variants and the Windows operating system. A compatibility matrix can be found on the Equalizer website.

Equalizer requires at least OpenGL 1.1, but uses newer OpenGL features when available. Version 0.5.0 has been tested on:

3.1. Operating System Support

Linux: Ubuntu 6.10 (x64, i386), RHEL4 (x64, i386)
Windows: XP with Visual Studio 2005 (i386, x64) and Cygwin (i386)
Mac OS X: 10.5 (PowerPC, i386)

3.2. Window System Support

X11: Full support for all documented features.
WGL: Full support for all documented features.
AGL: Full support for all documented features.

3.3. Documentation

The Programming Guide is available as a hard-copy and online. API documentation can be found on the Equalizer website. Equalizer does not yet have an Users Guide.

As with any open source project, the available source code, in particular the shipped examples provide a reference for developing or porting applications. The Developer Documentation on the website provides further design documents for specific features.

3.4. Support

Technical questions can be posted to the Developer Mailing List, or directly to [email protected].

Commercial support, custom software development and porting services are available from Eyescale. Please contact [email protected] for further information.