Welcome to Equalizer 0.2, a framework for the development and deployment of scalable multipipe applications, based on C++ and OpenGL. The major new feature in Equalizer 0.2 is support for scalable rendering.
Equalizer 0.2 is a beta release, and therefore intended as preview and evaluation snapshot for application developers and early adopters.
Features
Equalizer provides the following major features to facilitate the development and deployment of multipipe applications:
- 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 systemwide resource server.
- Runtime Scalability: An Equalizer application can use multiple CPU's, GPU's and computers to scale the rendering performance of a single view.
- 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 the head tracking needed for immersive installations.
New in this release
The following features, bug fixes and documentation changes where introduced in this release:
New Features
- Sort-first (2D), sort-last (DB) and eye task decomposition.
- Tile-based reassembly for sort-first and eye recomposition.
- Flexible recomposition engine for parallel compositing, including, but not limited to, direct send and binary swap sort-last compositing.
- Fast image compression for network transfers based on a modified RLE algorithm.
- Z-based sort-last compositing of polygonal data.
- Support for ordered alpha-based compositing of volumetric data.
- Support for dynamic near and far planes.
- Initial implementation of a statistics API.
Bug Fixes
Equalizer 0.2 includes various minor bugfixes over the previous release.
New Documentation
Supported Platforms
The platforms supported below are the primary development platforms. Equalizer is designed to run on a variety of platforms, including all Unix variants and the Windows operating system. Equalizer 0.2 supports:
Operating System Support
- Linux: SuSE Linux 10 (x86_64, i386), SLES 9.0 (ia64), Ubuntu 6.06 (i386)
- Mac OS X: 10.4 (PowerPC, i386)
Window System Support
- X11: Full support for all implemented features.
- CGL: Preliminary fullscreen support, no event handling support
Documentation
Equalizer does not yet have a formal Users or Programmers Guide. The shipped
eqPly example provides a reference for developing or porting
applications. The Developer Documentation
on the website provides further design documents for specific features. The
source code is a last resort for information.
Support
Technical questions can be posted to the Developer Mailing List, or directly to info@equalizergraphics.com.
Commercial support, feature requests, as well as software development and porting services are available. Please contact info@equalizergraphics.com for further information.
