> I understand that some of the companies (ie. TGS) that have licensed
> OpenInventor and ported it to other platforms have implemented or changed
> things that speed up the performance and added features. Is this true?
As Morten said, TGS is the only company with an Open Inventor product
based on the SGI source code. TGS started with the Open Inventor 2.0
source tree in 1994 and has faithfully applied all the SGI changes
through 2.1.4 (which was the last maintenance release they sent us).
The open source tree corresponds to 2.1.5. The current release from
TGS is 2.6 and is still a strict superset of 2.1.x as far as the API
and behavior.
> If so what changes/additions have they made to the library?
You can actually read the whole history of (major) changes from 2.1.x
to the present, in the 2.6 release notes if you want:
ftp://ftp.tgs.com/OpenInventor/Intel/Inv260/RelNotes.txt
Morten is correct that two packages are sold separately as add-ons:
* 3D-MasterSuite
+ Charts and graphs (2D and 3D)
+ Scientific/engineering data viz (multi-val meshs, isosurfs, etc)
+ Resolution-independent vector/poly hardcopy (CGM, HPGL, PS, etc)
+ Platform-independent dialogbox builder
* VolumeRendering (using texture mapping or VolumePro board)
But there's a lot of cool stuff in Open Inventor 2.6 itself. Sorry,
I can't resist adding a few highlights to Morten's list... :-)
General features (just some highlights):
* VRML97 nodes (including PROTO and fan-in for connections)
* Large Model Viewing
+ Mesh decimation
+ GetPrimitiveCount action
+ Adaptive viewer (target frame rate, etc)
+ Render list (automatically maintains list of geometry objects
that can be rendered in any order, independent of hierarchy)
* Collision detection (object-to-viewer and object-to-object)
* 3D texture mapping, polygon offset, vertex arrays
* Re-written NURBS code (faster, more accurate tesselation)
* Enhanced stereo (correct projection, many output formats)
* Double precision math classes
* Box and lasso picking
* SoMarkerSet, SoImage primitives, SoClipPlaneManip
* Reads PNG images, writes RGB, BMP, JPEG, TIFF images
* Output HTML image maps, output ZAP optimized Web3D format
* SoWin interface library for gluing Inventor to Win32
* IVF interface library for gluing Inventor to MFC
In Alpha test: thread-safe scene graph traversal
> Also how hard would it be to reimplement these changes in the open source
> version of OpenInventor?
Just a SMOP really (Small Matter Of Programming). ;-)
> Does the Coin implementation have these features / performance increases?
Coin has some good stuff, but Morten can better address that.
Regards,
-Mike
TGS Inc, http://www.tgs.com
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