Overview
Equalizer is an open source framework for the development and deployment of parallel OpenGL applications. An Equalizer application can run unmodified on any visualization system, from a singlepipe workstation to large scale graphics clusters and multi-GPU workstations. Equalizer is built upon a scalable OpenGL-based programming interface solving problems that are common to any multipipe application. The API is minimally invasive, making application porting as easy as possible while delivering maximum performance.
More Information
For further information on mailing lists, downloads, support and documentation, please visit the Equalizer website.
Compatibility
Equalizer is written in standard C++. It is running on Windows XP, GNU/Linux and Mac OS X systems. Equalizer is written in a portable way, and has been tested on 32 bit and 64 bit little endian and big endian systems.
Use Cases
An Equalizer application can be configured at runtime to be used in a wide range of parallel rendering scenarios, for example:
- Display Walls
- Virtual Reality Installations
- Multi-GPU Workstations
- Scalable Visualization Clusters
- Oil & Gas Exploration
- Medical Imaging
- Scientific Visualization
- 3D Content Creation
Features
- Parallel rendering on distributed memory and shared memory systems
- Active, passive and anaglyphic stereo rendering
- Distributed object support
- Head tracking API
- Software-based swapbarrier support for view synchronization on multipipe display systems
- Sort-first (screen-space), sort-last (database), pixel and stereo (Eye) task decomposition
- Tile-based reassembly for sort-first, pixel and stereo recomposition.
- Flexible recomposition engine for parallel compositing, including, but not limited to, direct send and binary swap sort-last compositing
- Z-based sort-last compositing of polygonal data
- Support for ordered alpha-based compositing of volumetric data
- Support for dynamic near and far planes
Licensing
Equalizer is licensed under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL), which allows distribution with commercial and open-source applications. Commercial support and development services are available from Eyescale Software GmbH.