Welcome to the osgCompute library - a nodekit for OpenSceneGraph.

For up-to-date information on the project, in-depth details on how to compile and run libraries and examples, see the documentation on the osgCompute website:

http://www.cg.informatik.uni-siegen.de/svt

You will find simplified build notes below. For support subscribe to the public mailing list of OpenSceneGraph:

http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/MailingLists

or go directly to the OpenSceneGraph forum which is synchronized with the mailing lists:

http://forum.openscenegraph.org

SVT Group (Simulation and Visualization Toolkit) Project Lead. 19th March 2009.

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osgCompute is the abstract base library for the execution of code on parallel streaming processors. The library is connected to OpenSceneGraph (OSG) and thus it can be included in the scenegraph. It gives the user the possibility to jump to the graphics processing unit (GPU) for any kind of calculations. The manipulated data is then afterwards available to the scenegraph for further processing (e.g. rendering).

osgCuda is based on the osgCompute library and implements the specific functionality for NVIDIA's CUDA (http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html). CUDA is a general purpose parallel computing architecture that leverages the parallel compute engine in NVIDIA GPUs to solve many complex computational problems in a fraction of the time required on a CPU.

What is next? OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a new heterogeneous computing environment. At the moment a release of a OpenCL API/driver interface doesn't exist. The use of osgCompute as the base library for the connection of OpenCL to OSG looks promising.

The osgCompute uses the CMake build system to generate a platform-specific build environment. This build system was choosen since OpenSceneGraph is also based on it.

If you don't already have CMake installed on your system you can grab it from http://www.cmake.org, use version 2.4.6 or later. Details on the OpenSceneGraph's CMake build can be found at:

http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Build/CMake

Under unices (i.e. Linux, IRIX, Solaris, Free-BSD, HP-Ux, AIX, OSX) use the cmake or ccmake command-line utils. To compile osgCompute type following:

cd osgCompute
cmake . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make
sudo make install

Alternatively, you can create an out-of-source build directory and run cmake or ccmake from there. The advantage to this approach is that the temporary files created by CMake won't clutter the osgCompute source directory, and also makes it possible to have multiple independent build targets by creating multiple build directories. In a directory alongside the osgCompute use:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make
sudo make install

If you would like to install the library somewhere else than the default install location, so type in the main directory of osgCompute the following:

cmake . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/path/to/install 
make install

Under Windows use the GUI tool of the CMake setup to build your VisualStudio files. The following page on OpenSceneGraph's wiki dedicated to the CMake build system should help guide you through the process:

http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg/wiki/Support/PlatformSpecifics/VisualStudio

OpenSceneGraph (http://www.openscenegraph.org) is currently available in the official version: 3.0.1. Although osgCompute has been tested with this version it should also run with previous versions of OpenSceneGraph.

osgCuda supports the Runtime API of CUDA 4.0. The Driver API is currently not supported by osgCuda.

If the examples are built please ensure that the data will be available (separate SVN checkout: svn co https://svn.cg.informatik.uni-siegen.de/svt/osgCompute-Data/trunk osgCompute-Data). Set the environment variable OSGCOMPUTE_FILE_PATH to the folder which contains the osgCompute data (e.g. C:\SVT\osgCompute-Data).

You have to setup the OSG_FILE_PATH environment variable accordingly in order to find these files. Please add OSGCOMPUTE_FILE_PATH to OSG_FILE_PATH. This ensures that OSG is able to load the necessary data successfully.

On Windows adapt the environment variable in the system properties and add to the OSG_FILE_PATH variable C:\SDK\OpenSceneGraph-Data;C:\SDK\OpenSceneGraph-Data\Images;%OSGCOMPUTE_FILE_PATH% On Unix systems do the following: export OSG_FILE_PATH=$OSG_FILE_PATH:$OSGCOMPUTE_FILE_PATH

The environment variable OSGCOMPUTEDIR should be defined for proper work with osgCompute. Scripts like Findosgcompute.cmake search for this environment variable automatically (especially useful for windows users).

The environment variable CUDADIR should be defined for proper work with CUDA. It should point to the root path of your CUDA installation (especially useful for windows users, e.g. C:\CUDA).