[OpendTect_Developers] Remote 3D rendering/ Use of the GPU

[Julien Moreau]

Thank you all for the advices,

I managed, after some crisis with my server, to make VirtualGL /TurboVNC perform properly. If the configuration fails, you can loose access to X locally (.Xauthority gets corrupted). The documentation is not completely up to date regarding lightdm and VirtualGL. However the scripts 'speak' the truth so that if you follow their verbose it actually works.

If it will be directly included into OpendTect it is indeed easier for the user and the sys admin. If I have a little bit of time, next week I will produce a small text for the ones which would be interested in doing the same.

Thanks for the help,

Julien
________________________________
From: Kristofer Tingdahl [kristofer.tingdahl at dgbes.com]
Sent: 26 February 2013 21:12
To: Jb West
Cc: Julien Moreau; developers at opendtect.org
Subject: Re: [OpendTect_Developers] Remote 3D rendering/ Use of the GPU

All:

One of the long-term projects we are working on at dGB Earth Sciences in converting our visualization from using Coin3D to OpenSceneGraph. It has turned out to take longer time than anticipated, but we are aiming at solving the remote visualization problem. Our solution is to have a special mode (invisible to the user) where we will render on the remote computer into a memory buffer, and then send the image over to the client side. It is what VirtualGL and TurboVNC is doing, but we are building the functionality into OpendTect. This will require high bandwidth between the client and the server, but the images should have the full quality.

Now, this is at least a year ahead before we are going to release anything with OSG, but I do want to give you a heads up.


Best regards,


Kristofer


On 26 February 2013 11:57, Jb West <jbwest at luminterra.comcastbiz.net<mailto:jbwest at luminterra.comcastbiz.net>> wrote:
Julien,
  Remote OpenGL over-the-wire is doomed to not work. Have a look at VirtualGL and the TurboVNC project. I've found this to be the best free remote-opengl solution. http://www.virtualgl.org/

JB West
jbwest at luminterra.com<mailto:jbwest at luminterra.com>
________________________________________
From: developers-bounces at opendtect.org<mailto:developers-bounces at opendtect.org> [developers-bounces at opendtect.org<mailto:developers-bounces at opendtect.org>] On Behalf Of Julien Moreau [julien.moreau at geo.ku.dk<mailto:julien.moreau at geo.ku.dk>]
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2013 2:57 AM
To: developers at opendtect.org<mailto:developers at opendtect.org>
Subject: [OpendTect_Developers] Remote 3D rendering/ Use of the GPU

Hello OdT Community,

I am a new to this list and I am not sure it is the right place to ask the question. However, I assume that you are probably the ones which are most likely to try this kind of operation.

For obvious economic reason and practicality I want to run OpendTect remotely on my workstation or in the future maybe a Cuda system or a server with Tesla cards. I work with OdT everyday but I want also to teach in class and convincing my Uni  to buy 20 quadro cards is not easy (So far I have 10 which is good).

I have performed several tests and from an old Dell laptop with a Quadro and Ubuntu installed I can connect on my workstation and it works perfectly fine through SSH.

Then I tried from a windows 8 laptop with a regular mobile NVidia + the intel chipset. Using Putty and Xming. I can do everything I want except indirect rendering. I spent some time reading about the error code (Xlib is missing the extension NV-GLX). And apparently it is due to the difference in architecture between the systems. There are compatibility flags and if the X server is not happy then you switch from indirect rendering to direct rendering (which is catastrophic over the network indeed). Then I went to see how to update my server in case it would perform better. And I discovered the numerous flavours of mesa and I must admit I don't know what to choose (I have by default installed mesa-dri).
Here a link to the description of the problem
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/remote-3d-is-it-possible-839699/
I have also noticed the presence of a od_glxinfo program which might be some of the solution.

My investigation might seems confused and I would be please to have your advices on that. Particularly if you found a turnaround (knowing that I am not a huge fan of remote control of the machine through vnc).

Thank you in advance,

Julien


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--
Kristofer Tingdahl, Ph. D.
CEO
dGB Earth Sciences

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