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Distributed OpenGL Rendering in Network Bandwidth Constrained Environments

Abstract
Display walls made from multiple monitors are often used when very high resolution images are required. To utilise a display wall, rendering information must be sent to each computer that the monitors are connect to. The network is often the performance bottleneck for demanding applications, like high performance 3D animations. This paper introduces ClusterGL; a distribution library for OpenGL applications. ClusterGL reduces network traffic by using compression, frame differencing and multi-cast. Existing applications can use ClusterGL without recompilation. Benchmarks show that, for most applications, ClusterGL outperforms other systems that support unmodified OpenGL applications including Chromium and BroadcastGL. The difference is larger for more complex scene geometries and when there are more display machines. For example, when rendering OpenArena, ClusterGL outperforms Chromium by over 300% on the Symphony display wall at The University of Waikato, New Zealand. This display has 20 monitors supported by five computers connected by gigabit Ethernet, with a full resolution of over 35 megapixels. ClusterGL is freely available via Google Code.
Type
Conference Contribution
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Neal, B., Hunkin, P. & McGregor, A. (2011). Distributed OpenGL Rendering in Network Bandwidth Constrained Environments. In T. Kuhlen, R. Pajarola & K. Zhou (Eds.), Proceedings of Eurographics Symposium on Parallel Graphics and Visualization (2011), Llandudno, UK; 10-11 April 2011 (pp. 21-29). The Eurographics Association.
Date
2011
Publisher
European Association for Computer Graphics
Degree
Supervisors
Rights
This article has been published in Proceedings of Eurographics Symposium on Parallel Graphics and Visualization. © 2011 The Eurographics Association.