kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Mário Luzeiro <mrluzeiro@xxxxx>]

Hi timofonic,

It is not possible to re-use this work and port it to render directly on a GPU. (if it was what you asked)
It is in my mind that one day we can implement (again) some traditional (triangle based) rendering using GPU.

I have more knowledge / experience on raytracing on CPUs and I have zero experience on GPUs, but it was not the main reason.

Doing a similar quality and performance engine using GPU also need much work and experimentation. The raytracing is an easy, more elegant way of archive detailed quality for rendering the boards, while getting the same features in a GPU, the way to go is to implement "tricks"

Another thing is that we (developers at kicad) know about issues that users have with openGL / drivers / etc (eg the openGL mode in pcbnew)
So if we develop/use a top engine using GPU, it will have that compatibility issues.

The more features we think implementing on a GPU, the more you will need an updated/recent GPU to be able to run that latest complex shaders..

I designed/refactor the 3d-viewer as it would be possible to extend to other render targets in future.

Maybe I plan one day to do a old-school openGL simple render for compatibility and maybe someone will implement some render using GPU shaders..

Cheers,
Mario
________________________________________
From: Kicad-developers [kicad-developers-bounces+mrluzeiro=ua.pt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of timofonic timofonic [timofonic@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 28 October 2015 22:38
Cc: kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] 3D-Viewer Raytraced render

Hi.

I know this is probably planned and it's too early to consider, but...

Is GPU rendering possible instead only CPU? What about OpenCL and such?

Kind regards.