VTK 5.6 Release Planning

Planned Schedule

• Preparation email: February 4th, 2010
  • On the developers' mailing list
• Create VTK-5-6 branch: TBD
• Release VTK 5.6.0: TBD

What's New in VTK 5.6?

New features in VTK since the 5.4 release include:

• Improved chart support
• Parallel render passes
• Partial support for 3DConnexion devices
• Classes moved from vtkEdge (vtkGPUVolumeRayCastMapper & associated classes. What else?)
• 211 new C++ classes.
• 91 new C++ tests running on most dashboards
• 17 new C++ examples that demonstrate how to use VTK effectively.
• Zhanping
  • More robust EnSight reader.
  • Addition of Tecplot reader.
  • Accurate anti-jagginess streamline integrator
  • Incremental / dynamic octree-based point locator for fast point location and insertion of non-uniformly distributed points (3 times faster than the previous version).
  • Integration of robust cell location to vector evaluation on complex grids.
  • High-performance table-based clipper for various kinds of grids (one to two orders of magnitude faster than the previous version).
  • Addition of GPU-based real time Line Integral Convolution (LIC) with enhanced image contrast and LIC+geometry compositing for dense vector field / flow visualization.

API Changes

• the use of vtkMath::Random(), vtkMath::RandomSeed(), vtkMath::GetSeed(), vtkMath::Gaussian() is deprecated (there are error-prone and not deterministic (which is important for reproducibility of regression testing) as they use global static information. Instead, you should create an object of class vtkMinimalStandardRandomSequence to get a sequence of pseudo-random number following a uniform distribution. You should create an object of class vtkBoxMuellerRandomSequence to get a sequence of pseudo-random number following a Gaussian distribution.

OpenGL requirements

Same as VTK 5.2 (?): See this section in the Frequently asked questions (FAQ)