VTK 5.6 Release Planning

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Planned Schedule

What's New in VTK 5.6?

New features in VTK since the 5.4 release include:

  • Improved support for line charts, bar charts etc - no Qt dependence.
  • New text analysis module.
  • Parallel render passes
  • Partial support for 3DConnexion devices
  • Classes moved from vtkEdge to VTK, including the vtkGPUVolumeRayCastMapper & associated classes.
  • 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.
  • 2D rendering API and canvas/scene with interaction support.
  • New data structures for points, vectors, colors, etc.
  • Compiler support for Visual Studio 10 - Fixes have been made so that VTK can now be compiled with Visual Studio 10. Note that CMake 2.8.0 or greater is required.
  • 270 new C++ classes.
  • 120 new C++ tests running on most dashboards
  • 17 new C++ examples that demonstrate how to use VTK effectively.

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)