VolumePro 500 Support

Software Releases:

Release Version 1.2 (3/3/00)

• Fixes to the VLI software
• Many enhancements and corrections to the VolumePro® 500 drivers for robustness, stability and performance for both single and *multiprocessor systems (*NT only).

• Migrating from Sun Solaris™ 2.6 cc4.2 /cc5.0 with our new support for Sun Solaris™ version 2.7 cc5.0 operating system.
• New support for SGI Irix 6.5.X operating system for the Visual Workstation O2 platform
• New support for Windows NT on the SGI Visual Workstation 320 platform
• Windows NT drive utility program
  
  Release Version 1.1 (1/7/00)

• Significant improvements to the VLI software, sample programs, VolumePro® 500 drivers forrobustness, stability and performance

• Windows NT Multiprocessor support
• Improved support for the VP500-2X 256 MB board
• Change to Kitware's Volview sales and support
  
  CD Release Version 1.0 (9/30/99)

• Major bug fixes in super-volumes, super-sampling, cut-planes and cropping
• Replacing the DemoA program with the Gfxsanity program
• Adding many new and exciting features in Revli and Gfxsanity
• Adding the Vliaccept program
• Adding larger data sets including lobster, CT head and Boston teapot
• Adding VolView sample program source code
• Adding a new .vox reader / writer program example
• Adding Solaris™ 2.6 support Adding Sun Creator3D support

  Software Release Schedule
  Release Version 2.1 (6/15/01)
  Release Version 2.0 (8/3/00)
  Release Version 1.2 (3/3/00)
  Release Version 1.1 (1/7/00)
  Release Version 1.0 (9/30/99)
  
  Release Version 2.1 (6/15/01)

  Operating System	Sample Applications/Programs Supported
  MS Windows NT 4.0	Gfxsanity, Revli
  MS Windows 2000	Gfxsanity, Revli
  SUN Solaris™ 2.6 CC5.0	XVGTest, Sanity
  SUN Solaris™ 2.6 CC6.0	XVGTest, Sanity
  SUN Solaris™ 8 CC5.0	XVGTest, Sanity
  SUN Solaris™ 8 CC6.0	XVGTest, Sanity
  SGI IRIX 6.5.4	XVGTest, Sanity
  HP HP-UX	XVGTest

  
  
  New Features/Changes:
  
  See VolumePro® 500 Release Notes for more details.
  • New VolumePro® 500 support for Windows 2000.
  • New VolumePro® 500 support for support for Solaris™ 8.
  • New thread VLI support features.
  • New 7th point feature for improved embedded geometry support.
  • Performance improvements.
  • Updated support for Solaris™ 2.6
  • Correction for VLI_MaxAngleDeviation error.
  • Improvements to our sample applications Gfxsanity, Revli, and XVGtest.
  • New separate driver with library and SDK installation for NT and W2K.
  • New serial number prompt with SDK installation for NT and W2K.
  • Volume True size control settings.

  Bug Fixes from the Previous Release
  
  See the relevant text file:
  
  MS Windows NT 4.0
  MS Windows 2000
  SUN Solaris™ 2.6 CC5.0
  SUN Solaris™ 2.6 CC6.0
  SUN Solaris™ 8 CC5.0
  SUN Solaris™ 8 CC6.0
  SGI IRIX 6.5.4
  HP HP-UX
  
  
  Release Version 2.0 (8/3/00)

  Operating System	TeraRecon Version	Sample Applications/Programs Supported
  Windows NT 4.0	Version 2.0	Gfxsanity and Revli
  Sun Solaris™ 2.5.1 cc4.2	Version 1.2	XVGtest and Sanity
  Sun Solaris™ 2.7 cc5.0	Version 1.2	XVGtest and Sanity
  SGI Irix 6.5.x	Version 2.0	XVGtest and Sanity

  
  
  New Features/Changes:
  
  • New NT multi-board support providing the ability to load larger volumes with slight increase in performance.
  • New VLI and driver command logging capability along with error handling improvements.
  • New non-threaded VLI for better reliability and render control.
  • New VLI maximum angle deviation error code to improve reliability.
  • VLI improvements to stitching together of large rendered image.
  • 3D cursor feature improvements.
  • Super sampling blend mode feature improvements.
  • Ray casting improvements for better centering on a volume to reduce image jitter and enhance image quality.
  • Updated Revli sample application with new features plus many improvements.
  • No program recompile required but is strongly recommended.
  • The maximum volume loading size of a single 128 MB VolumePro® board is now 512 x 512 x 224 at 16 bits. The maximum volume loading size of a single 256 MB VolumePro® board is now 512 x 512 x 445 at 16 bits.
    
    Behavior Changes

  Volume Load Size: Volume data loading has new improvements. This means that the upper bound of the number of slices is slightly lower. For example, given a 512 X 512 XY dimension, 445 slices is now the upper bound. You may experience slightly lowered performance with super volumes.

  Render BasePlane Size: The rendered baseplane is larger than before, since all the volume data is now loaded. The baseplane is also slightly larger due to the skew/jitter fix. This may cause some graphics cards to fail to load the texture (commonly expressed as a 1281 status from the OpenGL glTexImage2D function). The baseplane size will also change depending on the volume model and camera view matrix. Although still a power of two, it is no longer square and corrected. Render Status of Max

  Angle Deviation: The RenderBasePlane and RenderToGraphicsContext functions now return the kVLIErrMaxAngleDeviation status. VLI no longer perturbs the desired view to the next closest one expressible in the hardware. It is up to the application to handle this status. The Revli application provides an example that may be appropriate for other applications.

  Render BasePlane Image and Texture Coordinates: The texture coordinates are now the normalized indices of the baseplane. The image coordinates now contain the correct Z values. In addition, they represent the rendered extents. Note that this is always slightly less than the volume coordinates, due to the nature of ray tracing.
  
  Cutplane: The cutplane placement is now more consistently in line with user-specified parameters. Whereas in the previous release in certain cases, the cutplane may have been placed slightly away from the location specified by the application, it is now placed consistently with the user-specified parameters. The world space specified falloff distance converts to the closest chip expressible voxel distance. This means that the fuzziness of the thickness may change with non-isotropic data.

  Crop: The crop interface now uses a start and size paradigm, although the interface remains unchanged. The start is floor of the minimum and the floor of the difference between max and min is the thickness.

  Super Sampling Limits: Super sampling is now limited to three for X and Y and one, two, or four for Z. This represents the values that give the best chance of increasing quality while avoiding a kVLIErrMaxAngleDeviation status.
  
  Super Sampling BasePlane Accumulation Blend Mode: When super sampling and using kBlendBasePlane, the texture is allowed to increase to a dimension of 1K in X or Y before filtering occurs. This maximizes image quality, while still limiting the texture size to an achievable size.
  
  Data Accessors: Where possible, the getters in VLI objects now return the actual value, as opposed to what was set. This allows an application to understand what precision is actually being used.
  
  Bug Fixes from the Previous Release:

  • When rendering a super volume, the boundary between its component volumes may appear when the super volume is rotating. The boundary is especially visible if it appears on a surface that is at a large angle with respect to the image plane. This may also appear as seems in the image, stair casing in the image and image skew.
  • When rendering a volume and rotating the image, the image will appear to move about on its axis or jitter. This may appear when using X, Y and Z super sampling, cut plane and or super volumes.
  • When using Revli to view super volumes and rotating it causes occasional FetchBasePlane returned error and Render Base Plane returned error.
  • When using Revli to view a volume the 3d cursor may have some issues such as thickness appears different for X, Y and Z, it ooks jagged in certain angles and opacity does not change much.
  • When using Revli to view a volume Box Cropping does not crop evenly.

  Known Issues and Limitations: (see Behavior Changes)

  • Images in Revli or Gfxsanity may momentarily disappear when trying to render at an invalid angle with the error Invalid Render angle message.
  • Images in Revli or Gfxsanity may momentarily disappear when trying to render at an angle with the error OpenGL Status 1281 message. The cause is that some graphics cards fail to load the texture.
  • Slightly lowered performance issues to be addressed in future releases.
  • Using Enbedded Pointers in Revli may occasionally return FetchBasePlane error.

    VolumePro Software Release Schedule:
    
    The below schedule represents our estimated availability of future versions on our driver, VLI and SDK software. The actual software release date is predicated on our dynamic engineering schedule.
    
    Being a customer focused organization, we derive our product development direction from our customer demand. If there is a specific operating system or computer platform that you are interested in having the VolumePro® work on, please contact us.

  Version	Approximate Release Date
  3.0	4th Quarter or sooner

  Version Detail
  
  New VolumePro® 1000 support.
  Planned Supported Operating System or Computer Platfor

Beta Software Download:

Please click on the appropriate link below for the version you desire to download.

Please be aware that the beta software has minimal documentation.

Thank you for your cooperation in helping us improve our product as it is greatly appreciated.

New Features and Changes:

Please see the below VLI Plus Post Warp read me.

Download Instructions:

For Post Warp there are two files to download:

VLI Plus Post Warp Driver, Library and SDK software (950 KB)
VLI Plus Post Warp read me (6 KB)

Click on the above link to download the appropriate files.

Installation Instructions:

Once you download the software, follow the instructions in the Post Warp read me file. You may want to print out these instructions for reference.

Known Issues: