RenderKit/ospray v2.0.0-alpha

OSPRay v2.0.0-alpha

on GitHub

New major revision of OSPRay brings API breaking improvements over
v1.x. See doc/ospray2_porting_guide.md for a deeper description of
migrating from v1.x to v2.0 and doc/api.md for the latest API
documentation

• ospRenderFrame now takes all participating objects as
  function parameters instead of setting some as renderer params
• ospRenderFrame is now asynchronous, where the task is managed
  through a returned OSPFuture handle
• The heirarchy of objets in a scene are now more granular to
  aid in scene construction flexibility and reduce potential
  object duplication
• Type-specific parameter setting functions have been consolidated
  into a single ospSetParam API call
• C++ wrappers found in ospray_cpp.h now automatically track
  handle lifetimes, therefore applications using them do not need
  to use ospRelease (or the new ospRetain) with them: see
  usage example in apps/tutorials/ospTutorial.cpp
• Unused parameters are reported as status messages when
  logLevel is >= 1 (most easily set by enabling OSPRay debug on
  initialization)

New utility library which adds functions to help with new API
migration and reduction of boilerplate code

• Use ospray_util.h to access these additional functions
• All utility functions are implemented in terms of the core API
  found in ospray.h, therefore they are compatible with any
  device backend

Introduction of new Intel® Open Volume Kernel Library (Open VKL)
for greatly enhanced volume sampling and rendering features and
performance

Added direct support for Intel® Open Image Denoise as an optional
module, which adds a denoiser type to ospNewImageOperation

New CMake superbuild available to build both OSPRay's dependencies
and OSPRay itself

• Found in scripts/superbuild
• See documentation for more details and example usage

The ospcommon library now lives as a stand alone repository and
is required to build OSPRay

New support for volumes in the pathtracer

• Several parameters are available for performance/quality
  trade-offs for both photo-realistic and scientific visualization
  use cases

Simplification of the scivis renderer

• Fixed AO lighting and simple ray marched volume rendering for
  ease of use and performance

New API call for querying the bounds of objects (OSPWorld,
OSPInstance, and OSPGroup)

Lights now exist as a parameter to the world instead of the renderer

Removal of slices geometry. Instead, any geometry with volume
texture can be used for slicing (see tutorial
ospTutorialStructuredVolume for example)

Introduction of new boxes geometry type

Expansion of information returned by ospPick

Addition of API to query version information at runtime

Known issues:

• Open VKL must be built with a compatible set of ISAs with OSPRay
  due to a known issue with VKL iterator types. This is easiest
  to address by using OSPRAY_BUILD_ISA and OPENVKL_BUILD_ISA
  with the ISA of the target machine. This will be addressed for
  the official v2.0 release.
• The old variant of ospNewData was temporarily retained in
  ospray_util.h for C++ applications and will be removed for the
  official v2.0 release
• ISPC v1.11.0 and Embree v3.6.0 are both incompatible with OSPRay
  and should be avoided (OSPRay should catch this during CMake
  configure)
• This is a source-only release, binaries will be made available
  for the official v2.0.0 release