message to stephen about gpu computing migration or fork.

General Discussion
1

Hi Stephen, did you ever consider about gpu computing for map building or 3d viewport. This thread is not a feature request per se, but a general discussion about future possibilities. I was just looking at some stuff that is being done using nvidia CUDA, and was intrigued by the potential. Check this out, it’s a gpu based raytracer by nvidia, optix https://developer.nvidia.com/optix.

I will be posting some more stuff in this thread soon! Please do check it out, even if it is irrelevant to your plans.

2

Very interesting indeed, no doubt about that.

However, interesting to WM?
WM is a terrain modeller with native texturing functionality.

I’d say let the 3rd party software do the actual rendering/handling of WM output and have them care about Optix?

3

Here’s another library, perhaps more relevant. OpenCLIPP is for migrating image manipulation to the GPU. Check this link:
http://openclipp.wix.com/openclipp

In the features tab you may find something usefull. From what I understand, this is free for commercial use.

4

Yes moving to GPU is a must. If this is the right way to go then I am with you.
Maybe it needs to look at different approaches . How is it implemented in other software?
It is definitely a feature that I am willing to pay for.

5

There was a guy who implemented wm like functionality (although very basic and buggy) using a python script on GPU. I sent a link to it and developer’s blog to stephen. No reply yet. He did it as an experiment and abandoned it after proving a point. Let me find the link for you.

6

http://lithosphere.codeflow.org/

This is the program I’m talking about. Although it didn’t work on my windows 7 pc, I was able to run this in a virtual machine running 32bit xp, with gpu virtualized. You will need python 2.6, the newer versions are not working.