Why does Cura 2.5's layer view want OpenGL 4.1 when S3D works great with 2.1?

[smartavionics 289]

It's nice that Cura 2.5 has a new layer view but why does it require OpenGL version 4.1?

I am stuck with OpenGL 2.1 and S3D's layer view still looks really nice. If S3D can do it, why not Cura?

[ahoeben 807]

Why do apples taste different than oranges? Both are fruit!

The new layerview in Cura uses geometry shaders to offload most of the heavylifting of making the layers look spatial to the GPU. This way it can be done without too much change to the underlying code without a bug impact on performance.

Replacing the entire architecture of Cura to improve layerview just wasn't going to happen. The new layerview is an evolution, that leverages more modern GPUs in a smart way.

PS: remember layerview in Cura 2.1? Woah, things improved over the past year!

Edited March 24, 2017 by Guest

[smartavionics 289]

Thanks for the reply. I think I understand what you're saying.

[nallath 699]

The tl;dr is: "Yes it's possible, but would slow down your computer and cost a lot of resources to build".

[ahoeben 807]

Better tl;dr: "Yes it's possible, but would slow down your computer or cost a lot of resources to build"

Spend enough time & resources on it (that cannot be spent on anything else), and it should be possible to get it to perform well on OpenGL 2.1 too.

[smartavionics 289]

Hmm, another thought occurred... how come the solid view looks so nice on my machine given that it is only using GL 2.1? If the solid view can look nice, why can't the layer view too?

[nallath 699]

Hmm, another thought occurred... how come the solid view looks so nice on my machine given that it is only using GL 2.1? If the solid view can look nice, why can't the layer view too?

 

The engine sends us 2D data for the layerview. We use geometry shaders to convert those into geometries. In order to do that, we need a pretty high opengl version.

[bagel-orb 44]

The solid view contains the triangles of a mesh, while the layer view has a lot more data to show.