Custom OpenSceneGraph Software Development Consulting
What is OpenSceneGraph and how can I use it?
OpenSceneGraph (OSG) is the most mature, well-supported and widely used OpenGL scenegraph in the world. Created and Open Sourced by Don Burns and Robert Osfield in the late 1990s, its flexible and friendly OSGPL (LGPL-derived with static linking permissiveness) has led to widespread adoption across many platforms and operating systems, including desktop, mobile, embedded, VR/AR/xR, even WebAssembly and Windows UWP (without OpenGL!).
OpenSceneGraph is written in C++ utilizing good Design Patterns and software architecture, and is very modular. It offers dozens of file format input libraries and capabilities in the base distribution, including terrain, text rendering, post-processing effects, instancing, multiple view management, Visual Simulation (Vis-Sim) features and operating system integration. Additional third-party add-ons (often called NodeKits) and integrations add support for hundreds of new features. OSG can be somewhat challenging to compile initially, but the breadth of out-of-the-box or easily-accessible capability, broad platform support and ease of getting initial results is very compelling.
Who uses OpenSceneGraph?
OpenSceneGraph is the heart of hundreds or thousands of commercial applications with 3D visualization capability, including probably ones you already use, unaware. From CAD to Visual Simulation, Biomedical, Geospatial and even Games, OpenSceneGraph is pervasive, and we’ve helped clients in every one of these industries adopt and maximize their benefit from OSG.
How do I make OpenSceneGraph faster?
Naive use of OSG using the legacy “Fixed Function Pipeline” capabilities of OpenGL 1.x that it still allows you to access, and sub-optimal architecture of the scene graph can result in less performance than available or desired. AlphaPixel has many years of experience in OSG scenegraph performance profiling, optimization and tuning and can often deliver performance gains multiple times over, sometimes even more than an order of magnitude by adopting shader functionality, Level of Detail, instancing and intelligent data and buffer management. The larger the dataset, typically the more potential for performance gains. If you need help speeding up an existing OpenSceneGraph application, contact us!
The authors of OpenSceneGraph, primarily Robert Osfield, are now developing the new VulkanSceneGraph (using Vulkan) as a successor to OpenSceneGraph. The lean and performant VSG adopts many modern code and design principles to be even faster than OpenSceneGraph, sometimes many times faster. If you are considering moving from OpenSceneGraph to VulkanSceneGraph, AlphaPixel can help you migrate your existing code or write from scratch.
How can AlphaPixel help me adopt and integrate osgEarth?
AlphaPixel Development has been using osgEarth since the very beginning, and also has experience with predecessors to osgEarth like osgGIS (also from Pelican Mapping) and Virtual Planet Builder (VPB). We’ve successfully ported earlier versions of osgEarth to Android, iOS and embedded OpenGL ES platforms. We have created entirely new osgEarth applications from scratch as well as integrating osgEarth functionality into our customers’ applications, even replacing existing non-osgEarth 3D Globe rendering code.
We are experienced in creating Python wrappers for osgEarth to allow scripting of osgEarth functionality from Python. We have worked with clients around the world to integrate osgEarth into their solutions, port osgEarth to new environments, develop new data loaders and displays, and entirely new capabilities.
We have a close relationship with Pelican Mapping, creators and maintainers of osgEarth and can rapidly develop fixes and improvements that are able to be accepted into the main public development release.
Pelican Mapping is now building Rocky, a Vulkan-based successor to osgEarth, and we follow and contribute to that work as the geospatial world moves to Vulkan.
Reach out to AlphaPixel today to see how we can help you with custom osgEarth Software Development.
We do osgEarth Software Development Consulting.
When you want to add or improve osgEarth support in your application, AlphaPixel is who you want to solve your difficult problems.
