Book Image

OpenGL Data Visualization Cookbook

Book Image

OpenGL Data Visualization Cookbook

Overview of this book

OpenGL is a great multi-platform, cross-language, and hardware-accelerated graphics interface for visualizing large 2D and 3D datasets. Data visualization has become increasingly challenging using conventional approaches as datasets become larger and larger, especially with the Big Data evolution. From a mobile device to a sophisticated high-performance computing cluster, OpenGL libraries provide developers with an easy-to-use interface to create stunning visuals in 3D in real time for a wide range of interactive applications. This book provides a series of easy-to-follow, hands-on tutorials to create appealing OpenGL-based visualization tools with minimal development time. We will first illustrate how to quickly set up the development environment in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Next, we will demonstrate how to visualize data for a wide range of applications using OpenGL, starting from simple 2D datasets to increasingly complex 3D datasets with more advanced techniques. Each chapter addresses different visualization problems encountered in real life and introduces the relevant OpenGL features and libraries in a modular fashion. By the end of this book, you will be equipped with the essential skills to develop a wide range of impressive OpenGL-based applications for your unique data visualization needs, on platforms ranging from conventional computers to the latest mobile/wearable devices.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
OpenGL Data Visualization Cookbook
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Creating your first vertex and fragment shader using GLSL


Before we can render images using OpenGL, we need to first understand the basics of the GLSL. In particular, the concept of shader programs is essential in GLSL. Shaders are simply programs that run on graphics processors (GPUs), and a set of shaders is compiled and linked to form a program. This concept emerges as a result of the increasing complexity of various common processing tasks in modern graphics hardware, such as vertex and fragment processing, which necessitates greater programmability of specialized processors. Accordingly, the vertex and fragment shader are two important types of shaders that we will cover here, and they run on the vertex processor and fragment processor, respectively. A simplified diagram illustrating the overall processing pipeline is shown as follows:

The main purpose of the vertex shader is to perform the processing of a stream of vertex data. An important processing task involves the transformation...