The glAppGrapher project

Updated 5/15/2004

Download Version 0.5 Distribution for Windows Now!

Available on

Now supports

Description

The glAppGrapher is an interactive graphical server that allows clients to indirectly render three-dimensional objects. It is intended to be a debugging tool for software developers who need to visualize aspects of their programs without turning their programs upside-down in the process. This server, in conjunction with a properly written client side, has the potential to:

Assist a programmer in debugging a physics engine or collision detection code through the visual output of certain objects and key vectors
Allow the programmer to visualize BSP and other complex trees both topologically and graphically via spheres, planes and meshes, as well as what objects are associated with what nodes.
Involve more than one computer.
Do all of this in an interactive environment, even if the client process is halted.

Features as of v0.5

Fixed network processing
Added client-side files for debugging in the Newton physics engine

Features as of v0.4

Full OpenGL and GLU function support for both Windows and Linux builds. (That means you can call any OpenGL or GLU function in the entire library as long as you know the name and pass the in parameters correctly)
Ability to navigate around the scene with the mouse
A scalable interactive console (it currently does nothing)
Full-Screen or Windowed support
Uses Berkeley Socket function calls for communication between the glAppGrapher and clients
Single glAppGrapher server supports multiple clients
Mutex bug fix
Enqueue multiple messages and execute them all at once
Synchronize with the glAppGrapher by waiting for it to return a response from its main loop.

News as of 5/15/2004

Version 0.5 is out for Windows users, and now available for download!

glAppGrapher 0.5 Win32 distribution + test client 0.5 Win32 distribution: ZIP with source code, binaries, and manual
glAppGrapher 0.4 Linux tarball	glAppGrapher test client 0.3 Linux tarball (also works with 0.4)

Related Links

Sourceforge distribution: http://glappgrapher.sourceforge.net
The glAppGrapher manual
glut32.dll - GLUT library for Win32
ftp://ftp.redhat.co.nz/pub/linux/dist/redhat/redhat-7.3/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS - You can find RedHat 7.3 GLUT RPM's here.

Special thanks

George Toderici came up with the idea to make the program use sockets to communicate. I was originally going to use shared memory. What was I thinking?!