Tilcon in 3D

By Bill Graham

Today we announced our latest release of Wind River Tilcon Graphics Suite, version 5.8. This is an important release for us for many reasons. One is this addition of OpenGL version 2.1 3D graphics to the Tilcon Graphics Suite (specifically for VxWorks runtime platforms). The need for 3D graphics is growing in embedded devices because User Interfaces (UI) are becoming more and more sophisticated. For medical devices this may mean 3D images of internal organs, joints, etc. For industrial devices it might mean 3D data representation, maps, or orthographic displays. For aerospace and defense, Heads Up Displays (HUD), radar and other display types do or will leverage 3D graphics. For consumer devices 3D graphics are already used for mobile gaming. 

Three dimensional graphics are typically displayed in combination with 2D UIs since 3D libraries such as OpenGL do not have high level widgets for push buttons, dials, menus, etc. Combining 3D with the extensive and flexible 2D capabilities of the Tilcon Graphics Suite provides a perfect combination.

In the Tilcon Graphics Suite, the OpenGL objects are displayed with a frame and are controllable from the Tilcon application. This makes it easy to incorporate 3D graphics into an new or existing graphics project. We've recorded a nice demonstration of this on YouTube:

In the next post, I'll discuss some of the other enhancements we've done in the Tilcon Graphics Suite version 5.8 release.

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