I'm looking for a way to determine how to know whether an application is using the GPU with Objective-C. I want to be able to determine if any applications currently running on the system have work going on on the GPU (ie: a reason why the latest MacBook Pros would switch to the discrete graphics over the Intel HD graphics).
I've tried getting the information by crossing the list of active windows with the list of windows that have their backing location stored in video memory using Quartz Window Services, but all that does is return the Dock application and I have other applications open that I know are using the GPU (Photoshop CS5, Interface Builder), that and the Dock doesn't require the 330m.
The source code of this utility gfxCardStatus might help....
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I am working on a project where we are going to use multiple Kinects and merge the pointclouds. I would like to know how to use two Kinects at the same time. Are there any specific drivers or embedded application?
I used Microsoft SDK but it only supports a single Kinect at a time. But for our project we cannot use multiple PCs. Now I have to find a way to overcome the problem. If someone who has some experience on accessing multiple Kinect drivers, please share your views.
I assume you are talking about Kinect v2?
Check out libfreenect2. It's an open source driver for Kinect v2 and it supports multiple Kinects on the same computer. But it doesn't provide any of the "advanced" features of the Microsoft SDK like skeleton tracking. But getting the pointcoulds is no problem.
You also need to make sure your hardware supports multiple Kinects. You'll need (most likely) a separate USB3.0 controller for each Kinect. Of course, those controllers need to be Kinect v2 compatible, meaning they need to be Intel or NEC/Renesas chips. That can easily be achieved by using PCIe USB3.0 expansion cards. But those can't be plugged into PCIe x1 slots.
A single lane doesn't have enough bandwidth. x8 or x16 slots usually work.
See Requirements for multiple Kinects#libfreenect2.
And you also need a strong enough CPU and GPU. Depth processing in libfreenect2 is done on the GPU using OpenGL or OpenCL (CPU is possible as well, but very slow). RGB processing is done on the CPU. It needs quite a bit of processing power to give you the raw data.
I have heared vulkan will unify the initialisation on different operating systems. Does that mean vulkan creates the window, handles mouse/keyboard events so I can avoid using os specific programming?
It won't. Window creation will be platform specific and an WSI extension will let you link the window to a renderable Image that you can push to the screen.
From information gleaned out of the presentations that have been given I expect that you will use a platform specific WSI Extension to create a Swapchain for your window.
Then each time you wish to push a frame to the screen you need to acquire a presentable image from the swapchain; render to it and then present it.
see this slide pack from slide 109 onward.
No, Vulkan is a low-level API for accessing GPUs. It does not deal with windows and input. In fact it can be used easily in a "headless" manner with no visual output at all.
Porbably not, Vulkan API is an Graphics Library much like OpenGL.
Where in Linux Ubuntu OpenGL is used for animation effects of the desktop in Unity and could be replaced with Vulkan for better performance.
But I don't think Windows will change it as they have their own DirectX Graphics Library and would be weird if they use something else instead their own software.
The most applications that are going to benefit from Vulkan are Games and other software that uses either 2D or 3D rendering.
It's very likely that most of the games are going to change to Vulkan because it's Cross-platform and therefore they will gain more users which equals to more profit.
Khronos (Vulkan API developers) are also bringing out tools that will largely port your application from OpenGL or DX12 to Vulkan therefore requiring less development/porting from the software developers side.
So...
Window creation, likely. (Although the code behind the window is CPU side, the library that draws the window on screen might be using Vulkan) - this differs greatly from which OS, distribution and version you are working on.
Mouse/keyboard events, no as this doesn't require any graphical calculations but CPU calculations.
Window (frames) are general desktop manager controls; you could display the vulkan app's content in the client area, otherwise vulkan would have to provide interfaces to the desktop manager for window creation (GUI library). Someone could simply create a device context (DC in windows, similar for the X server) then manage the "vulkan app" manually like a windowed game with no chrome (frameless), but this would be a great deal of work right now.
Old hand Windows developer bible addressing device context and rendering among many other things: Programming Windows®, Fifth Edition (Developer Reference) 5th Edition. Very good read and from an agnostic point of view provides a great deal of carry over knowledge loosely applicable to most systems.
I am trying to detect if any Wallpaper type application is running on system and try to close them.
For example, Mechanical Clock 3D Lite for 10.8 is one of the apps which run as wallpaper for system. Is their any way to detect such applications?
This question, Programmatically check if a process is running on Mac, might lead you in the right direction. Essentially you find a list of currently running processes and check if that application name exists within it.
I tried using "Kinect for Windows" on my Mac. Environment set-up seems to have gone well, but something seems being wrong. When I start some samples such as
OpenNI-Bin-Dev-MacOSX-v1.5.4.0/Samples/Bin/x64-Release/Sample-NiSimpleViewer
or others, the sample application start and seems working quite well at the beginning but after a few seconds (10 to 20 seconds), the move seen in screen of the application halts and never work again. It seems that the application get to be unable to fetch data from Kinect from certain point where some seconds passed.
I don't know whether the libraries or their dependency, or Kinect's hardware itself is going wrong (as for hardware, invisibly broken or something), and I really want to know how to detect which is it.
Could anybody tell me how can I fix the issue please?
My environment is shown below:
Mac OS X v10.7.4 (MacBook Air, core i5 1.6Ghz, 4GB of memory)
Xcode 4.4.1
Kinect for Windows
OpenNI-Bin-Dev-MacOSX-v1.5.4.0
Sensor-Bin-MacOSX-v5.1.2.1
I followed instruction here about libusb: http://openkinect.org/wiki/Getting_Started#Homebrew
and when I try using libfreenect(I know it's separate from OpenNI+SensorKinect), its sample applications say "Number of devices found: 0", which makes no sense to me since I certainly connected my Kinect to MBA...)
Unless you're booting to Windows forget about Kinect for Windows.
Regarding libfreenect and OpenNI in most cases you'll use one or the other, so think of what functionalities you need.
If it's basic RGB+Depth image (and possibly motor and accelerometer ) access libfreenect is your choice.
If you need RGB+Depth image and skeleton tracking and (hand) gestures (but no motor, accelerometer access) use OpenNI. Note that if you use the unstable(dev) versions, you should use Avin's SensorKinect Driver.
Easiest thing to do a nice clean install of OpenNI.
Also, if it helps, you can a creative coding framework like Processing or OpenFrameworks.
For Processing I recommend SimpleOpenNI
For OpenFrameworks you can use ofxKinect which ties to libfreenect or ofxOpenNI. Download the OpenFrameworks packaged on the FutureTheatre Kinect Workshop wiki as it includes both addons and some really nice examples.
When you are connecting the Kinect device to the machine, have you provided external power to it? The device will appear connected to a computer by USB only power but will not be able to tranfer data as it needs the external power supply.
Also what Kinect sensor are you using? If it is a new Kinect device (designed for Windows) they may have a different device signature which may cause the OpenNI drivers to play-up. I'm not a 100% on this one, but I've only ever tried OpenNI with an XBox 360 sensor.
Im planning to build a Embedded system which is almost like an organizer i.e. which handles contacts, games, applications & wifi/2G/3G for internet. I planned to build the UI with QML because of its easy to use and quick application building nature. And to have a linux kernel.
But after reading these articles:
http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/5820 &
http://en.roolz.org/Blog/Entries/2010/10/29_Qt_QML_on_embedded_devices.html
I am depressed and reconsidering my idea of using QML!
My hardware will be with these configurations : Processor around 600MHz, RAM 128MB and no GPU.
Please give comments on this and suggest me some alternatives for this.
Thanks in Advance.
inblueswithu
I have created a QML application for Nokia E63 which has 369MHz processor, 128MB RAM. I don't think it has a GPU. The application is a Stop Watch application. I have animated button click events like jumping (jumping balls). The animations are really smooth even when two button jumps at the same time. A 600MHz processor is expected to handle QML easily.
This is the link for the sis file http://store.ovi.com/content/184985. If you have a Nokia mobile you can test it.
May be you should consider building QML elements by hand instead of doing it from Photoshop or Gimp. For example using Item in the place of Rectangle will be optimal. So you can give it a try. May be by creating a rough sketch with good amount of animations to check whether you processor can handle that. Even if it don't work as expected then consider Qt to build your UI.
QML applications work fine on low-specs Nokia devices. I have made one for 5800 XPressMusic smartphone without any problems.