DirectX 9 Rhino Labs Plug-In

SummaryThis plug-in adds the ability to have Rhino viewports use DirectX (specifically version 9 of DirectX) instead of OpenGL. The goal is to provide Rhino 4.0 users who are experiencing OpenGL problems with an alternative.

Background

The purpose for adding DirectX support is to help users who are having serious display problems while running under OpenGL.

If you are NOT having problems with OpenGL, then it is recommended that you continue to use OpenGL for your Rhino display.

There are two technologies, OpenGL and DirectX, used to access a computer's graphics card and perform fast 3-D drawing to a viewport (also known as hardware accelerated drawing.)

Rhino 4.0 by default uses OpenGL. This works great on most system, but some driver/graphics card combination will not work or perform poorly with OpenGL.

Also, poor OpenGL performance is common in Windows Vista because most graphics card vendors have not yet shipped OpenGL drivers for Vista. This may change with time as vendors update their drivers, but because Vista requires robust DirectX support, we expect DirectX may often be the best option for Vista.

DirectX is a technology that is similar to OpenGL in that it allows a program to use hardware accelerated graphics.

Rhino will NOT be dropping OpenGL support.

Downloads

Eventually all of this will be packaged into a single installer, but for now you will need to install 3 components to get the DirectX plug-in to work on your computer:

One time:

Download and Install the latest Microsoft runtime libraries.
Download and Install the latest DirectX End User Runtime libraries from Microsoft

Even if your computer states that it has DirectX9c it is advisable to download and install this software.

Every time there is a new beta version

Download and Install the DirectX 9.0 Display Plug-In.

Save the DirectX9Display.rhp file to a convenient location on your local computer (possibly in the Rhino Plug-ins directory)
Start Rhino and run the PlugInManager command. Click the Install button and select the DirectX9Display.rhp plug-in file.

Operating Systems

Windows 2000/XP - The plug-in should work with SR0 of Rhino 4.0

Windows Vista - The plug-in should work with SR0 of Rhino 4.0

Using the Plug-In

Once the plug-in is installed you are going to need to have some display modes that use DirectX.

Go to the Advanced Settings options under Appearance and create a copy of one of your display modes. For example; select Shaded, copy it and rename the copy to something like Shaded DX9. For testing, I have been using copies of Wireframe, Shaded, and Rendered display modes
Go to the settings for the copied display mode and select Other Settings. Change the pipeline to DirectX 9.

If you set one of your viewports to the new display modes, you should be viewing geometry using DirectX (for the first release of this plug-in the words DirectX 9 will display in the lower left corner of the viewport.)

Commands

DirectX9Options - Options for displaying DirectX viewports. The options are

TransformLighting - sets where certain calculations are performed (in software or on the graphics card). Changing this setting should have an effect on performance.
AntiAliasCurves - Lines and curves can be drawn with an anti-alias effect. The downside to antialiasing is display speed. This option allows you to never use anti-aliasing, always use anti-aliasing, or only use anti-aliasing when the viewport is still.