Before using Open Inventor, check if your configuration meets the minimum system requirements described in this document.

Shared requirements

Windows

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

MacOS

Java

Graphics boards and drivers

Shared requirements

Open Inventor requires that the following components be installed and available on your workstation:

  • OpenGL 2.1 (or higher) libraries.
  • A C++ compiler matching the version used to compile Open Inventor.
    NOTE: Open Inventor is compatible with C++11, C++14 and C++17 (since v9.9.17).
  • A validated graphics board and driver.
  • Flexnet floating license server version 11.14 (package available on download page)
  • [OPTIONAL] If you plan to use InventorCL or InventorCLAlgorithms libraries, you must have a GPU and driver compliant with OpenCL 1.0.
    Note that these libraries are not (yet) available with RHEL 6 and MacOS.
  • [OPTIONAL] If you plan to use InventorCuda or InventorCudaAlgorithm libraries, you must have an NVIDIA GPU and driver compliant with CUDA.
    Note that these libraries are not (yet) available with MacOS.
  • [OPTIONAL] If you use your own installation of CMake, it must be version 2.8.12 or higher.
  • NOTE: Remote display environments like RDP (Windows) or VNC (Linux) are not supported unless OpenGL 4 is available. Typically these environments only provide OpenGL 1.x support.

Windows

  • 1.8 GB is approximate disk space requirement for an Open Inventor installation.
  • We recommend Visual Studio Professional edition. The Express edition is not supported.
  • Operating systems are supported in the last service pack available. It is recommended to update your system using Microsoft Update.
  • The /DELAYLOAD (Delay Load Import) linker option is not supported by Open Inventor DLLs.
  • In order to be able to use the Cg shading language or CUDA, you must get Cg.dll or CUDA from NVIDIA.
  • [OPTIONAL] Qt: 5.6. If you wish to rebuild a complete Qt 5.6 distribution, please use the following arguments for the configuration step (from inside the Qt source directory):
    configure -opensource -opengl desktop -debug-and-release -no-qml-debug -no-icu -skip qtwebengine -platform %mkspec% -prefix %WORKSPACE%\Qt5\Qt -nomake tests -nomake examples
    Where %mkspec% points to win32-msvc201x (where x can be 0, 2, 3 or 5)  and %WORKSPACE% is the prefix of the directory where will be generated the binaries.
  • [OPTIONAL] Wx: 2.8.4.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 (v15.5.1) (64 or 32 bit)

  • Operating System
    • Microsoft Windows 10 (64 bits)
    • Microsoft Windows 7 (64 or 32 bit).
  • CUDA 9.2

Please note that latest Open Inventor 9.9 version built with Visual Studio 2017 can be used with application built with Visual Studio 2019.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Update2 (64 or 32 bit)

  • Operating System
    • Microsoft Windows 10 (64 bits)
    • Microsoft Windows 7 (64 or 32 bit).
  • Upgrade 2 is required for Microsoft Visual Studio 2015.
  • CUDA 9.2

Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Update4 (64 or 32 bit)

  • Operating System
    • Microsoft Windows 10 (64 bits)
    • Microsoft Windows 7 (64 or 32 bit).
  • Upgrade 4 is required for Microsoft Visual Studio 2013.
  • Open Inventor for Visual Studio 2013 does not support the XP compatibility mode (aka v120_xp toolset).
  • CUDA 9.2

.NET Framework version requirements:

  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2017: Framework .NET 4.7.1
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2015: Framework .NET 4.6.1
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2013: Framework .NET 4.5.1

IMPORTANT NOTES

Open Inventor 9.9 is available for Visual Studio 2017, 2015, 2013.
These are separate installs with separate libs and DLLs.
The libs and DLLs can be distinguished using the right-click Properties menu item in Windows Explorer.
You must use the Open Inventor install that corresponds to the compiler version that you're using.

The following table gives the recommended Open Inventor release according to the Microsoft Developer environment:

Microsoft IDE Open Inventor Release
Visual Studio Pro 2017 v15.5.1 Open Inventor 9.9.x for Visual Studio 2017
Visual Studio Pro 2015 U2 Open Inventor 9.9.x for Visual Studio 2015
Visual Studio Pro 2013 U4 Open Inventor 9.9 .xfor Visual Studio 2013
Visual Studio Pro 2012 U4 Open Inventor 9.8.x for Visual Studio 2012
Visual Studio Pro 2010 SP1 Open Inventor 9.6.x for Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio Pro 2008 SP1 Open Inventor 9.6.x for Visual Studio 2008
Visual Studio Pro 2013 U1 Open Inventor 9.4.1 for Visual Studio 2013
Visual Studio Pro 2012 U3 Open Inventor 9.4.1 for Visual Studio 2012
Visual Studio Pro 2010 SP0 Open Inventor 8.6.x for Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio Pro 2008 SP0 Open Inventor 8.6.x for Visual Studio 2008
Visual Studio Pro 2005 SP1 Open Inventor 8.6.x for Visual Studio 2005
Visual Studio .NET 2003 Open Inventor 7.2.x for Visual Studio .NET 2003
Visual Studio 6.0 (C++) Open Inventor 6.0.3 for Visual C++ 6.0

Additional notes for old compilers:

      • Visual C++ 6.0: Any modules of your application that include <windows.h> and Open Inventor header files must be compiled using the STRICT compiler directive.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

      • 1GB is approximate disk space requirement for an Open Inventor installation.
      •  X11 R6 development and run-time environment
      •  Motif 2.3 development and run-time environment
      • OpenGL: an accelerated graphics driver is required to get enhanced performance. The default graphics driver (provided by the X-server) is not fully accelerated.
      • [OPTIONAL] Qt: 5.6. If you wish to rebuild a complete Qt 5.6 distribution, please use the following arguments for the configuration step (from inside the Qt source directory):
        configure -prefix $WORKSPACE/Qt5/Qt -opensource -opengl -skip qt3d -no-icu -no-qml-debug -qt-xcb -nomake tests -nomake examples
        Where %WORKSPACE% is the prefix of the directory where will be generated the binaries.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x (64 bit)

      • Operating System:  Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 7.0 or higher.
      • Motif: OpenMotif 2.3.3
      • Compiler: gcc 4.8
      • C library: glibc 2.12
      • [OPTIONAL] Wx: 2.8.12
      • [OPTIONAL] CUDA 9.2

MacOS (before Open Inventor v9.9.21)

      • 1GB is approximate disk space requirement for an Open Inventor installation.
      • Operating System
        • MacOS from 10.10 up to 10.12
      • Compiler: Clang 6.0
      • Qt: 5.6. If you wish to rebuild a complete Qt 5.6 distribution, please use the following arguments for the configuration step (from inside the Qt source directory):
        configure -prefix $WORKSPACE/Qt5/Qt -opensource -opengl -skip qt3d -debug-and-release -no-icu -no-qml-debug -nomake tests -nomake examples
        Where %WORKSPACE% is the prefix of the directory where will be generated the binaries.
      • [LIMITATIONS]
        Please also note that they are some limitations under MacOS:

        • OpenGL stereo (aka Raw Stereo) is not available
        • SoMultipleInstance and SoAlgebraicShape (and subclasses) are not available.
        • Internal multi-threading optimizations are not available (OpenMP is not activated)
        • GLSL Shader 330 is not supported on this platform.
          All features requiring this technology are not available (e.g. SoAlgebraicShape).

Java

JDK/JRE requirements

      • Open Inventor Java is tested and validated against JDK/JRE from Oracle

        • for Open Inventor before v9.9.21 and against Open JDK 8 starting with Open Inventor v9.9.21

      • On Windows, you also need Visual Studio 2015 Runtime (crt). The redistributable package for this version of Visual Studio is delivered in %OIVJHOME%\jre\bin: vcredist_x86.exe or vcredist_x64.exe.

Support of OSGi

Open Inventor is partially compliant to OSGi requirements: most of Open Inventor java classes run successfully in any osgi application. However overriding some methods when extending an Open Inventor classes may not be possible especially when such methods are invoked from a native multithreaded context.

Known Limitations

      • Linux and MacOS platforms
        • the load of all dependencies of JNI libraries is required when the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH or DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH is not defined
        • Open Inventor JNI libraries are com.openinventor.*.so. Thus all other shared lib that are linked with any jni lib must be loaded explicitly in your application
        • The load of fei_proxy_ippro51 library (which is a dependency of com.openinventor.imageviz) is always required even if ImageViz classes are not used
      • Windows platforms
        • Loading of native libraries of Open Inventor is useless. JNI libraries and their dependencies are automatically loaded on Windows. So we suggest to not call any System.loadLibrary regarding Open Inventor native dlls.

Graphics boards and drivers

The following section gives the list of graphics boards validated by FEI Visualization Sciences Group for Open Inventor.

Open Inventor should run on any graphics system (board+driver) that provides a complete implementation of OpenGL 2.1 or higher (certain features may not be available depending on the OpenGL version and extensions supported). However board and driver bugs are not unusual. We recommend using a professional graphics boards in order to benefit from the professional support offered by the vendors (driver bugs fixes, etc...).

Professional graphics boards

Vendor Family Series
NVIDIA Quadro Turing, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, RTX
AMD ATI FirePro W, V
      • All driver bugs are submitted to the vendors. A fix may be expected in a future driver release.

Standard graphics boards

Vendor Family Series
NVIDIA GeForce Turing, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, RTX
AMD ATI Radeon since GCN 1.1
Intel HD Graphics Broadwell, Skylake
      • Due to vendors support policies, on standard graphics boards we are not able to commit to providing a fix for bugs caused by the driver.
      • Note regarding Intel platforms: We have detected an issue on Ivy Bridge GPU (HD graphics, HD2500, HD4000) that prevents the OIV shader cache mechanism from working as expected. In order to be able to run OIV correctly on these plateforms user must set OIV_SHADER_DISK_CACHE envvar to 0 in order to get OIV working. Newer Intel platforms such as HD 4600 are not concerned by this issue.

General recommendations

      • We recommend to always use a recent driver version for your graphics board.
      • The amount of GPU memory needed depends on the application. We recommend a minimum of 1GB on the board.
      • The memory bandwidth and the number of compute units provided by a graphics board can have a big impact on performance.
      • With an NVIDIA Quadro board we recommend to use the driver profile "Workstation app - dynamic streaming" for most applications, especially if using large geometry objects and/or VolumeViz rendering.  Applications with many small geometry objects should experiment with “3D App” profiles.
      • On laptops providing NVidia Optimus technology, we recommend to force the use of the NVIDIA GPU in order to get the best experience possible in all conditions.