IVL Data

Supported Data Formats

A component is the fundamental building block for a pixel value. For instance, the red, green, blue, and alpha components make up an RGBA pixel value. A pixel value may consist of either one or four components. The format argument to glDrawPixels and other routines specifies the number of pixel components.

Each component may be specified as one of several image types. IVL currently supports the following image types as arguments to glDrawPixels:

GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT
GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE

This means that you can provide luminance (single-component) pixel values as either 8-bit or 16-bit quantities and RGBA (four-component) pixel values as 8-bit quantities. (Note: IVL does not currently support the combination of type GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT and format GL_RGBA.)

IVL currently supports the following image data formats:

GL_LUMINANCE: This is a one-component data format that stores luminance values. The data can be in an 8-bit or 16-bit format.
GL_RGBA: This is a four-component data format that stores red, green, blue, and alpha values. In C language programs, declare this as a (one-dimensional) array of bytes so as to avoid byte-swapping problems with certain computer architectures.

Figure 3-1 Supported Data Formats

Pixel Unpacking

Information on how IVL unpacks pixels is available in the "Unpack Pixels" section of the "Overview of the Image Visualization Library (IVL)" chapter.

IVL Data

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Supported Data Formats

Pixel Unpacking