Nvidia

Unknown said:

From when V8 2004 was GPU accelerated...

MicroStation for many years, up until MicroStation V8 2004 Edition, used OpenGL as its graphic engine.  The graphic card vendors, such as NVidia, provide an OpenGL interface and hence could claim that MicroStation made use of their libraries.

From MicroSation XM the graphics engine has relied on Microsoft DirectX.  NVidia of course supports DirectX but could not claim to directly support MicroStation.

Unknown said:

If so, why in the first link we see the "old" Bentley Logo?

That's an issue for Bentley Systems marketing to discuss with NVidia marketing.

Unknown said:

It's because Microstation is a CPU base program?

MicroStation's core 3D engine uses the CPU.  The CAD engine passes element display to the graphic sub-system.  The graphic sub-system passes information to the DirectX API which in turn calls on the graphic card drivers to load its video memory and show us those vectors.  For simple 2D graphics, that's a long chain of communication; but for 3D rendered images there are plenty of opportunities for the graphic card to take over image processing.

Hi Jose,

Unknown said:

Why do we see Bentley here: (very nice) ... But no mention in Microstation and Bentley in the catalog:

I agree with John it's the question for Bentley marketing. But it's not big surprise in my opinion: Bentley has never cooperated closely with graphics cards manufacturers. I remember even in times when high end cards were really expensive and specialized drivers were required for optimum performance, so there were lists of recommended or certified card models for professional graphics progams, Bentley provided only general specification.

But maybe it's also because Nvidia is not active to promote companies/software oriented solely to DirectX (and not OpenGL). What I see in last few years, one from negative issues typical for Nvidia is really terrible quality of DirectX support (bugs, solving missing HW support by software workarounds etc.). Unfortunately MicroStation is DirectX based, so Nvidia orientation to OpenGL and GPU computing does not fit well with Bentley strategy.

Unknown said:

From when V8 2004 was GPU accelerated...

As Jon wrote, MicroStation has been able to use GPU acceleration for many years. I don't remember when QuickVision acceleration was added to MicroStationu (95 or SE?), but it allows to switch a particula view to be displayed using OpenGL acceleration.

In MicroStation V8 XM Edition two changes happened: MicroStation switched from OpenGL to DirectX (so any consumer gaming card played well with MicroStation) and the acceleration stopped to be optional and has been used always automatically. The question is whether MicroStation can be treated as "GPU accelerated", because the most of MicroStation is single thread CPU code. On the other hand, beside display acceleration, DirectX (and GPU power) is used also in some printing features, so from this perspective, MicroStation is GPU accelerated ;-)

With regards,

  Jan