Mesa is an alternative OpenGL implementation that let you run graphic application while not using your GPU driver.
It can be very useful for a number of cases :
- GPU is unsupported by OS (Old intel GPU)
- GPU driver is incompatible with ParaView for some reasons (Intel Driver current issue)
- The OpenGL version provided by the driver is not high enough (VM, Remote Desktop)
ParaView has been shipped with Mesa on Linux and MacOS for a long time, but building it on Windows is not something we have been trying to do so far.
Thankfully, a github project is providing release of Mesa for Windows that can be used directly.
https://github.com/pal1000/mesa-dist-win
Disclaimer : This code is not supported by Kitware and the binary are not built by Kitware, use as your own risk.
Here is a steps by steps guide to use this with ParaView (tested with 5.8.0) on an up-to-date Windows 10.
- Download ParaView release from https://www.paraview.org/download/
- Download the last release-msvc of mesa-dist-win (tested with 20.0.6) : https://github.com/pal1000/mesa-dist-win/releases
- Extract it anywhere
- copy
x64/opengl32.dll,libgallium_wgl.dllandx64/libglapi.dlltoParaView_Path/bin/ - open a Windows terminal
cd ParaView_Path/bin/set MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.5paraview.exe
You can check that it is actually working in Help → About