Welcome to the official site for Geometric Tools, a collection of source code for computing in the fields of mathematics, geometry, graphics, image analysis and physics. The engine is written in C++ 14 and, as such, has portable access to standard constructs for multithreading programming on cores. The engine also supports high-performance computing using general purpose GPU programming (GPGPU). Portions of the code are described in various books as well as in documents available at this site. The source code is freely downloadable, covered by the Boost License.

If you use Linux and OpenGL, you need OpenGL 4.5 or later. I use the latest NVIDIA proprietary drivers. Any attempt to run the sample applications without the specified OpenGL version will fail gracefully with the console-window output: OpenGL 4.5 is required.


Geometric Tools Engine 7.0. The mathematics code is in a header-only library (GTMathematics). A mathematics library with GPU-based implementations is provided (GTMathematicsGPU). The CPU-based common graphics engine code is in its own library (GTGraphics). DirectX 11 wrappers are provided for graphics (GTGraphicsDX11) and applications (GTApplicationsDX11). OpenGL 4.5 wrappers are provided for graphics (GTGraphicsGL45) and applications (GTApplicationsGL45).

Released on January 7, 2024
Microsoft Windows 10 or 11; DirectX 11.1 or OpenGL 4.5; Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 and 2022; LLVM (clang-cl); Intel C++ Compiler 2024
Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS; OpenGL 4.5, NVIDIA graphics drivers; Visual Studio Code 1.85.1; CMake 3.28.1; gcc 11.4.0
Fedora 39; OpenGL 4.5, NVIDIA graphics drivers; Visual Studio Code 1.85.1; CMake 3.27.7; gcc 13.2.1
openSuse Leap 15.5; OpenGL 4.5, NVIDIA graphics drivers; Visual Studio Code 1.85.1; CMake 3.20.4; gcc 7.5.0

The source code distribution is available as a download from this site but is also available at Geometric Tools on GitHub. The zip file at our website is a snapshot that is posted after a significant batch of changes are made. However, the GitHub repository always contains the latest fixes and updates as they are made in GTE.


Geometric Tools Library. The motivation for Geometric Tools was my graduate studies in medical image processing; it was then named MAGIC Software (My Alternate Graphics and Image Code). When I entered the 3D video game industry, I spent less time on image code and more time on graphics, physics and mathematics code. Much of the code was a result of helping people who posted problems to the Usenet forum comp.graphics.algorithms. Technical support questions over recent years have made it clear to me that the mathematics and geometry code is what people use the most, so I will focus on those topics now.

The Geometric Tools Library (GTL) will be a reworking of the mathematics and geometry code in GTE followed by adding new code as time permits. I am attempting to streamline the code, to provide consistent naming and interfaces, and to extend the capabilities. Some of the GTE geometry code already contains multithreading, especially useful when the numeric type involves rational arithmetic and arbitrary-precision arithmetic, and I plan to include multithreading in more algorithms. Separate code will be available for GPGPU-based implementations using HLSL, GLSL and CUDA and for SIMD-based implementations using Intel's SSE or AVX. I will be adding a framework for a mixture of rational and symbolic computing, which is described in my book Robust and Error-Free Geometric Computing.

The mathematics and geometry code base has associated documentation and a unit-test suite. Code for graphics and applications exists only for samples that illustrate the GTL algorithms. These will be contained in separate libraries that are provided as-is without unit-test support. The GTL source code will be freely downloadable and subject to the Boost License.

I do not have a reliable estimated date for posting GTL. When I do, I will announce it here. The GTL code will be available at GitHub.


Special thanks to Justin "Satriani" Hunt for the website design and support.