VirtualGL is a library which allows most Linux OpenGL applications to be
remotely displayed to a thin client without the need to alter the
applications in any way. VGL inserts itself into an application at run
time and intercepts a handful of GLX calls, which it reroutes to the
server's display (which presumably has a 3D accelerator attached). This
causes all 3D rendering to occur on the server's display. As each frame
is rendered by the server, VirtualGL reads back the pixels from the
server's framebuffer and sends them to the client for re-compositing into
the appropriate X Window. VirtualGL can be used to give hardware-
-accelerated 3D capabilities to VNC or other remote display environments
that lack GLX support. In a LAN environment, it can also be used with
its built-in motion-JPEG video delivery system to remotely display
full-screen 3D applications at 20+ frames/second.
VirtualGL is based upon ideas presented in various academic papers on
this topic, including "A Generic Solution for Hardware-Accelerated Remote
Visualization" (Stegmaier, Magallon, Ertl 2002) and "A Framework for
Interactive Hardware Accelerated Remote 3D-Visualization" (Engel, Sommer,
Ertl 2000.)