# Survey about updating minimum OpenGL version to 4.1
**URL:** https://discourse.vtk.org/t/survey-about-updating-minimum-opengl-version-to-4-1/13631
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [March 25, 2024, 11:41pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/survey-about-updating-minimum-opengl-version-to-4-1/13631 "2024-03-25T23:41:50Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jaswantp](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/jaswantp)
#### Post date: [March 25, 2024, 11:41pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/survey-about-updating-minimum-opengl-version-to-4-1/13631/1 "2024-03-25T23:41:50Z")
We’re proposing to bump the minimum OpenGL version from 3.2 to 4.1. As VTK uses a core profile context and asks for the highest available version from the OS, chances are you’re already using 4.6. Please let us know if your team requires VTK to support GPUs with OpenGL 4.0 or lower. We could look into the use case if needed and make necessary updates.
This backward compatibility is starting to hamper the introduction of newer robust rendering capabilities like tessellation shaders, compute shaders, etc. In the future, VTK will move over to WebGPU, however, that is a long term goal, best discussed in another post.
Here are some resources to get the general idea of systems supporting OpenGL 4.1
1. [https://developer.apple.com/opengl/OpenGL-Capabilities-Tables.pdf](https://developer.apple.com/opengl/OpenGL-Capabilities-Tables.pdf) (pg 34 onwards)
2. [https://www.phoronix.com/news/Zink-OpenGL-4.1-Mesa-21.0](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Zink-OpenGL-4.1-Mesa-21.0)
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### Author:  [@jcfr](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/jcfr)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2024, 6:08pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/survey-about-updating-minimum-opengl-version-to-4-1/13631/2 "2024-03-26T18:08:10Z")
Rational for choosing `4.1` instead of a newer version\[1\]:
- macOS only supports up to 4.1\[2\]
- Mesa 12 onward support OpenGL 4.3 (Ubuntu 20.04 has mesa 21.2.6, Debian 10 has 18.3.6, many distributions considered ‘old’ have a mesa version \> 18.)
For more details, see [https://gitlab.kitware.com/vtk/vtk/-/issues/19291](https://gitlab.kitware.com/vtk/vtk/-/issues/19291)
* * *
1. [History of OpenGL - OpenGL Wiki](https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/History_of_OpenGL)
2. [c++ - Develop using OpenGL 4.x on OSX Big Sur - Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65802625/develop-using-opengl-4-x-on-osx-big-sur)
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### Author:  [@MicK7](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/MicK7)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2024, 8:11am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/survey-about-updating-minimum-opengl-version-to-4-1/13631/3 "2024-09-06T08:11:20Z")
Will the bump to OpenGL 4.1 allow for delegating “High Order” solution tesselation and rendering directly to the GPU ? When is the switch planned ? VTK 9.4 ?
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### Author:  [@jaswantp](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/jaswantp)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2024, 1:27pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/survey-about-updating-minimum-opengl-version-to-4-1/13631/4 "2024-09-06T13:27:02Z")
Yea. VTK already does the tessellation of a new dataobject subclass called `vtkCellGrid` on the GPU. The switch could be done by 9.4
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### Author:  [@jamesobutler](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/jamesobutler)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2025, 9:25pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/survey-about-updating-minimum-opengl-version-to-4-1/13631/5 "2025-04-13T21:25:24Z")
@jaswantp Since it has been a little over a year since your original post on this topic, has there been any further discussion of bumping the minimum OpenGL version? Might this occur for the upcoming VTK 9.5 release?