On Tue, 2011-03-01 at 09:55 -0800, Brian Paul wrote: > On 03/01/2011 09:51 AM, Roland Scheidegger wrote: > > Am 01.03.2011 16:23, schrieb Brian Paul: > >> On 03/01/2011 04:18 AM, Blaž Tomažič wrote: > >>> On Mon, 2011-02-28 at 16:39 -0800, Brian Paul wrote: > >>>> On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 4:13 PM, Blaž Tomažič<blaz.toma...@gmail.com> > >>>> wrote: > >>>>> Hi Mesa developers, > >>>>> > >>>>> I am really interested in Gallium3D and I'm thinking about a project for > >>>>> my diploma (I think this is the same as bachelor's degree) on a computer > >>>>> university. I'm thinking about writing a Glide state tracker for > >>>>> Gallium3D. I know that Glide hasn't been used for a decade, but I think > >>>>> it would be relatively "easy" to implement an old 3D API and a great way > >>>>> to learn a part of Gallium3D on the way. > >>>>> > >>>>> Some old games (only Glide: Need for Speed 2; Glide and OpenGL: Unreal, > >>>>> Quake 2) used Glide API for rendering and Gallium3D could therefore > >>>>> accelerate them on newer hardware and more importantly, render them with > >>>>> nicer graphics instead of software rendering as is with some glide only > >>>>> games. I don't know if there were any Linux games, but Gallium3D works > >>>>> on Windows too if I'm not mistaken. > >>>>> > >>>>> So I have a few question for you: > >>>>> - How hard and how much work would be involved in implementing such > >>>>> an > >>>>> API? (Any help on implementing it would be welcomed and appreciated of > >>>>> course) > >>>>> - Are Glide to OpenGL wrappers a better solution because of changing > >>>>> nature of Gallium3D interface? (Personally I think they are, but I would > >>>>> like to work directly on Gallium) > >>>>> - Do you think this project would fit well in Gallium3D or do you > >>>>> have > >>>>> any other/better proposals for a project including Gallium3D? > >>>> > >>>> I don't mean to discourage you, but I this probably wouldn't be a very > >>>> good project. > >>>> > >>>> The Glide API and 3dfx hardware is lacking in a number of areas, > >>>> particularly shaders. Gallium was intended for newer hardware so it > >>>> wouldn't be a good fit for this older technology. > >>>> > >>>> I'm sure there are other projects you could do related to > >>>> OpenGL/gallium if that's where your interest lies. Other people on > >>>> this list might have some ideas. I could probably come up with a few > >>>> otherwise. What do you think? > >>>> > >>>> -Brian > >>> > >>> I know that Glide is an old technology and probably I should test this > >>> games if they even run on newer OSs. But still, Gallium supports OpenGL > >>> 1.x functionality and Glide is a subset of it. Fixed-pipe functionality > >>> is easily implemented with shaders so I think that it could be > >>> implemented. > >> > >> The issue isn't converting fixed-function GL rendering (e.g. 1.x > >> functionality) into shaders, it's converting Gallium shaders into > >> Glide/3dfx fixed-function. > > > > But he was only talking about implementing a glide state tracker hence I > > can't see why he'd need to do that. > > Oops, I misread the email. I thought Blaz was proposing a glide > driver, not a state tracker. > Yes I was proposing a state tracker only. It seemed to that me we weren't thinking about the same thing. > > > So I think conceptually this would work just fine. > > Still, it might not be something terribly useful. For one, if you'd want > > to run this with windows, while gallium is OS-independent, the hw > > drivers surely are not. Hence you'd also need to write a d3d or ogl > > backend driver for gallium if you'd want it to run hw-accelerated with > > windows. Also, for this really old glide api, opengl wrappers are > > probably just fine - noone is going to write new glide apps anyway. > > Agreed. > Ok, I see now that writing a Glide state tracker would mostly be a waste of time. I like Keith's idea about automated bug-finder driver, maybe I'll take a crack at it. First I'll take a look at some Gallium code and see how drivers are implemented to see how this would work.
On a side note, is there any progress on implementing OpenCL on Gallium? I'm asking just out of curiosity, I think that implementing OpenCL would be an overkill for me. Blaž _______________________________________________ mesa-dev mailing list mesa-dev@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/mesa-dev
