Slashdot Mirror

The non-comercial Linux users do not like to buy software, ever. No one will make money becuase you dont buy.

Who are these "non-comercial[sic] Linux users" that you are talking about? I can't speak for any other Linux user, but I don't mind paying for software. In fact, many Linux users actually do pay for software. This is known because that software is the games that people talk about having to reboot into Windows in order to run.

I can, however, talk about why I don't buy Linux games. So far, I've bought three of them. I've got "Civilization, Call to Power", I've got Quake II, and I've got Quake III. (I can definitely confirm the poor sales of the last. The Half-Price Books near my house has maybe a dozen copies in those cool limited-edition tins.) Of those, the only one I paid full price for was CivCTP. I chose to pay full price for CivCTP in order to support Loki and encourage others to produce games for Linux.

My primary difficulty with the current crop of Linux games is the fascination that those who create those games have with 3-d acceleration. I don't know the incantations needed to get hardware 3-d acceleration under Linux. I haven't yet been able to figure out which card to buy that offers 3-d acceleration under Linux or which software to install to cause it to occur. I go to Web sites like Linux3D.org and I leave more confused than anything else.

In particular, the cards that are on sale down at the local Best Buy don't seem to correspond to anything listed in the compatability list.

So, I've bought these games (and the Half-Price Books has Heavy Gear II for Linux for $14.95, but I haven't purchased it) but I can't play them because they require stuff that I don't have. Maybe if someone ported a game that didn't require hardware 3-d acceleration, it would sell better. I know I'd be more likely to pay full price for it.

For those interested, there was a BOF meeting at SIGGRAPH 2000 dealing with Linux and 3D. The notes by Brian Paul are already available: SIGGRAPH 2000 Linux / OpenGL / 3D Birds of a Feather Meeting

Unfortunately, Slashdot is much like other discussion forums in that the vast majority of the other participants are unable to read your mind.

Please tell us what your requirements are. It's nice and all to hear about your current solution, but what you described says absolutely nothing about what you need.

Does your application require fullscreen 30-fps video, periodic stillframes, or something in between?

What kind of processing do you need to do? Does it need to be realtime? Could it be done in software on a fast CPU (like an Athlon)? By edge detections are you talking about simple convolutions with a Sobel filter or something much more involved?

What are you trying to use OpenGL to draw? Are you just using it to do 2D edge detection, or are you rendering a 3D scene? How is it related to the video inputs? Are the video cameras digitizing control points, to manipulate a model in realtime? Are they digitizing textures, to map on various surfaces in realtime? Or is it something completely different?

Anyway, the Video4Linux web page has information on available video input solutions, such as BTTV, and Linux3d.org has links to most of the major OpenGL-related projects.

What you want to do is to check out Darryl Strauss's excellent work with the with the VooDoo 3 (& Banshee) XServer. Until you install this you will not see any better than 320x200 on your card. Darryl's site is at www.linux3d.org, but the status of the XServer development is at www.linux3d.org/status.html. Be sure to read whatever you find there, there's lots of good information, and you'll need it all. After you get X working correctly, for instance, you'll want to install the Glide RPM's to get your 3d working...

If you're as new to Linux as you're saying, you may want to consider waiting a while before playing with the brand new versions of the 3DFX drivers that are being announced in this /. article, at least until they stabilize a bit. Finally, after you've R all TFM you can find, if you're still having problems and need assistance getting things working, you can point your favorite news reading client at news.3dfx.com and look for the various Voodoo Linux newsgroups. (I don't have the exact names with me at work, sorry.) The folks there are typically very responsive and helpful, but, please, read the last few weeks worth of posts to see if your question has already been answered before posting yourself.

(Hmmmm.... just noticed that www.linux3d.org doesn't seem to be responding right now. A little busy with the big news, perhaps?)

Good Luck!

What you want to do is to check out Darryl Strauss's excellent work with the with the VooDoo 3 (& Banshee) XServer. Until you install this you will not see any better than 320x200 on your card. Darryl's site is at www.linux3d.org, but the status of the XServer development is at www.linux3d.org/status.html. Be sure to read whatever you find there, there's lots of good information, and you'll need it all. After you get X working correctly, for instance, you'll want to install the Glide RPM's to get your 3d working...

If you're as new to Linux as you're saying, you may want to consider waiting a while before playing with the brand new versions of the 3DFX drivers that are being announced in this /. article, at least until they stabilize a bit. Finally, after you've R all TFM you can find, if you're still having problems and need assistance getting things working, you can point your favorite news reading client at news.3dfx.com and look for the various Voodoo Linux newsgroups. (I don't have the exact names with me at work, sorry.) The folks there are typically very responsive and helpful, but, please, read the last few weeks worth of posts to see if your question has already been answered before posting yourself.

(Hmmmm.... just noticed that www.linux3d.org doesn't seem to be responding right now. A little busy with the big news, perhaps?)

Good Luck!

Yeah, right... only 3 or 4 Linux users in the whole world have either a Voodoo {1,Rush,2,Banshee,3} or nVida Riva TNT(2) or Amiga Warp3D!!
I for sure know more than 4 Linux users who have supported hardware, and besides, if you check Linux 3D, you'll se that support for other cards is under way as well!!
---
Ilmari
Remove the capital letters from the e-mail-address

As a comparison of what's possible right now, I've got a Voodoo3 in a Celeron 300A@450, and am able to get 35 to 50fps in Q3Test at 1024x768 with all the quality options set to their maximum! (...under Linux, of course.)

Check out the www.linux3d.org site for more details on the Glide driver which makes this possible. It's not Open, but it's free and it's here now.

Disclaimer: I don't work for 3DFX, I'm just in awe of one of their cards.

Check out http://www.linux3d.org/. This site is run by Daryll Strauss, who does all the glide ports to Linux...

As far as I know, Voodoo is the only consumer-grade 3D hardware support under Linux. (nVidia only has a 2D X server.) Daryll is also porting to Linux/PPC and Alpha..

However, I don't think SLI is supported under Linux...