Slashdot Mirror
Mesa 5.0 Released
Eugenia writes "Mesa 5.0 has been released. It implements the OpenGL 1.4 specification." There's more information as to what's been fixed/added/changed on their SF.net project page.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
When will Mesa 5.0 be incorporated into Debian stable?
So that's all it takes, eh?
<grin>
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
It'd be interresting to know how this release compares to other OpenGL implementations on Windows. Anyone looked into this?
Why Windows? It's always interresting to see how any open software solutions stack up versus their proprietary cousins on a proprietary system.
.: Max Romantschuk
But the new mesa seems to have intelligent workload distribution between the cpu and the gpu, i e
:). Server gaming woohoo!
glxgears running in a small window - 200 fps, average 2% cpu load(with Mesa 4.1 it was 800 fps 100% load),
running maximized in 1600x1200 - 80 fps, 100% load(exactly as with Mesa 4.1).
And all the games and etc run at exactly the same speeds with less cpu load.
All I can say is this is great - nobody needs insane fps numbers above 100 and it saves cpu for my poor apache running in the background
Join the elite! Post at score:2! Ghostwheel is online.
Hey, OpenGL is at least standardized, something you can build on for years. Nobody can guarantee you that the next version of DirectX will be compatible with the current version.
In fact, there are only two 3D APIs that are standardized and (more or less) widely used: OpenGL and OpenInventor.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
I used to use Mesa years ago as a software-only OpenGL-like API, on a system for which there was no OpenGL implementation, but I was writing code to run on a system that did have it (these were MacOS 7.x and an Indy, if memory serves). But if you have an OpenGL driver, what does Mesa do? Surely the libraries that come with the driver implement the API? Or does it just let you write 1.4 code with a card/driver that only supports up to 1.2 in the hardware, and do the new 1.4 features in software?
A good game generally needs a good budget to back it.
A flashy game with a lot of graphics may need a big budget. But those games are not necessarily good, nor do good games necessarily need flashy graphics. For example, many of the movie-tie-in 3D games are financed heavily and anywhere from mediocre to horrible. On the other hand, excellent games like chess or go are of utmost graphical simplicity, and they have been refined over centuries and millenia in a process akin to open source. Furthermore, there are quite a few excellent open source games with minimal graphics and excellent gameplay.
Closed source, heavily financed games satisfy a yearning for novelty. They spend a lot of money on eye candy and pushing technology to the limit. But really good game design is a long-term, open process. For computer games, that has barely begun. I suspect that in another few years, you are going to see open source games whose graphics is simpler than Doom but whose gameplay beats anything commercially available. And closed source games won't be able to compete with that because they simply can't have thousands of game players contributing directly to the evolution of the game.
Open source is slow--but eventually, it gets there, and it usually ends up doing a better job.
Licensing fees for DirectX? If that were true, i'm surprised we're not seeing more OpenGL-development under Win32 (although there's a lot going on already, there's still far more DX-development) ..
.. they may change it completly and scrap backwards compability or they may just leave it like it is (btw, backwards compability has in fact, been maintaned quite good when it comes to DX. You may write code in DX8 that worked on DX3 etc).
The "problem" with DX from a developers point is that you can't be sure about what MS decides to do with the API in the next revision
I've spent time developing for both APIs and my personal favourite is still OpenGL, mostly because i can use the same code on different platforms.
i agree. OpenGL lost the lead a long time ago.
So? Who cares? I'd much rather use an open API than some snazzy, proprietary thing.
Wait for 2.0 to come out. MS is going to lock Linux out of 2.0 as some of the api's are based on dx9
Again, who cares? If MS has the power to lock Linux out of OpenGL 2.0 (through patents?), then open source will just not use it and instead evolve OpenGL 1.* in a different direction.
Your just saying that because you are: A) Stuck on a window machine B) You don't know how to use linux. Guess what, you still have to pay for a game even if its on an open source platform. If the game is good people will pay it, the reason that there are less users is because there aren't enough games on Linux, I'm stuck dual booting between Windows and Linux because of this. Why do you think that there are so many Linux game servers. Elite Force for an example is one, it would be dead today if it wasn't for Linux. Linux's Golden Age will come and I'm sure your going to :)
A) Have to use linux because Microsoft went bankrupt.
B) Figure out how to use Linux. :)
I didn't have a use for this vacuous comment, yet you posted it anyway.
In a way this troolhoor is right. I was using Mesa on Sun and Linux machines years ago, when SGI was about the only place you could find OpenGL professionally. It wasn't OpenGL that cost anything, it was those damn SGI boxes and high-end video cards! Mesa was also the first to provide OpenGL for the 3fx Voodoo, the first consumer-level 3d video card. The really funny thing is, if you've ever done anything 3d in Linux, you've almost certainly used Mesa before, but I'm taking this troll too seriously.
Now mod this and the parent post into oblivion.
I think he's talking about the licensing fees for windows (you need windows to use the latest DirectX). The DirectX SDK (like all Windows SDKs) is free.
This is not correct. Future versions of DirectX are always guaranteed to provide the prior COM interfaces. For example, you can have an old DirectX 3 program running just fine under DirectX 8.1.
As for OpenGL being standartized, if you want to support newer features like pixel (fragment) shaders or vertices in AGP memory, you NEED to use vendor extensions, which means separate code for nVidia and ATI.
You're still depending on the good will of Microsoft. DirectX is still proprietary, and Microsoft can do with it whatever they want.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
Mesa is very tightly bound to XFree86. Are there instructions out there for how to replace the Mesa that ships with XFree86 4.x with this new version? Does anyone know when XFree86 4.3 is due out and which Mesa version it will have?
I'd like to try this out and see if I can finally get some decent FPS on my Radeon 7000, but I don't want to sacrifice stability by messing with Mesa if I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Craig Howard
so.. which is better vaporware.. properiaty vaporware or open vaporware..
dx doesn't come on straight on backwards compatibility btw. try playing master of orion 2 on win2k.. it either works or doesnt, most probably you'll lose your cursor.
moo2 is dx2 btw..(the win32 vers).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
appearantly youve never been introduced to Gentoo Linux.My Quake3 runs so much faster than on any windows.Could be that an O.S. compiled and fitted to your machine will be the fastest running for games.hey, my two cents.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Microsoft will have the good will to support those prior interfaces - do Age of Empires or Age of Kings ring a bell? They will not stop supporting their prior games in the foreseeable future.
Good, 'cos I'm having some problems trying to run GORILLAS.BAS on WinXP.
Still, I agree, MS is not going to shoot themselves in the foot
by breaking backward compatibility if they don't have to.
Yes, OpenGL is open, but do you think anyone cares?
The computer games industry is like any other business, it is run by economics.
The kids want games with bleeding-edge 3d, and unless you're name is John Carmack, the industry is not going to support anything else than DirectX.
Now OpenGL 2.0 has the chance to turn the tables;
If GL2 can equal DirectX,
the game industry will use it,
if not for other reasons than economic reasons. Why? One word: Portability.
Porting to the Mac (and maybe even linux) is no problem with OpenGL, but if your code depends on DirectX: forget about it.
Now which game developer would knowingly limit themselves to the MS platform, if they had an equal alternative?
Which game producer would not want to be able to release a Mac or Linux port, at little extra cost?
Last time i checked, the Driver Development Kit is no longer free. It's not expensive (relatively... just shipping), but you can't download it anymore.
http://www.microsoft.com/ddk/
Why did they do that? Beats me.
silic
Not all "Real Gamers" are fixed on the PC. Many of them use the PC to emulate their favourite system. The reason why I use Linux (some of the emulators use mesa) for emulation is that i dont want to spend my day with a system from which i dont know what it realy does.
After reading comments I want to write just one thing: Mesa is not hardware accelerated. There is no point to compare it with nVidia or ATI closed source drivers, there is no point to compare speed of Mesa and Win OpenGL implementation. You can't play any new game with Mesa, because you will get 1-2fps.
I am not sure why non-developer should download Mesa, probably only if he/she need to run OpenGL application (like Blender for example) and hardware accelerated driver works bad or not exist.
Direct3D STILL sucks for scientific visualisation (still favours texture pushing over high-poly-count), and is STILL Windoze-only (Wine excepted). OpenGL sucks less, and is not bound to C++ (Well, o.k. DirectX is theoretically COM, but I defy you to program it seriously in anything other than MS-bastardised C++)
Scientists tend to use grown-up OSes (i.e. no Windoze) and code in Fortran 95 or HPF, pure C or occasionally Lisp - all languages with OpenGL bindings.
You can learn OpenGL+SDL basics in an afternoon, and have flocks of teapots flying across your screen the following morning. Just beginning to learn DirectX and Direct3D means taking on board all the bizarro-world Microsoftian "C++" and COM cruft.
OpenGL's going to be around for some time.
Now, it is inappropriate for hardware raytracing cards, but us people in the scientific graphics community (and movie-making-community) are only getting to play with them now, don't expect them to trickle down to the gaming market for a while yet.
pssshht, they'd be free if I could actually download the damn things. Some sort of funky javascripted activeX control that errors out on all the breeds of IE I've tried (IE 5.55, 6 on 2k and XP). *glare microsoft*
I hope you realize OpenGL is used for a lot more than just games. Even if there weren't good games for linux (which there are), there would still be a need for an OpenGL implementation.
"Me-sa like it. Me-sa good!"
Direct3D ... still favours texture pushing over high-poly-count
This is wrong. In fact, Direct3D supports hardware acceleration (AGP memory, etc.) for high-res models natively through vertex buffers, while with OpenGL 1.* you need to use vendor extensions - nVidia VAR, ATI VAO, etc. Which, believe me, you can't learn in an afternoon.
You can learn OpenGL+SDL basics in an afternoon, and have flocks of teapots flying across your screen the following morning. Just beginning to learn DirectX and Direct3D means taking on board all the bizarro-world Microsoftian "C++" and COM cruft.
For fsck's sake, the stuff that JC wrote about OpenGL vs. DirectX is extremely outdated. Today, using OpenGL's easy-to-learn, flock-of-teapots immediate mode (i.e. glBegin(), glEnd()), will give you a really measly fps for scientific visualization. You have to use vertex buffers if you want performance. So you might just as well do it for exactly the same amount of time with Direct3D 8.1. Also, stop the FUD about Direct3D being "Microsoftian C++" only, you can use it just as fine with C, and *gosh* even under MinGW.
Let me point readers to the Mesa FAQ:
***
1.2 Does Mesa support/use graphics hardware?
Yes. Specifically, Mesa serves as the OpenGL core for the XFree86/DRI OpenGL drivers.
***
Now, Mesa does *include* a software rendering engine...
This could be what you meant, but this is the first post along the "Mesa is nothing more than a software renderer" lines, and there are a *lot* on here, some of which are definitely wrong.
May we never see th
you can evaluate the process that will make opengl to be what it is.
it's vapor until it's final, packed, and shipping, and supported.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
why-oh-why is this a troll?
My guess is that some moderator thought that asking on the availability of a package is automatically an insult. To all moderators; if they aren't explicitly being insulting, then it's probably a genuine question! It's pretty sad when our hides get so thick that our immediate answer to a request for help is to try and ignore them.
To answer the original question, my guess is that it'll probably go into the latest unstable, which is Sid. (If it isn't in there already.) My guess is that it's probably not going to be around long enough to make the testing release, Sarge, before Sarge gets bumped to stable. From what I understand, to make Sarge, it'd need to be in for 3 months. If they bump Sarge to stable in less than 3 months, it won't make the next stable release. I could be wrong, here, though.
I don't personally run Debian anymore (Windows), so.. maybe someone from Debian could offer some insight here, on just how much work needs to be done to get this hooked in with the latest X, and what it would take for it to make it into Sarge.
The NVIDIA drivers accelerate OpenGL on NVIDIA hardware. Mesa, unless it has a mini-driver for your card, is a software implementation of OpenGL. There is no Mesa driver for NVIDIA cards, so the NVIDIA driver is still preferred.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Who cares about games? Soon, we'll be using OpenGL to draw our desktops. Just check out evas_test (from E17) and let your jaw drop. MacOS X ain't got nothing on EVAS! At that point, OpenGL becomes a whole lot more important.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Do you think the industry is going to let Microsoft lock in OpenGL 2.0? Sun and SGI depend on OpenGL for their visualization business. Linux is becoming more popular with graphics shops every day. I doubt even Microsoft can go against that kind of industry opposition. Microsoft has a lot of money, but if you attack something like OpenGL, which is central to the businesses of a whole lot of companies, then the money on the other side because rather significant.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Whoa, hold on a second! I wasn't talking about your mom!
-- Jim
You are my hero. Not only do you create 2 original replies (har har) to my message, but you're proficient at ASCII art too! You even reply to your own messages congratulating yourself!
PS. Goatse.cx? Are you a regular? Judging by your intelligent response, you sound like you might be the owner!
-- Jim
And you think i'm a source of your amusement...
Childish? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Judging by your 'eloquent' response, it seems you are the source of your own amusement.
The only thing I can agree with you on is this - it's over. You can go back to AOL now, playing The Sims: Hot Date and fantasizing about your virtual girlfriends. Does your 'shield of intellect' give you a hard on?
Stylistically, you're a putz.
-- Jim
"Trolls are recognizable by the fact that they have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net"
/. which you probably do anyway) ... you are boils on the asses of life, your only purpose here is seemingly to demonstrate how fucking retarded you are.
In other words - KMA.
In all seriousness - why don't you idiots get off the fucking board (no, that means leave... I don't literally mean get off on while reading
So like, fuck off or something.
-- Jim
Haha ... dude, I have a technical certification, dumbass (CNE 4.11/5, BTW) and I have an IT job at a large company. What's that about judging books by their covers?
A Windoze brat... running Debian Linux 3. Yeah, ok. You're "insightful" Have fun with your regular accounts. You're still a Troll, thus by definition "a lower form of life" and guilty of most of the things you've said about me already.
-- Jim
That was ... perhaps the most unintelligible thing i've read in a while.
I'm sure you'll write another novel in response, but you became predictable about 3 posts ago and this is getting really really old.
-- Jim