Translucent Windows for X using OpenGL

Anonymous Coward writes "Take a look at this! This guy is working on an OpenGL backend for X. But he needs pizza and some new hardware. He's on a TNT2 for heaven sake!"

Comments

This doesn't automatically mean higher performance

[FooBarWidget]

Everybody seems to be obsessed with all this "3D-accelerated desktop" stuff but IMHO it's all overrated.

Using OpenGL will not automatically make everything faster. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if some things become slower. OpenGL is good for 3D stuff, but sucks for 2D stuff. Ever tried blitting in OpenGL? Slooooooooow. And guess what? Most applications use 2D drawing primitives.

The biggest performance bottlenecks are, and have always been: 1) the driver 2) the kernel.
2 has already been addressed (my system flies with these patches; it's even faster than Windows!). The upcoming 2.6 kernel will be amazing.
1 remains a problem. X's architecture doesn't cause the slowness, it's all in the driver! If the driver doesn't implement all OpenGL features then you'll still be stuck with slow drawing speed (or maybe even slower, since emulating OpenGL is slow beyond imagination. ever tried running TuxRacer in plain non-accelerated Mesa?)

Isn't that what Windows does ?

[BESTouff]

If I'm not mistaken, recent Windows use the 3D acceleration to draw all 2D operations, which means they can accelerate everything. I'd love to see XFree do the same thing. Really, this is more than a nice hack.

This is being discussed in win.org

[Nicopa]

This is being discussed here.

Mirror

[brejc8]

Mirror List

Re:This doesn't automatically mean higher performa

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience is that when operating at lower resolutions, (slightly) translucent terminal windows can be useful for viewing information in another window I want to see but not copy-paste (for various reason - personally, I even retype short bits rather than copy-paste because I'm a very fast typist and don't like to move my hands away from the keyboard).

And it isn't distracting in other situations (at least not with my settings and working habits).

Still, I prefer a higher resolution so that I can have non-overlapping windows, but with laptops that often isn't an option.

In general, I do think that the X11 rendering features need updating, things like alpha blending can be used for a lot of things besides translucent windows. Using GL features isn't a bad idea, considering that most current and recent hardware works hard to accelerate those features, although going as far as Quartz Extreme is perhaps a bad idea since it consumes a lot of graphics memory, which XFree86 isn't currently very good at managing dynamically (everything used by the X server is permanently allocated to it).

In fact, if you look at the recent RENDER extension, it's very similar to OpenGL. It looks like it's probably the direction rendering APIs are headed for. The biggest problem with OpenGL isn't that it isn't suitable for 2D - it works very well for 2D - but that it isn't specified to a pixel level and that it doesn't have decent font rendering support.

screenshot mirror

[gokulpod]

here

Using HW accel for eyecandy is the way to go.

[Qbertino]

This is the way to go for eyecandy, using the Hardware, which lies unused when in a 2D session. I've been waiting for something like this quite some time now. Good thing it's here now.
But there's still work to do. Note that the windows are translucent all across, borders and all.

The Framebuffer is a DOG!

[MarcQuadra]

Anyone looking at the framebuffer device as salvation is barking up the wrong tree. Yes, its direct to hardware, but it's slow as molasses when there's anything happening on the screen. Try running a console-intensive app on a fbconsole and watch the latency of all your apps go through the roof. I can't even play an MP3 when the framebuffer is busy, and I have a top-end system with optimized software.

XFree86 has direct-to-hardware rendering, it has DRI and MITSHM. Granted it uses a few more megs of memory than I'd like it too, it's our best bet for 2D performance out there. It really is quite good, I think a lot of the desktop environments need optimization (KDE is a bad performer all-around, IMO).

The framebuffer exists for three reasons:

1. Simple to program for.
2. Needed for 68k and most PPC machines (no native console mode)
3. Platform Independent.

it doesnt:

1. Perform well enough for casual use.
2. Play well with others.
3. Run X programs without the overhead of X anyway.

Re:Oh great, more network traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the "low bandwidth X" extension:

http://www.x-docs.org/Xext/lbx.pdf
http://www.g elatinous.com/aaron/tips/lbxproxy

Re:This doesn't automatically mean higher performa

[Trashman]

Translucency in win2k? You want this. The author of this software posts on /. sometimes.

Re:This doesn't automatically mean higher performa

[Daniel Phillips]

In fact if this guy keeps his hardware low-end and makes it useable.. he will out-code all the other schmucks out there that call themselves programmers.

and the remark by the article's editor about the TNT2 is proof that many people have no clue about computers even so called geeks.

No, it's proof that you didn't bother to read the article, in which the author clearly states:

"* Implement more graphics primitives using OpenGL instead of cfb. This currently is kind of stalled since I only have a poor TNT2 which lacks pbuffer support and has a buggy implementation of Copy[Sub]TexImage2d. So rendering to textures is kind of hard with this hardware."

Re:Why?

[ksplatter]

I know of one very good application for this.

It seems like everyone on slashdot is only looking for reasons it is useful to them. Put away your icr and web browsing thoughts for a minute.

Let's think broader. Lets think about the commercial use for a feature such as true transparency. I currently develop Air Traffic Control software for the US. I work on the display software that had to be written with the MOX (multiple overlay extenstion) extension to X. But we needed to have a vendor deveop a very expensive card to actualy be able to do the transparency. We have requirments to display the tracks (aircrafts) over anything else on the display. All of our windows therefor have to be truly transparent because they all have a different visual priority. I belive there are many other commercial uses for this too in real time monitoring. If there was linux support for this there would be a much bigger push to develop some of these big money project on linux boxes. This would be a major cost saver for software companies and a big boost for linux.

IMO

Re:Can you say Quartz Extreme? (don't feed troll)

[llamalicious]

Know your facts before you troll, buster.

Go to Apple's QE site and follow the link to the technology brief.

IIRC, one primary reason is the card has to support non-square textures, something the TNT2 does not, otherwise QE cannot function.

Re:This doesn't automatically mean higher performa

[red_dragon]

... but the other one was called a PixelWorks card...as I understand it, they were specifically optimized for displaying and rendering postscript (cause that's what the program made!).

Yay, a NeXTDimension board for PCs!

For those who don't remember, NeXT made a colour graphics card for the NeXTCube called the NeXTDimension, which consisted of an Intel i860 processor running at 33 MHz, up to 32 MB of RAM, and a bunch of video/audio I/O interfaces. The card was designed to offload all Display PostScript operations from the CPU (besides the added video editing capabilities). Since the NeXTStep GUI used Display PostScript for everything, the GUI got a hefty boost from the dedicated hardware.

I wish there was something similar for Display PDF.

Re:This doesn't automatically mean higher performa

[p3d0]

Translucent means that the object behind the material is distorted in some way.. such as darked or discolored.

That's not my understanding, and at least one dictionary disagrees with you:

translucent adj.
Transmitting light but causing sufficient diffusion to prevent perception of distinct images.

"Translucent" implies diffusion, not merely darkening or discolouration. Coloured glass can be transparent or translucent depending on whether diffusion occurs.