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SIGGRAPH '99 OpenGL/Linux BOF Minutes
An anonymous reader sent us Minutes from the OpenGL on Linux BOF from SIGGRAPH 99. Lots of
interesting tidbits about the future of hardware
and application support. Mentions Mesa, 3dfx, and more.
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>Ultimately get the new Woo book for OpenGL 1.2
> and the Kilgard book for the interaction with
> the X environment.
Looks like I got a bumm deal.. I just picked up
the Woo book a couple months ago, for OpenGL 1.1.
I haven't had much time to read it, however. I am
very glad that before programming I was an ept 3d
artist (now only if I was a good programmer)
But then what of Inventor? The Apprentice project doesn't seem to be more than a scene graph viewer as far I can tell, and TGS Inventor costs >> $0 and so isn't an option. Does anyone know anything more about Inventor options for Linux? (or care?)
Too bad, I don't think M$ will ever allow Fahrenheit (or Direct3D 8?) to be released for Linux. That'll just make porting of Direct3D based Windows apps/games to Linux a very easy job, which goes against M$ developer lock-in principle. From what I've read, Fahrenheit seems to be more than OpenGL, it also includes features of Performer, Open Inventor, and one other toolkit which I forgot. Now that Fahrenheit will only be available on Windoze (not even on Irix), and SGI is spinning off its NT VW, looks like SGI has wasted much effort in giving away valuable expertise to M$ for nothing. I think Fahrenheit is very much dead in the SGI camp.
It's not a matter of OpenGL vs. Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit uses OpenGL (it's an application layer that sits on top of it). OpenGL is more of a low level state machine interface and Fahrenheit is a scene graph managment toolkit. It's too bad this is the case. I always thought that Fahrenheit belonged to SGI and M$ was a customer. From my own first hand experience, SGI engineers hate Microsoft with a passion. Don't believe anything you read on either one's web page about the two companies "colaborating harmoniously" together on various projects. That's just bullshit P.R.
I wish SGI would release the source to this. They don't
seem to realise that they're toast otherwise. OpenInventor
is still the best library for developing interactive 3d apps (apps, not games).
SGI is best at making 3D hardware, but if all 3d apps are
developed for MS platforms (using farenheit or whatever)
then SGI will have to compete in the MS-hardware compatable
world. They just admitted that they can't do so. What gives ??
Their only chance is for developers to create 3D apps under Linux.
Until SGI releases the source code to OpenInventor, very few people
are going to do so. Still, until SGI figure out where their
interest lies, we have to consider the alternatives.
TGS Inventor- great if you can afford it, but there are run-time fees
involved, which eliminates certain possibilities.
Apprentice - "free for non-commerical use", it's inventor like, but hardly a replacement
doesn't look like much is happening on this front yet.
Pyran - LGPL as far as I can tell no development has occured on this for a year or so
there are a few things to fix if you're using a recent egcs.
Scene - LGPL looks promising, current version is 0.13, and it's problematic to
compile currently. Probably your best bet.
Coin - QPL, only available through CVS at the moment, and as it's neither
a free software project, nor past the alpha stage, I can't be bothered.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Well for the 8th year since Linus invented it, we see more companies advertizing more development libraries and system services but no apps. Are OEM's not making any money by supporting the next level above the base system? Shouldn't this Linux workstation be able to do something besides compile libraries?
Intel? i740? That would be SSSWWWWEEEEETTTT because thats what I got.
:-)
-thanks for the info
geekd
Answer: Yes. The DRI is being ported to FreeBSD so some OpenGL support should be possible. However, most IHVs and ISVs will only be looking at Linux support, at least for the time being.
This sounds a bit like there is no much OpenGL sppport.
Let me clarify that we have both software rendered and hardware accelerated 3d for FreeBSD.
There is a Mesa version for GLIDE in the ports collection for some time now, and ports of the open GLX effort for Matrox (G200) and nvidia (RIVA128, 128ZX, TNT, TNT2..) cards are under public testing now. Works already very smooth with the usual gang of apps (xscreensaver, Mesa Demos, Flightgear ..)
And sure, DRI will get ported.
For more information send mail to 3d@freebsd.org
So how should I proceed to get some fundamental OpenGL-knowledge?
Are there any good book, anything Linux specific perhaps? Or is www the best resource for this kind of thing?
--
Pirkka
I'm surprised there's no mention of nVidia. It was part of SGI's big announcements, and they already have kick-ass accelleration under linux for TNT.
Not that I don't like having the cool xlockmore OpenGL modes run on my machine, nor do I dislike being able to play q3test, but when will someone finally port ElectroPaint to Linux? The single most amazing OpenGL application ever? Do I have to go buy an old Indy?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
They are my favorite developers. Looks like someone over there likes us. It says that they would like to see more software support for Linux.
Maybe if we can get enough support for OpenGL on Linux, we can get Final Fantasy X ported to it.
Need I say more?
Hey, there's a poll question... If you had a choice of game developers which one would you rather work for? I'd choose Square or Cyan.
Slashdot just keeled over for a few minutes. Someone reboot?
The article says to go to precision insights web page to find out more about which 5 chipsets are gonna be supported for OpenGL. I looked all over the PI site. I didn't find anything. Anybody know?
Thanks,
geekd
It was some sort of soccer game. Looked fine, but unfortunately when I asked them they admitted that they are far from having an OpenGL driver _really_ optimized for the (awesome!) fx6+ cards on Linux yet. (IE they haven't even started on DRI support yet.)
Best bet in the _near_ term for Linux is still a 3dfx Voodoo3 card, but hopefully in 6 months we'll be seeing more highend stuff (Wildcat 4000, fx6+, SGIs vpcs, Evans & Sutherland's new thing...) supported.
1) When asked "How many people here are from Microsoft?" nobody raised their hands. Jon Leech said "I suspect a couple of you are fibbing...but anyway..." and then went off into the rest of the meeting.
2) Kurt Akeley from SGI, one of the two or three people most responsible for OpenGL, spoke passionately about Linux, OpenGL, and how SGI is going to work with both of them. He said that "A win for Linux is a win for SGI". Now, somebody else saying that would have just been more platitudes, but Akeley has the authority to back it up. He's committed to making Linux a true contender in 3D, and is putting SGI behind that.
Finally, the fun of seeing all my fellow Linux/OpenGL enthusiasts overflowing a pretty big conference room was heartening. Siggraph is so big that 300 or so people can get lost, but all together in one room it felt like an avalanche was just getting started.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
find this hard to believe. didnt they learn anything from nvidia and 3dfx? what could
they possibly gain from this?
still waiting for maya/linux...
Heh, I was just being polite; I'm certain some of them were there. I was told one woman started to raise her hand and stopped real fast when she realized it was a trick question :-)
Kurt Akeley from SGI, one of the two or three people most responsible for OpenGL, spoke passionately about Linux, OpenGL, and how SGI is going to work with both of them. He said that "A win for Linux is a win for SGI". Now, somebody else saying that would have just been more platitudes, but Akeley has the authority to back it up. He's committed to making Linux a true contender in 3D, and is putting SGI behind that.
Kurt and Mark Segal were the co-creators of OpenGL. Working with Kurt is one of the joys of being at SGI, and I'm very happy that he's just been elevated to Chief Technical Officer of the company. Many of us are jazzed about the new commitment to Linux, too - various bits and pieces have been in the works for quite a while (e.g. the GLX open source release, funding PI, etc.) but it's all starting to come together now.
Hello all, in this short report, I've found the first sentence about Fahrenheit which is concrete: Fahrenheit is a Microsoft-thing. SGI does just "cooperate" with them. Fahrenheit will only come on Linux if Microsoft will release it for Linux... I think this means Fahrenheit is nothing else than Direct3D (in which version ever). Woohoo. Let's stick with OpenGL then... Cheers Bössu
The reason why I ask is because I worked on a demo for them specifically for SIGGRAPH and LinuxWorld. I'm curious if they actually used it.
Uh DUH!! Of course they won't release it!
Its in the hardware chipset (cobalt or arsenic
or somesuch crap) Doing this is the same as
handing out your microcode from the chipset,
a.k.a. giving out your hardware secrets.
With the box being so damn new, and them
signing their souls away to M$, I can see
not releasing this.
WHY would they WANT to give this out? They've
released GLX already. I expect the second gen
of these to support Linux native. We have a
320 here running X and use Opengl on it.
Give me one GOOD reason. And don't say to
port apps, or something stupid like
"for accelerated drivers".
da'fly dreaming of OpenGL games that don't suck
Anyone here this one@SigGraph: Sgi gave RedHat some OpenGl "consession" in exchange for small mods to future Redhat release so Sgi can ship
"redhat complient" boxes? Read "not linux complient, but _Redhat_ complient." (worrysome?)
I would guess these entail things like xfs,
kernel debugging (i/lcrash) and the big-memory patches from sgi. Linus has already expressed a "not built here" attitude towards IBM and sgi's GPL code.
I know for a fact that both Xig and RedHat were
courting SGI for a while regarding hardware
OpenGL. Seems the battle is quietly over.
Will we finally see hardware OpenGL accel. in X?
I think this could be outstanding.
da'fly hacking away at OpenGL vis code
Now to show you how interested MS is in supporting unix, they have hired a 3rd party company to do the porting. Said (unnamed) company does not have any graphics knowledge - by MS's own admissions at the BOF. Kinda says something about it doesn't it.
I managed to get in a question at the end about how heavily MS was going to persue the licensing wrt to the OSS community developing an implementation (yup, I was the blue-haired one standing near the door). Their response - "umm... we hadn't thought of that. Might be worthwhile.". There were also a bunch of other statements about how well specified Fahrenheit is compared to the standard Win32 APIs. I just hope they are actually telling the truth this time and it's not another Chrome type effort. Given the reaction on the guy's face when I asked the question I tend to believe that they honestly hadn't thought about the spec issues and OSS implementations.
Other noteworthy things were that they have extensions for particular application areas. No-one in the MS Fahrenheit team has any decent Viz-Sim experience. They don't even have an extension underway to deal with this effort. Not particularly good if you want it to be used in large scale environments.
Lots of excuses on the MS part about not wanting to speak for SGI and their commitments to the IRIX side of it (the BOF was held a couple of hours after SGI announcement of the big culling going on).
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
hopefully maya and sgi or hp will be ready by january.