Slashdot Mirror
3dfx Glide and DRI Open Sourced
jazzman45 writes "3dfx has released glide v3 as open source. There's the link to the driver's page. It has support for XF86 v4 and it's DRI structure! I found a link to someone's screenshots of Q3Arena in Linux. "
> Are these open ala Nvidia and Sblive, "Here's some code but no specs"
Dammit, I'm real tired of people saying this about nVidia. Try these on for size.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Ok. I have a Voodoo3 3000. I play q3test all the time (tweedgeezer, for those who care). What I don't quite understand, though, is what exactly is the point of this? Everything works right now. If I install these drivers will I get better framerate? Will I be able to play q3 without using the command line option "+set in_dgamouse 0"? Why would I want to install these rpms?
:-)
Perhaps it's for that nice open source feeling
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
Um...that Mesa support for Voodoo2 etc. is just a wrapper around the Glide libraries, which with this new development don't look like they're going to be updated for much longer.
- |Daryll
Darryl, you are the man. Single handedly giving us some good 3D in Linux. GREAT!
EOL
Well, before there was no V3 of Glide. Before, Glide only ran on x86 hardware.
Everything has changed. The license seems to be an attempt at being compatable with the XFree86 license.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Aargh... even so, the worst that would happen is a code fork and establishment of a new XFree86 tree, with new maintainers.
Actually, I think the original post is rumour mongering/FUD by XiG, who have a record of being TOSSERS.
Personally, I'm not as happy about the fact that it's Open-Source. That was inevitable; it's a Good Thing, but hey, it was coming. What I'm happy about is that this can now be ported to other architectures (last I checked, PPC, Sparc, and Alpha didn't seem to have any 3D acceleration yet; I know PPC doesn't).
:)
Dammit; I keep trying to resist the urge to buy a Voodoo3 instead of waiting for V4, and then something like this has to come along and tempt me again. I suppose I'll be able to hold out till the PPC port is working. Here's hoping that's not till after the V4 is out
Dos provided "direct pipeline to hardware". We need something more ... direct layer of functions that emulate or execute in real hardware ...
With a head full of ignorance and a pocket full of cash, I headed out to my local electronics superstore 2 days ago to catapult myself into the wonderful world of 3D. After much debating, I adventually left the store with an Elsa Erazor III, a TNT 2 based card, based on the fact that (1) it came with 3D shutter glasses (I'm a sucker for gimmicks), and (2) Nvidia seemed to be the most linux friendly graphics manufacturer out there.
Now, the 3D in windows is wonderful, and the glasses are impressive, but seeing how I'm in linux 99.9% of the time, this doesn't matter a great deal. It seems that performance on a TNT2 in linux is still substandard (I actually haven't gotten it to work at all yet, but that's my own fault), so, with this receint development, would it be in my best intrest to return it and get a Voodoo 3? Also, on a side note, is there a 'TNT under linux' resource that's any better than Nvidia's site?
The new DRI release does work on Banshee. Last weekend durring testing I had some trouble with the video signal being very wiggly. However other have had a lot of success with DRI on Banshee. I invite you to try it out and see how it works. Then give us some feedback on the results in the newsgroup (3dfx.glide.linux)
I see the headline, and think to myself, "Self, it looks like you'll be able to use that VooDoo card in your AlphaStation afterall!" Then I see that it's voodoo3 only. Damn the electric fence.
Here's what happened. 3dfx offered a prerelease of XFree86 4.0 with DRI support for Mesa using glide3x. All of this is new. XFree86 4.0 and DRI allow better support for Mesa rendering. Glide3x is a newer version of the Glide library. Previously only Glide2x was availiable for Linux. Glide3x is a bit different from Glide2x and they are not binarily compatible (like libc5 and glibc2.0 and glibc2.1 are not compatbile). They also aren't source compatbile but a porting job can usually be done pretty quickly.
Now for the open source. Within the same prerelease 3dfx also released the complete Glide3x source code for Voodoo3. This can be built for DRI or as a standalone API. What happened after this source release? Not much yet, its only been availiable for a few days and it took some time for people to notice it.
Joseph Kain
Pardon me while I do some AC preaching here:
:)
.deb while you're at it, you freaks. If it weren't for those nifty free-software programmers who're still around, you'd be using frickin' shar.Z files or something. Or still trying to hack friggin' PkZip 2.04G for your k-rad warez d00d komputer, man.
This is not redundant! This is post #16, with a good reply for post #14! Moderate them up, and me down! And remember how to moderate! That post is on-topic, and good. Encourage the good AC's to get accounts, and stomp out the bad ones!
.rpm is an excellent format. And if you want to complain, whine about
Um... no, dude, you have it backwards. *You* are downloading *their* software. No one e-mailed you an .rpm, you would be downloading it, and they get to pick how they package it. It's a courtesy to offer several different formats, preferably binary formats as well as packaging formats, if necessary. But that's it. It isn't your right, no one is forcing you to do anything, and I guarantee you everyone will grab it and repackage it and stick it in their favorite distribution before you can blink. So it can't be that hard.
/, and put files in "traditional" unix file locations?
I like Linux and don't like Windows. If I download a "Windows" program, and I want to get one file out of it, I can't because it's usually InstallShield, and that doesn't run in DOS, or even under Wine well. Whose fault is it? Certainly not theirs for catering to the largest market segment...
And tar.gz looks like a de-facto standard for the *nix world, but what about cross-platform code? It's all in zip files. Should I then put all my source in zip files because someone might want to compile it with DJGPP? Or what about an old *nix box that only has compress, or cpio or dump? Should we all use arj, or uuencode it?
I see a lot of people using bzip2 on source, because it compresses better... but it's slower! And do you want to make that tar.gz file a Slackware package, or should it assume that you untar everything from
The fact of the matter is, there are too many options and too many needs and preferences. A friend of mine does prefer everything uuencoded and e-mailed to him, it's easier that way. Do that to a Windows user, and they might freak out!
Also, you are at the mercy of the supplier. Remember who is getting something free before you whine.
I'm sorry if I seem ungrateful and all that, but the tying of the Linux 3D market to 3Dfx cards (as it effectively is at the moment) is a bad thing, we're suffering from relatively low quality graphics compared to the 'doze world...
However, if this means that it's now going to be easier to write glide wrappers for other cards which do support some kind of extra acceleration, then this makes me happy...
Any news on the state of play with Linux and the GeForce yet?
-- I reserve the right to be completely wrong --
I like 3dfx. I HAVE 3dfx. Quake3 and Unreal Tournament are sweet. The fact that now the drivers are open source is even sweeter because I sure would like to wrap my brain around it for a little while, see what makes it go. I wonder what effect this will have on 3dfx card makers though? Maybe none, maybe a lot. I think that that is why many commercial companies don't go opes source, because we would take the code (not a bad thing) but many more of the same product would be released, driving the company out of business. Aw, who knows.
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
jdube is who I am.
is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted
interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under
this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation
excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in
or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License
incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
Funny this looks remarkably like Section 8 of the GPL
This is not to say that there aren't patent problems. It would be better if they explicitly licenced those particular patents to open source software or at least derivatives of this software. That should make any derivatives redistributable. If they did not do this and decided to sue later for patent infringement, I should think that one would have a case that they acted in bad faith, but IANAL.
If they do not own the patents then all bets are off.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
It's really just a D3D wrapper, but it may be what forced 3dfx's hand.
---
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
I think it's a bit scary when they just assume you have Redhat. What about us Slackers (heh).. or FreeBSD people? Devils like fragging too.
-Warren
As far as I understand, all the drivers developped nowadays are for interactive 3D or real time 3D. Sometimes in scientific imaging, all you are really interested in is non-interactive rendering, like the stuff you would get from pov, renderman or radiance...
In this respect, it'd be much more interesting to use the 3D accelerator for just console-based rendering.
I know there was a plug for running mesa in parallel that would also support voodoo 1 at some point...
Is there any work done for accelerating this kind of "console" rendering or is all the work these days done on xfree drivers?
---
"Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
This is probably a dumb question..but is the driver good for both agp and pci cards?
Good to see another Slackware user...
.tar.gz is the only truly universal distribution method...
:o)
Yes, it's a apain when they assume that you only have Redhat.. when
BUT.. (I'm guessing you haven't heard...)
Slackware v7 has an RPM package, which comes with a utility to convert RPM's to Slack's TGZ (so you can install it with installpkg, and have it added to the slackware package list)... and while I have only used it with one RPM, it worked perfectly... (and not co-incidentally, the RPM was the Glide drivers for my Voodoo3
Time to do the happy dance! Although 3dfx has never been stingy with the code before, this makes things even better. :)
:)
Oh yeah, 1st post.
Deosyne
Not only did that server get /.ed, but this entire side of campus seemed to be kinda slow today. I go to Georgia Tech and use the eastnet network.
--
--
I swear that the statement in this sig is false.
Its funny, my stepdad (clueless) made the association that linux = redhat, and he is right. If you think you can run linux in any way shape or form that doesnt involve redhat or its method of doing things, you are mistaken. Try installing this tool on a non-rhat system. /usr/src/redhat? wtf i thought it was rpm, some package manager. How about we rename it and maybe so many people wont have such a big beef about using REDHAT PACKAGE MANAGER, Linux Package Manager? I dunno just a suggestion.
Oh... wait a sec.. yeah, I guess that isn't actually that off topic for this story... Sorry All!!
Oh well... First Post, then? :-)
--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com
WTF is this marked as flamebait?!?? The current accelerated rendering structure is a hack! The whole /point/ of DRI in XFree4.0 is a better structure for 3D! I'm patiently waiting for XFree4 also, it promises to be excellent. Plus, if the 2 years to Debian comment was what got you, notice the frickin smily face...
"i will wait for RH 7 and XFree86 4.0 for it all to be complete"
I totally agree.
Of course, everything released as open source cannot be bad, but in the applications-known-not-to-work department, we can see some ultra-classics that should work: Quake, Quake II and UnReal Tournament. OTOH, Quake 3 is supposed to work fine with that stuff.
This does not quite convince me that my next 3D graphics board should be a Voodoo-whatever, though. Does anybody know if TNT drivers have been open-sourced yet?
Going on means going far, going far means returning. Tao te Ching
While I do appreciate the fact that 3Dfx is making the source available, it isn't the complete Glide library that older applications (such as Quake II) depend on. Rather, it is a subset of the Glide API that allows Mesa and their new OpenGL driver to access the Voodoo3.
I'd like to see the source for the complete Glide library so that my "old" Voodoo2 can also use Glide3X. But, 3Dfx probably isn't going to release this, and they are equally less likely to update Glide for Linux (at least, they haven't done so in ages - Daryll, any takes on this one?)
Oh well, I planned to go out and buy another 3D card for Q3Arena anyway...
--Fritti
Mandrake 6.1 renames the path to
So there.
Personally, I like the RPM format. It's open-source, has a website (www.rpm.org) and a free documentation book (www.rpm.org/maximum-rpm.ps.gz). Tools like rpm2cpio and alien are widely available. A "Package" is more than just a collection of files (which is all a tar is), so it makes sense to define a format like RPM to hold the metadata, rather than trying to stuff it into magic files within a tar file.
I'd like to see a single "Linux Package Manager", iff it would replace both
[posted AC 'cos it's off-topic]
I installed the files and it works pretty well but i will wait for RH 7 and XFree86 4.0 for it all to be complete(redhat next year debian in two:) ).
>Voodoo Rush is dead. It was still-born. Take it from someone who was foolish enough to actually buy one at one time.
I agree - you are a fool.
>Waah waah waahh... Look, 3dfx is still on probation in my book too, but god are you ever an ingrate. Has the Linux Way become to bitch at companies who don't do ALL your work for you?
What exactly is your point? Glide is proprietary, and 3Dfx have been very vigorous in defending it (recall the Glide wrappers for TNT cards), preventing anybody from finding a way around the restrictions on it (like lack of cross-platform support, for a start). I paid exactly the same amount of cash for my Voodoo2 card as any Windows weenie, and yet the company that made that card still insists on treating me like a second-class citizen. Does that make me an ingrate? Or did you just feel like spouting bullshit?
Why don't you take some time out to grow up.
Lately it's really seeming like 3dfx is just trying to redeem itself. First the open release of their texture compression, then the announcement of a line of difficult-to-believe 3D accellerators, and now releasing part of the source code to GLIDE -- the same thing 3dfx was so retentive about before. Seems peculiar, to be entirely honest... still, as of right now, their only redeeming values are their Linux support and glimpse at the OpenSource ideals.
this place has definitely been /.ed.....
Not at all, really. Oh, I'm sure that we've seen the last of Glide-only games, but Glide is still an excellent performer, so it behooves 3dfx to make it more convenient for programmers to utilize it, as their video cards (notice that this only affects the Voodoo 3, and I presume later versions, which is owned wholly by 3dfx, unlike the earlier Voodoos which they only provided processors for) are the only ones that support Glide natively. The more games that support Glide, the better the odds that people will decide to purchase a 3dfx card over a competitor, particularly since the Voodoo 4 will address the concerns that bug the existing cards, such as 32 bit rendering. I would wager that they will release the earlier versions of Glide open sourced once they release the Voodoo 4 as the older cards released by their now-competitors will no longer be produced.
Deosyne
From: Daryll Strauss
:-(
Subject: Re: glide 3x open source !??!!
Mike Palczewski wrote:
> is it true that glide 3x is open sourced. I downloaded the src rpm and
> installed it. That doesn't meen I believe it. That's amazing.
I was wondering how long it was going to take for people to notice that.
:-)
I wasn't supposed to say anything.
Yes, it is true. The whole kitten kabootle top to bottom is now open
source.
After three years of working on this in my spare time, and not being
able to talk to anyone about it, it has finally seen the light of day. I
am VERY pleased.
I wonder if this means they will be releasing a closed glide > 3 for windows soon.
i originally bought a voodoo 3 3000 right when they came out and had bad performance with glide in quake games so i took it back and got a tnt2 ultra (also cause voodoo 3 is a 16bit card) because i knew nvidia would put out drivers. now the voodoo cards perform as well as in windows (so i hear), and the tnt2 well... it just sucks for 3d. i wish nvidia would get involved with the xfree 4 snapshots like 3dfx has lately. i've waited a few months with this card cause i don't want to support glide because its propriety, but now it looks like the only thing keeping me from it is the tnt2 being 32bit.... hell most things in linux require you to change to 16bit and don't support 32bit.. so maybe your right there is no question of which card to buy....
Not a flame. Just wanted to point out the correct phrase. I've made similar mistakes many dozens of times. Ain't English grand?
Can this be used by non-Creative labs TNT cards, such as the diamond ones?
Anyone any idea? I looked for a proper GLiDE- wrapper for ages, but never could find anything beyond Ultra-HLE support.
They have some deal with ATI for open source drivers on some of their cards.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
My god, Hell really has frozen over. The apocalypse really IS coming!
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Those specs arn't worth the electrons they are printed on. Go read the glx-dev list, the developers agree: Nvidia's specs are worthless.
Sure, NVIDIA's TNT2 (possibly the plain old TNT, too) works windowed on Linux. Their X server/driver combo does not use DRI though, so it isn't quite that fast. ;^(
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
I don't know much about 3D on Linux (and 3D in general, actually) as I don't play games, but I'm curious. Will this make for more realistic (and/or better) 3D on Linux or do some things deeper in Linux (or X maybe?) need to be reworked? Like I said I haven't played games under Linux, but I've been under the impression that 3D under Linux wasn't spectacular because X wasn't a great platform (design-wise) for games. Just curious. It's one of those instances where I'm saying to myself, "I wonder...", so I thought I'd ask.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
OK, I'll probably get some flak for this but oh well. I'm EXTREMELY new to Linux, or any command-line OS. I've been trapped in the Mickeysoft empire for a LONG time (since DOS 5.0). But last night, thanks to the Propaganda website, I decided enough was enough, and just blew out all my Windows partitions, so I had 14GB for Linux. I have a Voodoo3 2000 AGP card, and I installed Red Hat 6.0. I have to manually enter stuff in for the card and monitor in Xconfigurator, which is cool, I can get 24bit color, etc. But when X/Enlightenment come up, my monitor's resolution is like 320x200!!! I CANNOT figure this out, and I NEED HELP PLEASE. Commissar88@netscape.net or casey_hendley@drsoptronics.com... Thanks in advance,
-=Casey=-
Too bad you'll only get to see it in 16 bit color. With teeny tiny textures. Let me know how many colors you can count in the lightning gun's flare..heheh...
I totally agree. I've been noticing lately that there are some moderators who seem to think that "redundant" is just a big word that means "you're a poopy-head." Perhaps Rob should post a word list next to the little pull-down box? Maybe a javascript pop-up that says "are you sure this post is [whatever they moderated it to be]? That term means [definition]."
Incidentally, moderators, moderate this post as Offtopic, Flamebait, and maybe Troll- not as Redundant, though, 'cause it's not.
=)
"never look a gift penguin in the mouth, or he just might spit."
-- i just made this up
"The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear."
I to dislike rpm's, but it's not that bad.
Just use rpm2targz.....
>Too bad you'll only get to see it in 16 bit color. With teeny tiny textures. Let me know how many colors you
>can count in the lightning gun's flare..heheh...
Voodoo cards support only 16 bit colors so of course that isn't any surprise...
What i'm wondering is why TNT-cards only work accelerated in Linux when in 16-bit mode, as they DO support 32 bit colors..?
They're missing the low-level details on how to talk to the card; instead you have to go through the obfuscated source code they provide. It's not completely useless, but it's not completely useful either.
Hopefully, the XFree86 team will not stop development on 4.0, even if it is true.
However, maybe it's time for the XF86 developers to open up more. I know that the 3.9.xx betas were supposed to start that process up.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
This is a prerelease of the DRI software for 3dfx. It includes FULL source. Because it is a prerelease we know there are bugs and issues. We're collecting feedback on the newsgroup news://news.3dfx.com/3dfx.linux.glide.
It works with the Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo3. Early cards will never support it, because they are 3D only cards. It doesn't make sense to do X on them. (The Rush is an exception, but it is the so degenerate that it isn't worth the trouble.)
The old cards will still work just fine with the old Mesa and Glide. Applications will be linked against Mesa, and if you have an old card it will use Glide2x and be fullscreen. If you have a new card, it will use Mesa+DRI and glide3x and possibly run in a window.
This is a phased rollout. Right now we're in the "stealth" phase. :-) There will be more materials coming out over time and some more press releases to talk about it. So when you see the press releases you'll know about everything coming out.
Why do you care about this? This lets you run multiple apps at once in a window. Performance is just about the same as fullscreen was. So, if all you cared about was full screen quake, this doesn't make any difference. If you wanted to run other apps, this is a big win. It is also the first full DRI solution, which should be helpful to other projects.
This work emphasizes OpenGL. That's why the glide3x defaults to DRI only use. The code to make Glide3x work fullscreen non-DRI is included in the source tree. We want companies to use OpenGL. We realize there's a problem with Glide2x only applications. They won't work in this prerelease. Fixing that correctly means making Glide2x a DRI client. We're working on a solution to do that.
Yes, it is yet another license. (I had nothing to do with that) If you have specific problems with the license bring them up on the newsgroup. They may get changed.
What about other distros/OSes? You've got the source, go for it. We're still doing a prerelease. We've got other problems to worry about first.
All this work was done by Precision Insight and 3dfx.
I think I've got all the relevant questions. Hopefully this will get moderated up. I'll look for other questions later.
- |Daryll
Gee, ya think that a *SOURCE* RPM might actually contain the source code? :-)
- |Daryll
The rumor says that the XFree team met up with XiG at ALS and this deal soon followed. XFree is being deathly silent, of course. There are also rumors that they are VERY quietly trying to get 3.9.x sources removed from mirror sites.
Realism can also come from using advanced features on the card which let gl programs do more work for little cost in frame rate. Open sourcing the drivers also makes this possible, but getting the best performance requires programmers to know which trade offs to make on which card. Although this is possible don't expect it too soon.
This is news because a lot of people have these cards and it pressures other 3d card makers to follow.
Be insightful. If you can't be insightful, be informative.
If you can't be informative, use my name
> Why am I somewhat less than dazzled by drivers that (A) do not support Voodoo Graphics/Rush/2 cards, and (B) do not support the full Glide API?
Voodoo Rush is dead. It was still-born. Take it from someone who was foolish enough to actually buy one at one time.
Waah waah waahh... Look, 3dfx is still on probation in my book too, but god are you ever an ingrate. Has the Linux Way become to bitch at companies who don't do ALL your work for you?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
gif is proprietery format, algoritm used in .gif (lempel-ziv) is patented by unisys (i think)
.png instead of .jpeg
heh you probably missed "burn all gifs day" they should have used
F'in cool, hehe!!
MULLY
Could someone tell us something about the status of the Xfree86 snapshots - and why the next snapshot hasn't surfaced yet.
Thomas S. Iversen
Just did :)
Hey its not a problem, tell you what, me and 5 other folks will chip in and buy a copy. then we will warez it and put it out for public distribution. BTW how the heck can XiG get away with close sourcing any Linux development?
Ah, You might mean: Are those Open Hardware?
I guess not, at least there is not any common video card in Open Hardware Catalog.
Do manufacturers even know that Certification exists, do they even care? ... like GPL is now?
- If not, it's because nobody asks that certification.
Would you like to use it as definition of openess
- Then we must start using it, then others start asking about it ("Huh, what's that?"), and perhaps it can be become well known denifition.
It's up to us
[sandeen@Lager sandeen]$ rpm -qpl tdfx_dri-3.9.16-3.src.rpm
:) Granted, that's kind of silly, and (much as I like Red Hat) I was a little dismayed to see the requirement for a RH 6.1 install. But... you want tarballs? You got tarballs. :)
DRI.spec
DRI.tgz
glu.tgz
glut.tgz
misc.tgz
unique.patch
[sandeen@Lager sandeen]$ rpm -qpl Glide_V3-DRI-3.10-2.src.rpm
3dfx.gif
Glide3.10.tar.gz
Glide_V3-DRI-3.10.spec
Ooh! Look! Tarballs inside the RPM!
----
what's wrong with them? I'm not a hardware guy or a programmer guy, so bear with me. But what's missing?
----
I have the same card in the PCI version, and it's running at 1024x768 in 16-bit color. I ran one of the other config. programs that comes with XFree86 3.5 (I think it was xf86config), and it set up everything automatically. So I suggest: 1. Get the latest official release (3.5?) if you don't already have it. 2. Use xf86config. In its long list of cards, you'll find a voodoo3 entry. 3. Start out just picking the one configuration that you want, like 16-bit, 1024x768. I've found that seems to limit the number of things that can go wrong, and that it's easy to add more modes by hand later.
I emailed someone that I should know and I'll paraphrase the responses:
Q: I hear a rumour that XiG has bought away several of the XF86 developers.
A: A totally erroneous rumor.
Q: Why no new snapshots?
A: Because the developer in charge of snapshots hasn't uploaded any, probably due to having a life outside of XF86 development.
Q: Has the CVS been shut down?
A: No, in fact an update was made last week.
Q: When will XF86 4.0 be released?
A: Unknown, but it has not been terminated. There are still issues to be resolved and, as with all development, they want to avoid releasing a bad version.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
That, of course, should read "I emailed someone _WHO SHOULD KNOW_..." Sorry.
*sigh*
matt
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
This is what I don't get though:
:)
In the unix world, isn't redundancy a GOOD thing?
Fork the tree!
-Erik-
Awesome, sounds very cool. This might be especially useful for massively multiplayer games (large scale war sims, maybe a MMP version of Rogue with simple windowed 3-d). Windows sucks hard at windowed 3d.
+&x
Pretty much ends the discussion on which type of video card to buy!
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
Hopefully this means that 3dfx has given up on locking developers into their proprietary APIs. They very successfully leveraged their initial dominance of the market to get many game shops to write glide only, or primarily glide based games. Of course, no one would write a game using glide only anymore, mainly thanks to Nvidia. Here's to OpenGL as the standard for 3D graphics!
If you want tools, the Perl "alien" script will do the conversion/extraction for you.
I think it would have been better for RPM to be a standard cpio file without a header (the header information could have gone into a file inside the archive), but that's really pretty minor.
Yes, but glide on voodoo 2 is already fully ported and mature - can even do windowed rendering by a sneaky copyback hack. All you really need is the maintainer to recompile each time a new libc comes out - which shouldn't be for quite a while.
I jsut wish they would get windowed rendering working on the Voodoo Banshee. The voodoo banshee is basically a slow voodoo 3.
I'm probably going to get a G400max soon anyway, though.
Of course, PNG is supposedly enjoying the rennaissance in terms of not only good, but Politically Correct graphics format. Just a reminder for those of you trying to use JPEG to aviod GIF.
I haven't noticed a quality difference in PNG, but then again, I've neever been an imaging purist.
They used to have Anon CVS on cvs.xfree86.org. As soon as those developers were hired, the anon access went bye-bye.
XiG will stop at nothing to prevent the obsolence of their products.
I've heard it can be used for other TNT based cards, but you have to do wierd things like mixing driver files, etc... you'll also need a valid Creative serial number to D/L the file IIRC. Check Planetriva.com and some of the other TNT oriented sites, especially the forums for more details.
XFree86 is distributed under the X11 license. It provides no protection against propritary derritive works.
Furhtermore, the XFree86 team refuses to make beta code available to people working on GPLed features, such as a imlib server side module.
This is why anytime that XFree does something that AccelX doesn't, AccelX does in the next revision.
The XFree developers seem happy working with the one-way street, so it's not supprising that some of them sold out.
I'm sure development can continue.
I think it's important that these concernes be heard.
Maby we (slashdot) can muster up enough $$ to buy these developers back?
This is not true. The source is a full implementation of Glide3.x fully compatibile with the windows API (Its missing a few extensions). The source will even build on Windows if you grab a couple of Windows DDK/SDK files. If you take a look at the source you'll notice that you can even adjust a few symlinks to builds a fully functional non-DRI standalone version of Glide3x. However as this is the first release of Glide3x for linux there are no Glide3x programs to run. However the Glide3x documentation is provided so you can write your own Glide3x programs. Joseph Kain
Yeah, but I don't have the serial number to my TNT card, so I can't download the thing. My computer is such a huge mess of wires it takes forever to get inside it to see if the number is on the card.
Despite all that I know several people that have this running on Debian, using alien to convert the packages to debs. I've converted the packages to tgz files using alien as well. I've also built the entire thing from source on Slackware 7.0. Given all that I think this prerelease is in very good shape. The only major problem I've seen so far is that it won't run on Suse (The provided binaries or a build on Suse) I'll be looking into that today.
Joseph Kain
Again, stupid moderation kills an informative post.
What kind of moron would mistake the above for a troll, it seemed to be well worded and not inflamitory. It may not be valid (as a below reply suggests) but it is a real concern that seems to be buzzing around the internet.
Oh well. What can you expect from slashdot, the mental LCD of the internet.
Because the current implementation is "for development only", and that feature will be in their DRI release.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
its not like rpm is some closed proprietary standard. If you use gmc, double click on the rpm and you can easily drag and drop the files out. Or you can use alien. or rpm2tgz. I don't understand why people begrudge redhat for being successful. Or is it less "cool" to use an OS if too many other people use it?
Without tweaking q3a in any way, and using the above mention DRI+glide driver, with a 1600x1200 desktop, and the standard size q3a window I get 30.2 fps on q3demo1 on a celeron 300A/450 with the slowest voodoo3 (2000).
Can any non-3dfx card do 3d in a window with linux? Faster?
I checked out the webpage and I'm not sure exactly what's being offered. Is this the source to Glide, the 3D API, or is it an X server for the Voodoo cards? Or something in between? If its the former, then doesn't that mean people can port Glide to work with any 3D card? Being that I have a TNT 2, I'm a little pissed about games that require Glide.
I'm talking more about Windows than Linux here. Normally I hate Windows just as much as (if not more than) your average Linux user does, but gaming is one area where Linux just can't compete with Windows. This is not flamebait, its a legitamite question, even in a crowd of Linux users. Remember, open source can apply to Windows stuff, even if it usually doesn't.
No, this is a subset of glide that allows GLX DRI support for Voodoo 3. Not useful for glide wrappers. It's not API-compatrible to windoze glide version 3.
The GLX DRI is a part of the forthcoming XFree86 4.0 that allows hardware accelerated full screen and windowed 3D, network transparently (! i.e. you could run a 3D program on a computer in Nebraska, and have it display its output on your computer in Ohio, using the 3d hardware of your Ohio computer. It does this by passing OpenGL commands to the GLX module in the X server. Very clever. Very cool. SGIs have been doing this for years. Windows doesn't.
Why am I somewhat less than dazzled by drivers that (A) do not support Voodoo Graphics/Rush/2 cards, and (B) do not support the full Glide API?
Basically that means that I can say bye-bye to playing any new 3D games in the future on my Voodoo2. For some reason, that really pisses me off.
Are these open ala Nvidia and Sblive, "Here's some code but no specs", or are the open ala Matrox g200/400, where you actually have specs and can do useful work beyond optimizing what they give you? The article was brief and didn't seem all that clear, imho...
As I still only have a riva128, matrox's (imho) better open-ness will lead me to get a g200/400 when I do upgrade...
David
This sig left intentionally blank.
If it was /just/ glide then it's no big deal.
But from the fact that opengl can be
implemented as a thin(ish) layer over glide
which makes it wa-hey cool for voodoo3
owners.
As one previous poster mentioned, it would
be great if 3dfx would release stuff which would
allow the older voodoo cards to work too.
its not like rpm is some closed proprietary standard.
.src.rpms as an option, but we already have a lowest-common denominator for souce code in the *nix world. It's called tar.gz.
No, it's not. But distributing source only in one packaging format is just plain impolite. It's saying to non-rpm distibutions, "We just don't care about you and your users. You should have to use our tools because they're popular over here where we live." That's the attitude I have trouble with. It's as insensitive as emailing MS Word documents to strangers.
It's fine to offer
They've just basically claimed that they're dying out. Making glide v3 open source is basically their last resort to staying alive. It's a shame.
The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face. - Jack Handey
good question how open are these are they going to release how the low level calls are made ?
some how they are trying to fudge it not the 3Dfx developers but the managers
often giveing out specs is hard because they are hard to seprate from what you would want to keep out of the public domain for your own safety
WAY TO GO for useing the DRI though !!
DRI means windows and not just full screen so bring on MAYA !
a BIG THANK YOU to the grunts testing and moaning in 3Dfx to do this right !!
peace
john
out
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
The glide code is under yet another source license. At first glance, it sounds DFSG-free, claiming to be GPL-ish with exceptions for code not explicitly derived from the original code. I'm not sure what they're trying for there that the lgpl doesn't cover. Porting glide to your proprietary card seems like an example.
Here's the preamble:
program interface (API).The license is intended to offer terms similar
to some standard General Public Licenses designed to foster open
standards and unrestricted accessibility to source code. Some of these
licenses require that, as a condition of the license of the software,
any derivative works (that is, new software which is a work containing
the original program or a portion of it) must be available for general
use, without restriction other than for a minor transfer fee, and that
the source code for such derivative works must likewise be made
available. The only restriction is that such derivative works must be
subject to the same General Public License terms as the original work.
This 3dfx GLIDE Source Code General Public License differs from the
standard licenses of this type in that it does not require the entire
derivative work to be made available under the terms of this license
nor is the recipient required to make available the source code for
the entire derivative work. Rather, the license is limited to only the
identifiable portion of the derivative work that is derived from the
licensed software. The precise terms and conditions for copying,
distribution and modification follow.
I noticed two obvious hitches:
section 3.2(f) says:
You do not make any use of the GLIDE trademark without the prior written permission of 3dfx.
And yet, a la GPL, you must insure that all recipients receive a copy or be referred to "this License" which is defined as the "3dfx GLIDE Source Code General Public License". Hmmm.
I'd guess this is an oversight, since they seem to be attempting to hold to the spirit of the GPL.
Also, section 4.2 says:
If the distribution and/or use of the Program or Derivative Works
is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted
interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under
this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation
excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in
or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License
incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
This seems to say they can take away one's right to redistribute at any time, especially since the readme lists a number of US patent numbers. This seems like a real show-stopper.
Comments?