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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. "
- |Daryll
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
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.
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Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
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?
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"Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
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
I wonder if this means they will be releasing a closed glide > 3 for windows soon.
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.
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"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
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
- |Daryll
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.
[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!
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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
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!
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
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.
- |Daryll
OOPS!
- |Daryll
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.
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?