You are talking about plain OpenGL 1.5(or less) or 2.0 specification?
Extensions handle "missing functionality" problems. If you have a capable hardware, design extension, implement it in driver and you have what is needed. Another popular method is to use pixel shaders to do antialiased vector rendering. Xgl doesn't really care here about implementation specific problems, it leaves all that to glitz (Cairo - OpenGL backend) which investigates appropriate GL ways to do required work.
Alpha channel covers only transparency. What about other effects? Do you want important system message to wobble or to be still and readable? Or consider any other possible effect in the same context. Separate compositor can't know that information without input from window manager. Making them work in single process only simplifies design for both compiz and plugin developers, which can only benefit Xgl users.
After all, Anyone disagreeing with this design decision is free to write their own separate composite manager or use already available ones. It's probably even doable to have compiz composition-only plugin which isn't a window manager and instead works with regular window managers (like metacity).
Being a user from Firefox 0.3 (Phoenix), I immediately predicted it's success. It was, unlike clunky Mozilla (and Netscape) a real refresh in a browser world. Tabbed browsing was very novel thing back then (although not completely new). Enough for me to switch fro IE. Soon extensions were there and it was definitely a killer feature that gave firefox a BIG boost.
it is easy once you have a nuke. Pack it in lead so ionization detectors can't find anything, hide inside of ship's hull and you are ready to nuke NY or any coastal city.
I can only imagine the devastating effect on economy (we've seen how even two downed skyscrapers can have bad consequences, what if whole city would be destroyed?)
Future of 3D in wine is grey because: a) linux driver for non-nvida cards mostly suck. OSS DRI drivers are good, but still lacking some pieces and lack dirty optimisations (which ati and nvidia use heavily in their proprietary drivers for last bit of performance - kids usually buy cards that win on 3dmarks). Some important OGL extensions are still unaccelerated in linux drivers - there are probably some direct3D abilities which OGL doesn't cover or appropriate extensions aren't well supported for now (e.g. FBO's), or simply not suitable for translation. Graphic card memory tests in wine are much slower, probably for something like that. Theoretically best way is to have directX reverse engineered and implemented in linux drivers, but I hope noone will spend too much time on that, maybe only add some specific new extensions to MESA if really needed for better support and speed.
b) DirectX to OpenGL translation takes some performance away. Cedega has much more advanced D3D translation for now, and this certainly can be improved.
c) Copy protections are BIG issue. Starforce 3 especially will be impossible to run, maybe with heavily hacked kernel, or only if you run virtualised windows kernel in parallel. But it isn't a problem as with new processors you will be able to run windows with XEN3 and play games with full performance in windows without rebooting. Yeah, you can try cracks if they exist, but starforce is practically uncrackable for now. Too bad game developers tend to go windows/D3D route so much, maybe PS3 can change that and bring us loads of OGL games, not only FPS shooters. Games using OGL have better chances of being ported to Linux. MS on the other side is trying to make OpenGL obsolete on Windows, now that they have powerful enough 3D API.
They got their ass kicked recently from mobile manufacturers. Apparently noone wants Microsoft setting standards (and eventually control hardware design like in PC world) in the mobile world. Large mobile hardware corporations decided to jointly take linux route: powerful OS + full control of all aspects of their products. Mobile phones, not PDA's or bulky laptops are most probable ones to become personal devices of the future. Connect them with display or keyboard and you will get a classical computer.
I already see Microsoft loosing their dominance in OS market, and they seem to know it already (trying to desperately push forward Windows Mobile, with good success so far only in handheld area). Symbian on the other side is in hands of Nokia so I'm unsure of it's long term acceptance.
Dominating sky as part of US Air Force attacking poor contry (which was under sanctions for a decade) is easy for any plane, fighting modernised Sukhoi/MIG planes with good ground support is completely different thing.
You must be mistaken, China is a magnet for investments in private sector. With annual growth of 10% (or more) it will, in less than a decade, become worlds No.1 economical superpower. Internet isn't a big spending for them anyway.
If USA stop Microsoft from doing business in China (I hope they do), all they achieve is shooting their own tech giant into the foot. If open source software gets mainstream in such big population country like China, it will start advancing at much faster pace, which Microsoft can't follow, so Windows will be in few years a pile of shit compared to linux desktops.
You are referring to Dreambox. That receiver is best there is. it allows people ("pirates") to seamlessly watch encrypted content using keys available on internet. It also allows card sharing and many more. Based on PPC processor, and platform is open meaning yo ucan install custom programs. All that has led to great community support for the receiver.
I regret for not buying it, instead I got a PC (athlon-xp) with skystar2 and dxr3 card for cca $200. System is ubuntu 5.10 (with lost of custom adjustment), VDR+SC+xine combination for now. DXR3 is useless until I connect composite output to cable because my TV doesn't support s-video input. Bet would of course be RGB but dxr3 requires hardwre modification for that.
Is it technically impossible to have WinFX bindings (or some other new API for Vista) for C++ or it is just a policy by Microsoft not to have one (with purpose of forcing as many people as possible into.NET)?
With more articles like this, we could neglect impact of Microsoft advertising machine (aka FUD spreaders). I would also add one fact here: If you have non-standard IDE controller or SATA disk, you MUST use ancient technology called "floppy disk" to install even the latest Windows XP (SP2) version!
Manufacturers don't want to offer cheap open platform because it can be competition with their expensive, advanced, "niche" phones. Service providers probably fear of VoIP on mobile phones which could down their income significantly.
Movie indutstry (MPAA): Shameless adversiting of every movie as a good, inspired, entertaining, happy etc. In my country (middle Europe) radio stations give tickets to people who call. Guess what? They also revew movies. I'm sure they wouldn't get any tickets if reviews were realistical. But majority of people can't see it is sort of advertising, so ti works.
Music industry: I won't spend any time explaining MTV, a "standard setting TV".
Car industry: Look at magazines. They a) live from advertising b) get cars for review, from car dealers or manufacturers It's easy to guess that they won't be able to write "this auto is bad".
Game industry: They send preview versions to game magazines. If text is too crtical, you don't get it next time. Luckily there is a warez community. Forums on theisonews.com are filled with people saying what they think about games. I use those reviews as major reference before *obtaining* games.
DVD's won't go away for at least a decade. And I'm talking about almost simultaneous releases on HD and DVD disks. As long as 90% of households own DVD player, and can't distinguish difference between quality, HD formats can't make huge inroads, just small and incremental. It's even possible high-def video will be accepted by high-quality freaks only. If DVD's remain cheaper, they will still be selling muuch more movies.
If they even try releasing HD movies before DVD releases, except huge stream of pirated content, obtained either by analog or digital screen capturing.
There still are some gaps though.. Indirect rendering isn't very hot, for instance. That is when you run a application remotely (X Windows is a networking protocol after all, like HTTP or whatnot) you can't get OpenGL acceleration working on it.
This is about to change with XGL. Because X server is itself a GL application, it will render all child indirect-GL windows in it's own context, hardware accelerated.
I shall write something about XGL's workings. It is a X server implemented as GL program, using GPU to manipulate bitmaps which are therefore stored in video memory. It cun run directly using linux framebuffer and MESA, or use another X server to get stuff as input, graphic mode setting and direct hardware (DRI) access.
As app bitmap data is located in vram, GL-based composite manager (in the works by DavidR) is essentially GL program which manipulates video ram data of all windows using GPU directly (and as such can be blazingly fast on moder GPU's) to render final screen. XRender is a part of X protocol: commands are issued by applications to xserver to do requested vector operations (in similar way to Cairo) and draw to resulting bitmaps. Drawing it to bitmap is done here by XGL,a GL X server program, which does this using GPU to calculate and write result into video memory bitmap. XGL also other X drawing operations besider Xrender in similar fashion.
Important point here is that XGL uses glitz for access to GL protocol. This has nothing to do with Cairo, it is merely a usage of what has already been done as a good vector GL interface. Taklking about cairo-based apps, they only need to use XRender cairo backend to get result hardware accelerated. They can also use glitz with direct GL, but then it opens new GL stack and avoids XGL render acceleration completely (in case of indirect GLX it isn't like that, it still goes all over XGL). Compositing manager (and possibly XGL) will still have access to those direct mode rendered textures, via special GL extensions (which it uses also to access XGL bitmaps that are part of regular X apps).
I think hardest part is to get good memory management working, but also a GPU scheduler could be required for simultaneous usage of GPU by more processes (see MS plans, in vista they will have both). Also, DRI/MESA needs to get some tweaks and new extensions to allow all possible windowed GL apps to run in XGL alongside composite manager and XGL itself (in full screen I guess XGL/composite manager can be suspended). It remains to be seen how fast NVIDIA will folow that development with their proprietary driver. For ATI I don't care yet because there is open R300 driver working with most except the new X1000 series (and they use DRI so it won't be so hard to integrate their stuff).
In more distant future I hope someone will come up with vector-based compositing (i.e. storing vector based data in memory which compositing manager transforms into final bitmap), and maybe there will be a new and simple method (accompanied by new protocol extension) for creating 3D apps, similar to what MS is doing with Avalon.
In fact, there are some efforts to get it working on R300 DRI driver(works on R200). Both XGL and XEGL need DRI memory management (which is planned in DRI) and proper mode setting support. Currently linux frambuffer has most necessary patches for functional r200, but idea(plan) is to make a separate mdoe-setting library that is cross platform. most hard stuff is there for XEGL.
Another related issue is plug and play for graphic system (jon smirl had idea to probe sysfs for EDID display changes, even have graphic cards cold/hotplugging support, etc). And there is a need for in-kernel VGA legacy administration (what's the status of that?), which is, AFAIK, a blocker for some multi-card uses.
Why is this report published as a Linux story on Slashdot? XGL's goal is to be prefectly capable of running on other Unix systems (BSD's, Solaris), either layered on top of existing X server or using DRI+MESA-solo (or proprietary hardware GL implementetation), as well as on MacOSX and Windows GL stacks. There is even a possibility of support on embedded OGL-ES systems.
...of AnyDVD? It is a driver filter for windows which presents all DVD data as unencrypted and region free. Besides it beats most recent Sony, Macrovision,etc. DVD "protections".
Slashdot Mirror
You are talking about plain OpenGL 1.5(or less) or 2.0 specification?
Extensions handle "missing functionality" problems. If you have a capable hardware, design extension, implement it in driver and you have what is needed. Another popular method is to use pixel shaders to do antialiased vector rendering. Xgl doesn't really care here about implementation specific problems, it leaves all that to glitz (Cairo - OpenGL backend) which investigates appropriate GL ways to do required work.
You are talking about plain OpenGL OpenGL backend) which investigates appropriate GL ways to do required work.
Alpha channel covers only transparency. What about other effects? Do you want important system message to wobble or to be still and readable? Or consider any other possible effect in the same context. Separate compositor can't know that information without input from window manager. Making them work in single process only simplifies design for both compiz and plugin developers, which can only benefit Xgl users. After all, Anyone disagreeing with this design decision is free to write their own separate composite manager or use already available ones. It's probably even doable to have compiz composition-only plugin which isn't a window manager and instead works with regular window managers (like metacity).
Being a user from Firefox 0.3 (Phoenix), I immediately predicted it's success. It was, unlike clunky Mozilla (and Netscape) a real refresh in a browser world. Tabbed browsing was very novel thing back then (although not completely new). Enough for me to switch fro IE. Soon extensions were there and it was definitely a killer feature that gave firefox a BIG boost.
it is easy once you have a nuke. Pack it in lead so ionization detectors can't find anything, hide inside of ship's hull and you are ready to nuke NY or any coastal city. I can only imagine the devastating effect on economy (we've seen how even two downed skyscrapers can have bad consequences, what if whole city would be destroyed?)
Future of 3D in wine is grey because:
a) linux driver for non-nvida cards mostly suck. OSS DRI drivers are good, but still lacking some pieces and lack dirty optimisations (which ati and nvidia use heavily in their proprietary drivers for last bit of performance - kids usually buy cards that win on 3dmarks). Some important OGL extensions are still unaccelerated in linux drivers - there are probably some direct3D abilities which OGL doesn't cover or appropriate extensions aren't well supported for now (e.g. FBO's), or simply not suitable for translation. Graphic card memory tests in wine are much slower, probably for something like that. Theoretically best way is to have directX reverse engineered and implemented in linux drivers, but I hope noone will spend too much time on that, maybe only add some specific new extensions to MESA if really needed for better support and speed.
b) DirectX to OpenGL translation takes some performance away. Cedega has much more advanced D3D translation for now, and this certainly can be improved.
c) Copy protections are BIG issue. Starforce 3 especially will be impossible to run, maybe with heavily hacked kernel, or only if you run virtualised windows kernel in parallel. But it isn't a problem as with new processors you will be able to run windows with XEN3 and play games with full performance in windows without rebooting. Yeah, you can try cracks if they exist, but starforce is practically uncrackable for now. Too bad game developers tend to go windows/D3D route so much, maybe PS3 can change that and bring us loads of OGL games, not only FPS shooters. Games using OGL have better chances of being ported to Linux. MS on the other side is trying to make OpenGL obsolete on Windows, now that they have powerful enough 3D API.
They got their ass kicked recently from mobile manufacturers. Apparently noone wants Microsoft setting standards (and eventually control hardware design like in PC world) in the mobile world.
Large mobile hardware corporations decided to jointly take linux route: powerful OS + full control of all aspects of their products.
Mobile phones, not PDA's or bulky laptops are most probable ones to become personal devices of the future. Connect them with display or keyboard and you will get a classical computer.
I already see Microsoft loosing their dominance in OS market, and they seem to know it already (trying to desperately push forward Windows Mobile, with good success so far only in handheld area). Symbian on the other side is in hands of Nokia so I'm unsure of it's long term acceptance.
Dominating sky as part of US Air Force attacking poor contry (which was under sanctions for a decade) is easy for any plane, fighting modernised Sukhoi/MIG planes with good ground support is completely different thing.
I hope so. Bye-bye windows mobile...
And it even doesn't apply to dead persons. it's legal to write their full name.
You must be mistaken, China is a magnet for investments in private sector. With annual growth of 10% (or more) it will, in less than a decade, become worlds No.1 economical superpower. Internet isn't a big spending for them anyway.
If USA stop Microsoft from doing business in China (I hope they do), all they achieve is shooting their own tech giant into the foot. If open source software gets mainstream in such big population country like China, it will start advancing at much faster pace, which Microsoft can't follow, so Windows will be in few years a pile of shit compared to linux desktops.
You are referring to Dreambox. That receiver is best there is. it allows people ("pirates") to seamlessly watch encrypted content using keys available on internet. It also allows card sharing and many more. Based on PPC processor, and platform is open meaning yo ucan install custom programs. All that has led to great community support for the receiver. I regret for not buying it, instead I got a PC (athlon-xp) with skystar2 and dxr3 card for cca $200. System is ubuntu 5.10 (with lost of custom adjustment), VDR+SC+xine combination for now. DXR3 is useless until I connect composite output to cable because my TV doesn't support s-video input. Bet would of course be RGB but dxr3 requires hardwre modification for that.
Is it technically impossible to have WinFX bindings (or some other new API for Vista) for C++ or it is just a policy by Microsoft not to have one (with purpose of forcing as many people as possible into .NET)?
Then you are lucky. Silicon image 3112 on-board here.
With more articles like this, we could neglect impact of Microsoft advertising machine (aka FUD spreaders).
I would also add one fact here:
If you have non-standard IDE controller or SATA disk, you MUST use ancient technology called "floppy disk" to install even the latest Windows XP (SP2) version!
Manufacturers don't want to offer cheap open platform because it can be competition with their expensive, advanced, "niche" phones. Service providers probably fear of VoIP on mobile phones which could down their income significantly.
err...and earn new anti-trust case in Europe, maybe US for forcing their web services in OS?
Movie indutstry (MPAA):
Shameless adversiting of every movie as a good, inspired, entertaining, happy etc.
In my country (middle Europe) radio stations give tickets to people who call. Guess what?
They also revew movies. I'm sure they wouldn't get any tickets if reviews were realistical.
But majority of people can't see it is sort of advertising, so ti works.
Music industry: I won't spend any time explaining MTV, a "standard setting TV".
Car industry: Look at magazines. They
a) live from advertising
b) get cars for review, from car dealers or manufacturers
It's easy to guess that they won't be able to write "this auto is bad".
Game industry: They send preview versions to game magazines. If text is too crtical, you don't get it next time. Luckily there is a warez community. Forums on theisonews.com are filled with people saying what they think about games. I use those reviews as major reference before *obtaining* games.
DVD's won't go away for at least a decade. And I'm talking about almost simultaneous releases on HD and DVD disks. As long as 90% of households own DVD player, and can't distinguish difference between quality, HD formats can't make huge inroads, just small and incremental. It's even possible high-def video will be accepted by high-quality freaks only. If DVD's remain cheaper, they will still be selling muuch more movies. If they even try releasing HD movies before DVD releases, except huge stream of pirated content, obtained either by analog or digital screen capturing.
I shall write something about XGL's workings. It is a X server implemented as GL program, using GPU to manipulate bitmaps which are therefore stored in video memory. It cun run directly using linux framebuffer and MESA, or use another X server to get stuff as input, graphic mode setting and direct hardware (DRI) access.
As app bitmap data is located in vram, GL-based composite manager (in the works by DavidR) is essentially GL program which manipulates video ram data of all windows using GPU directly (and as such can be blazingly fast on moder GPU's) to render final screen. XRender is a part of X protocol: commands are issued by applications to xserver to do requested vector operations (in similar way to Cairo) and draw to resulting bitmaps. Drawing it to bitmap is done here by XGL,a GL X server program, which does this using GPU to calculate and write result into video memory bitmap. XGL also other X drawing operations besider Xrender in similar fashion.
Important point here is that XGL uses glitz for access to GL protocol. This has nothing to do with Cairo, it is merely a usage of what has already been done as a good vector GL interface. Taklking about cairo-based apps, they only need to use XRender cairo backend to get result hardware accelerated. They can also use glitz with direct GL, but then it opens new GL stack and avoids XGL render acceleration completely (in case of indirect GLX it isn't like that, it still goes all over XGL). Compositing manager (and possibly XGL) will still have access to those direct mode rendered textures, via special GL extensions (which it uses also to access XGL bitmaps that are part of regular X apps).
I think hardest part is to get good memory management working, but also a GPU scheduler could be required for simultaneous usage of GPU by more processes (see MS plans, in vista they will have both). Also, DRI/MESA needs to get some tweaks and new extensions to allow all possible windowed GL apps to run in XGL alongside composite manager and XGL itself (in full screen I guess XGL/composite manager can be suspended).
It remains to be seen how fast NVIDIA will folow that development with their proprietary driver. For ATI I don't care yet because there is open R300 driver working with most except the new X1000 series (and they use DRI so it won't be so hard to integrate their stuff).
In more distant future I hope someone will come up with vector-based compositing (i.e. storing vector based data in memory which compositing manager transforms into final bitmap), and maybe there will be a new and simple method (accompanied by new protocol extension) for creating 3D apps, similar to what MS is doing with Avalon.
In fact, there are some efforts to get it working on R300 DRI driver(works on R200). Both XGL and XEGL need DRI memory management (which is planned in DRI) and proper mode setting support. Currently linux frambuffer has most necessary patches for functional r200, but idea(plan) is to make a separate mdoe-setting library that is cross platform. most hard stuff is there for XEGL.
Another related issue is plug and play for graphic system (jon smirl had idea to probe sysfs for EDID display changes, even have graphic cards cold/hotplugging support, etc).
And there is a need for in-kernel VGA legacy administration (what's the status of that?), which is, AFAIK, a blocker for some multi-card uses.
Why is this report published as a Linux story on Slashdot? XGL's goal is to be prefectly capable of running on other Unix systems (BSD's, Solaris), either layered on top of existing X server or using DRI+MESA-solo (or proprietary hardware GL implementetation), as well as on MacOSX and Windows GL stacks. There is even a possibility of support on embedded OGL-ES systems.
...of AnyDVD? It is a driver filter for windows which presents all DVD data as unencrypted and region free. Besides it beats most recent Sony, Macrovision,etc. DVD "protections".