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SIGGRAPH '99 OpenGL/Linux BOF Minutes 36

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
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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SIGGRAPH '99 OpenGL/Linux BOF Minutes More

SIGGRAPH '99 OpenGL/Linux BOF Minutes

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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)
  • Does anyone know anything more about Inventor options for Linux? (or care?)

    Things are starting to happen. Search Freshmeat. You have at least the two projects Coin [www.sim.no] (QPL) and Scene [netpedia.net] (LGPL). Also check out Troll Tech's web site for a Qt-based .iv file viewer called Pryan [troll.no].

  • 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.
  • 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
  • Question: Will OpenGL on FreeBSD be supported?

    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 [mailto]

  • I've really been impressed with things like DRI on Linux. I'd Like to start developing OpenGL applicaions for Linux, but articles like this one are often just a bit too vague fot that sort of thing.

    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

  • So how should I proceed to get some fundamental OpenGL-knowledge?

    The beautiful thing about OpenGL is that it is mostly platform independent. So you could start by adapting existing code, reuse the OS interfacing parts, and put in your own OpenGL code. Such code and lots of tutorials can be found at www.opengl.org [opengl.org] and in the example directories of a Mesa [mesa3d.org] distribution. (We owe Brian!)

    Side note:
    Interestingly enough the Win32 world seems to stay closed as it always have been, while there are many OpenGL demos for Win32 out there, few of those authors disclose their source.

    Ultimately get the new Woo book for OpenGL 1.2 and the Kilgard book for the interaction with the X environment.

    If you are interested in 3d graphics for FreeBSD watch the announcement for the upcoming 3d section on www.freebsd.org [freebsd.org]

  • 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?
  • 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.

  • Hell yeah - electropaint is the most cool screensaver ever to save pixels.

    A Free release would be wonderful.
  • I had two favorite memories of the meeting.

    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

  • 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...
  • 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.

    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.

  • > Sorry, you're going to have to get an old SGI
    > unless you want to port ElectroPaint from IrisGL
    > to OpenGL.

    Well, while I'm not really that much of an OpenGL programmer, I feel it would be considerably easier to port it if there was source code available.

    Meanwhile, let's see if there's a cheap Indy on eBay...

    Heck, I'd pay for a Linux binary of ep. Not a whole lot, but I'd buy it for like $20. I like it that much.
  • 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.
  • We have contracts with Intel, ATI, and 3dfx at this point. We're talking with just about everyone.

    If you add the nVidia and Matrox you get five DRI based implementations.

    I can't really say anything else. :-)

    - |Daryll

  • 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
  • I plugged both those projects while I was speaking. It just didn't make it into Brian's version of the minutes.

    - |Daryll

  • 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
  • I attended the Fahrenheit BOF and there were some pretty heavy questions being asked of MS there wrt to Linux support. They copped quite a caning about it and Unix support in general. The general attitude was if it isn't really trully supported on Unix, nobody was really interested.

    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).

  • 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?)

    No more worrisome than, say, Mandrake. There are lots of distributions based on other distributions, and it happens that the SGI distribution is based on Red Hat 6.0 at the moment.

    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.

    I have no idea what "battle" you are referring to. Xi Graphics has been an OpenGL licensee for years, as has Metro Link. We add new licensees all the time. SGI and Red Hat have both funded some of the work Precision Insight has done as well, but that has nothing to do with OpenGL licensing, Red Hat compatibility, or concessions of any sort.

  • You can get a QD3D implementation of ElectroPaint at http://www.eblong.com/zarf/stonerview.ht ml [eblong.com].

    It wouldn't be terribly difficult to convert it to OpenGL for an xscreensaver module (it's a Mac app at the moment, but GPL).

    -dair
  • Due to the rapid nature of the developement(ie. they hacked hard and fast to make it in time), they couldn't get the maxium performance out of the FX board. Their initial driver was implemented only using PCI. If they had more time, they could have utilized the AGP and really let the polygons fly. :-) Although technically a "non-product technology demo", look for some sweet Linux stuff(hardware and software) from HP in the near future.
  • hopefully maya and sgi or hp will be ready by january.
  • David Tristram, the author of ElectroPaint and one of the Raster Masters, has a web page for his company, Tristram Visual [tristram.com]. Perhaps you can beg him to release the source?

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