From: David Waite <mass@ufl.edu>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 15:53:49 -0400

RE: 3d

When it comes down to it, 3d graphics hardware is not standardized enough to
create a standard abstraction layer. Even with OGL/DirectX, there are some
cards that do not fit into the generalized scheme at all, and special cases
have to be made (i.e. PowerVR2)

So, the best scheme in this case is to have the driver be either the
low-level hardware, or have it be a low-level API that the manufacturer
provides (i.e. Glide, PowerSGL I believe). Then any "greater" API would
detect these drivers and abstract them.

This way, you have the benefit of abstraction if it is possible, without the
large amounts of bloat in kernelspace or other problems by making something
like Mesa kernel-level.

You also get the benefit as a programmer of being able to program directly
to the hardware driver, rather than being forced to program for an
abstraction layer. People can still use GLIDE to program 3dfx chips, as well
as Mesa to generate platform and hardware independant code.

-David Waite