From: Jon M. Taylor <taylorj@ecs.csus.edu>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 22:08:32 -0700 (PDT)

Re: 3d

On Mon, 17 Aug 1998, teunis wrote:

> On Mon, 17 Aug 1998, James A Simmons wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 17 Aug 1998, Torgeir Veimo wrote:
> > 
> > > James A Simmons wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Why we are discussing this. I have been working with the TGA video adapter
> > > > and have notice it supports gourand shading and z buffering. It does not
> > > > have texture mapping. Alot of cards have gourand shading and z buffering.
> > > > How should we support this? Any ideas?
> > > 
> > > There is no "correct" sollution for this. One can provide a common API
> > > for rasterization, but not for all kinds of acceleration. Drivers which
> > > implements such a common API are called mini client drivers (in the SGI
> > > / MS OpenGL driver kit).
> > >
> > 
> > I will not start this flame war again. Their are some very common high end
> > acceleration in many cards. The thing that varies the most is the texture 
> > mapping functions. 
> 
> And on the -really- high-end cards (ie. 3DFX-2 and the like :), the entire
> card is programmable ergo next response:

	How's this?  I still am stuck with a Voodoo I.  Does Voodoo II
have a coprocessor of some kind. 

> > > There allready exist a minor API in Mesa for rasterization, which means
> > > a driver can accellerate these.
> >  
> > I like to see library independent accelleration. Threw ioctl not special
> > library stubs. 
> 
> Not likely.  There's really no compatibility below the OpenGL/whatever
> layer.  None whatsoever.  Even OpenGL doesn't really cut it with some
> hardware (OpenGL is too bare-metal for them or they're planar hardware)
> but it'll do for now.

	See my z-buffer/polygon/pluggable shader idea elsewhere in this
thread.  It'll work closely enough with most hardware.

Jon

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