[Bf-committers] Software OpenGL

[Campbell Barton]

Hi, I would be interested in getting blender working better under 
software OpenGL.
I assume there are a many software openGL implimantation but Id like wo 
work with Mesa for now.

On my system Mesa is quite useable, and not even as slow as I expected, 
even fully textured large scenes can redraw about 10fps which is useable.

I use mesa when developing OpenGL plugins in Python to avoid crashing my 
graphics card (driver issue I guess, but its beside the point) so theres 
one resion for software openGL (buggy drivers), also even hardware accel 
can be slower then software when you have more textures loaded then the 
card has memory. I while back I used software openGL for a model that 
had overt 256meg of images.

I have a distant hope that blender may run on linux IPAQ. Linux /IPAQ 
run SDL/X11/Mesa and Python, so I dont see why blender would not compile 
after some small work.

To this end, here are some things that could be done to accelerate 
Blender in software openGL/Ipaq.
* Modify redraw loops only to redraw on mouse move
(This is a problem with Bounding, box and space boarder resizing) - 
Seems that Mesa isnt that fast at XOR drawing operations,
I have patched the border resizing problem my only redrawing on mouse 
movement. now works well in mesa. this was the main problem I noticed.
https://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2480&group_id=9&atid=127 


* Investigate fastest mipmapping options- I think nearest if faster for 
enlarged textures, couldent notice any difference for scaled down 
mipmaps. Not sure how to do this, since we might still want mipmaps not 
totaly disabled (as with mipmap on/off button)

* Have options to ignore alpha in floating panels.

* Have options to ignore Smooth curves in floating panels or UI.

* Have options to remove menu drop shadows

Should these be IFDEFS?, Somthing like FAST_OPENGL to turn anything 
thats slow in software open GL off.
After this, running on ipaq would be more fesable.

These speedups could also be good for people with low quality on board 
gfx cards.

- Cam,





-- 
Campbell J Barton

133 Hope Street
Geelong West, Victoria 3218 Australia

URL:    http://www.metavr.com
e-mail: cbarton at metavr.com
phone: AU (03) 5229 0241