[Bf-committers] OpenGL Profiles Project?

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

The sad truth is that the implementation of Opengl, driver versions,  
bugs in drivers, all make Opengl not work as smooth as it could be.

The idea of a Profile is that you can setup per-system settings that  
match the used hardware. These could be topics like:
- FSA
- Buffer swap methods
- Bitmap support
- mipmap settomgs
- GLSL support levels
- VBO (I guess)
- dual graphics cards (?)
- multi monitor setups, or stereo
- ....

This should not to be automatically checked on, because most cards  
support it more or less. The profile is to ensure you can get maximum  
performance and best quality user experience.

What is also possible it to extend our bgl calls (like  
bglBegin(GL_POINTS)), which wraps specific problematic calls in Opengl  
to match what we expect. The choosen profile can work that way without  
polluting the code with checks, making it all local in a single C file  
or so.

If you check in our code, the places where opengl extension or vendor  
strings are being checked is probably a good indication where we have  
issues.

Hope this info helps. Be warned it's not the best beginner code  
project, good understanding of opengl on various systems, and on how  
Blender uses opengl is required. And don't forget Mesa!

Thanks,

-Ton-

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands

On 5 Oct, 2010, at 8:50, Mathew Burrack wrote:

> Not to butt in here, but what exactly is the point of the OpenGL  
> profiles? To simplify setting up OpenGL display settings? What's  
> wrong with auto-detecting what the card is capable of and just using  
> that? Is the goal to avoid settings that are buggy on certain cards?
>
> It just seems to me like the end users would want it to Just Work  
> and not care (or even necessarily know about) the difference between  
> the profiles, and would just end up picking the first one that  
> worked, not necessarily the best one.
>
> (Just trying to understand the goal here :)
>
> --mcn
>
>
> --- On Mon, 10/4/10, Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] OpenGL Profiles Project?
>> To: "bf-blender developers" <bf-committers at blender.org>
>> Date: Monday, October 4, 2010, 11:12 PM
>> Might start by doing a hardware poll
>> among the users. Perhaps on the
>> Blender.org site and also a few of the other bigger blender
>> sites. I
>> would bet that you could find a much narrower design goal
>> that way.
>>
>> I will start out here. Nvidia Gforce 7600 GS. A nice card
>> for blender
>> but I am hoping to update soon.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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