[Bf-committers] Minimal Blender specs - 5 year old systems & OS

[patrick boelens]

Hmm, seems my last mail didn't get through. If it did, apologies for the spammage:

I think it's very important to keep into account 
that Blender is supposed to be an easily accessible 3D creation suite for 
the masses. Learning curve aside, anyone who wants to give 3D a try can 
download Blender and give it a whirl. This also means people who don't 
upgrade their hardware every 4 years, the more casual users (for lack of
 a better term). According to this Wikipedia article[1] Windows XP had a
 market share of 39% last year December. I say in this case it doesn't 
matter the OS is 10 years old. It could be 20, but if enough people 
still use it, I think it's worth supporting. Just my two cents anyways.

-Patrick

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems

> From: ton at blender.org
> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:27:58 +0100
> To: bf-committers at blender.org
> Subject: Re: [Bf-committers] Minimal Blender specs - 5 year old systems & OS
> 
> Hi Alexander,
> 
> With minimal specs I mean this:
> 
> - The reference we test Blender for and ensure it keeps working.
>   (startup settings, OpenGL defaults)
> 
> With average specs I mean:
> 
> - The reference we release and configure and design Blender for.
>   (UI layouts, tool designs)
> 
> Of course you then can still use Blender on a 1.5 Ghz cpu with simple graphics. But users of older hardware should expect to fall behind in performance and usablity, or even need to accept that a future release might not work anymore.
> 
> All this assuming we don't have people to support such old systems, and that we might accept code and design in Blender that's not working (well) on old systems.
> 
> Tablets (Android, or other) are a special case here. That project is still WIP and with unclear outcome, especially how this will result in usable software. I'm extremely motivated to get tablets supported well, but not at the cost of limiting our software for 3D professionals working on film, animation or games.
> 
> -Ton-
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
> Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands
> 
> On 29 Jan, 2013, at 16:20, Alexandr Kuznetsov wrote:
> > Hi.
> > 
> > I don't know what you mean by minimal specs.
> > Blender can run fine on 1.5 GHz dual CPU with integrated graphics card. 
> > (Even on tablets with some redraw optimizations)
> > Also, about OpenGL 2.1. Blender doesn't yet need shaders to functions as 
> > most drawing is done using GL 1.x.
> > Moreover, I would advice against using shaders directly with GPU 
> > compatibility layer (which hopefully will be merge soon). Then we can 
> > easily migrate to GL 3.x without modifying shaders. All drawing will be 
> > done through gpu layer in order to support GL ES and GL 3.x.
> > It is better to have "Supported Specs" so user wouldn't complain why 
> > they cannot load a complex scene.
> > 
> > Alex
> > 
> > P.S.
> > On the other hand, we should drop >10 years old OS (cough XP)
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Bf-committers at blender.org
> > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
> 
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