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Xi Announces Hardware Accelerated 3D X Server 160

Posted by Hemos from the making-my-games-look-even-neater dept.
Thanks to Jeremy Chatfield for poking me about Xig [?] 's recent press release regarding them being the first to market a commercial hardware-accelerated 3D X server. They will be showing at Comdex, next week, and shipping in December. Support for cards looks nice as well, with over 30 cards supported,from companies like 3Dlabs, ATI, Evans & Sutherland, Diamond, S3 and Matrox.
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Xi Announces Hardware Accelerated 3D X Server More

Xi Announces Hardware Accelerated 3D X Server

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  • Does anyone know if this server will support games such as Q3test, specificaly on a TNT?
  • No support for Voodoo 3???

    I have a feeling that there is probably a good-ish reason for this. Anyone know what it is?

  • Damn the torpedos (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    After reading the mini flame war awhile back that involved Xi, I say let them keep their closed source X server. The disparaging comments and ads that the principles of Xi made about Xfree where horrible. So I say let this product wither on the vine or rot on the tree as Eve should have done with the fabled apple. I don't hold this opinion lightly. I am dying to get good accelerated 3D support for Linux. It is the last thing that my win32 box is required for. As soon as Xfree 4.0 is out, or a commercial server is availble from a decent company (like Precision Insight or Metro Link) I am there.
  • As an example, I'm currently playing with xmms. The deb file comes with an OpenGL plugin that runs quite slowly. However, if it could actually use the 3d acceleration of my voodoo 3 then it would run like the wind. I have a feeling that 3dFX cards don't actually support in-window 3d rendering, but other cards do, and they could be accelerated.

    How about 3d modelling? This sort of thing really requires an accelerated X server.
  • Would you care to point us to any examples of this?
  • Voodoos only do full-screen HW accelerated 3D - no windowed mode like Matrox G400.

    (However, Daryll Strauss, who was working on 3dfx support for XFree, was looking into a hack to copy back from the 3D buffer into 2D, thus allowing windowed 3D - I don't know what the current status of that is, I suspect even if it did work, it wouldn't be in XFree until 4.0)
  • I would really like to know when I will be able to run Quake3 (with a Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra) as fast on Linux as on Win98

  • Re:No Voodoo? (Score:5)

    by Pascal Q. Porcupine ( 4467 ) on Saturday November 13, 1999 @04:19AM (#1536963) Homepage
    Not quite. The Rush, Banshee, and Voodoo3 series all can do windowed 3D as well. However, I think I have a better explanation as to why no 3dfx support - 3dfx cards just plain suck for actual 3D applications. Sure, they might be fine for games, but Xi's stuff tends to be for more practical, workstation-oriented applications. A real OpenGL card and not the crappy Voodoo chipsets are what's called for.

    For example: 3dfx cards are limited to 256x256 textures, 16bpp rendering (don't give me any of that 22bit crap, all that is is a lowpass filter on the RAMDAC's lower bits to 'compensate' for the dithering), have a really crappy memory architecture, no stencil or accumulator buffer... there's no real reason for a workstation graphics developer to support what amounts to a kludgy legacy gaming card. A TNT1 is much cheaper and much more powerful, in terms of OpenGL features if not fillrate, than 3dfx's highest-end card.

    That said, there's much less of a need for 3dfx support in the X server, Mesa already supports it through Daryll Strauss's Glide port. It works about as well as can be expected. (The buffer-copying thing you mentioned has been in fxmesa for quite some time, though it's quite slow.)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Thanks, I thought it was something like that...

    I can understand that being a real problem on the Voodoo 1/2 where you a passthrough cables and such.

    There really isn't any excuse for that in the Voodoo 3. Anyone know if the Voodoo 4 will still have this problem?

    Darn backwards compatability...
  • I wonder what 'added functionality' will be in the professional edition on top of the entertainment edition. I'm quite concerned that they may consider the advanced OpenGL functionality (stencils, accumulation buffer) to be something which only the professional edition should have. Games are starting to use them for shadows, reflections, and motionblur. It used to be that having to support 3dfx cards led to stencil/accumulator-less legacy.

    Regardless, what functionality could pros need which isn't in the entertainment edition? Don't they realize OpenGL is OpenGL, and that to restrict the hardware based on what amounts to not paying as much for drivers is somewhat asinine? If the professional edition means having better/faster emulation for what the card doesn't support in hardware, that's fine, but if it means crippling the hardware, that's outrageous. Then again, $100 is a bit outrageous for a video card driver, too. :P

    I'm just going to wait for XFree 4.0. It'll be out soon enough; in the meantime, Mesa's software renderer is enough for me. (Yes, it's slow, but that just helps me optimize my code even better. :)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • 3Dfx cards can do in-window rendering, just it's not supported in any X server as yet. Hopefully XFree 4 will have a good driver that can do this, tho.

  • If you take closer glance at the list of cards they support so far, you'll notice that only a few of current chipsets are supported. I'm sure the list will increase rapidly, and eagerly await support f.ex. the GeForce 256 chipsets. ...So I could buy one. :)

  • Ah. I'm just a little behind the times...
  • If, and only if, you get the AX 5.0 with it, otherwise, it's a bit much, I'd love to be able to upgrade AX5.0 with these driver, but If I have to pay $99, then I start paying too much. I already paid the obligatory $99 for the server so I could go to 1600x1200 on my rage128, (long before SuSE came up with their driver), if ATI Lets developers get their hands on the 3d programming specs, I may end up back at XFree86, and use the GPL Rage128 OpenGL drivers. (I can see why they're doing this though, specs are hard to get when you will probably end up publishing the source, kinda makes an NDA useless, XiG doesn't have that problem)

  • Re:xfree 4.0 (Score:3)

    by Pascal Q. Porcupine ( 4467 ) on Saturday November 13, 1999 @04:58AM (#1536972) Homepage
    Matrox is supported as well; Matrox released the specs to the G200 some time ago (and the G400 is basically a faster version of the G200 with a few more features; it's low-level compatible, apparently). Xi has a history of trying to pollute the free software world with important commercial software; it's well-known that they like to sling mud at XFree86 to try to sell AcceleratedX, for example. If they took a route that MetroX did (make a commercially-supported XFree-based server and contribute their changes back into the XFree codebase) I wouldn't have a problem with them, but as it is, they make a big deal over nothing, and charge lots of money for it.

    Yes, they're the first to release a commercial hardware OpenGL-capable X server for Linux. nVidia released an alpha-quality free OpenGL-capable X server quite some time ago, Matrox released the specs for one... I can't help but wonder if Xi has taken the various design documents put on the web by the various parties developing the free servers and used them to try to undercut them, beating them to market and trying to make a first impression.

    As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I'm waiting for XFree 4.0. I know they can deliver, and will put out something which will hopefully work much better, and will certainly be freer. I'd be willing to accept a slightly slower OpenGL performance if it meant not having to spend $100 for a video card driver. So far the various clued-in vendors seem to be supporting the XFree efforts, in the meantime.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • From Xi's homepage [xig.com] they have some feature lists for the entertainment vs. professional versions. According to this, the entertainment version only allows one 3D window at any given time, is OpenGL 1.1.1 compliant, and does, in fact, support stencil buffers. The professional version is basically the same except it supports multiple rendering windows, color index mode (which, frankly, I don't think anyone cares about anymore), overlay planes (if available in hardware), and better display list management, among some other miscellaneous things.

    Basically, this amounts to "only professionals need multiple GL contexts, and so you need to pay 2.5x as much to get multiple GL contexts." I find this somewhat outrageous, myself. They also make a big deal about features which are standard parts of OpenGL and which, as I already stated, are basically just parts of a graphics card driver which are only being enabled for people willing to pay more.

    Also, 64 MB RAM for an X server? That's just beyond ridiculous. (That's for both the entertainment and pro versions.)

    None of the feature lists say anything about GLX (network-transparent OpenGL), either. XFree can do GLX now.

    Oh, another thing: they are a bit incomplete, at best, when saying what cards they support. The only nVidia chipset they seem to support is the TNT2 - they don't have any listed support for the TNT, or the Riva 128 series. They also don't have any listed supported Matrox cards. For their sake I hope they just forgot to complete their supported cards list.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Some of Xi's typical FUD (Score:5)

    by Pascal Q. Porcupine ( 4467 ) on Saturday November 13, 1999 @05:16AM (#1536974) Homepage
    One of Xi's many Accelerated X ads [xig.com] doesn't exactly make them seem honest to anyone who knows what they're talking about. They make a lot of implied connections between the Linux kernel's stability and AccelX's, and imply (but never state) that XFree86 (they only refer to 'an X server') is inherently unstable. They also lovingly embrace the older closed standards, such as CDE and Motif, and appear to love trapping their customers into using those highly proprietary products.

    My advice: Don't buy this GL server. Wait for XFree 4. Just because they're first to market doesn't mean they're the best; personally, I can't stand the thought of supporting any company which resorts to Microsoftian tactics to try to put themselves above the rest of the Linux world.

    Speaking of Microsoftian tactics, they even have separate versions of their CDE for executives and developers each on desktop and laptop computers! Four different versions "optimized" to the supposedly different needs of different users, rather than having a single product which can be tuned to the needs of the individual! Pathetic.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • I ran XIG's acceleratedX for about 3 months because I thought it would be "accelerated" and thus faster than Xfree. After having AX crash fairly regularly, and not provide me with a signifigant speed increase, I've gone back to XFree. XFree actually feels a little faster. I'm not sure if that's because it actually is, or if I feel better knowing that the free, open product is more stable than the closed product that claims to be more stable... BTW, this was true on my FireGL 1000, Imagine 128e, and TNT-based card.
  • The same reason people pay for Windows.
    It is commercial.

    Free software is known (though sometimes incorrectly) as having no support. Commercial software gives people someone to rightfully bitch to if it doesn't work.
  • Why do they bother? Because they have a good product. They support more cards than XFree86 does overall (last I checked atleast).

    Not everything in your happy little linux world needs to be free for it to be good. A Free X server can't support as much hardware as a commercial one, because the commercial one will pay companies to write drivers or for specs, XFree86 can't afford to do this.

  • Don't forget about Open Source! (Score:4)

    by Kev Vance ( 833 ) <kvance@NOSPaM.kvance.com> on Saturday November 13, 1999 @05:53AM (#1536984) Homepage
    Don't forget that we have an open source project that works right now. Accelerated GLX [openprojects.net] for XFree86 3.3.5 supports Matrox G200 and G400 as well as Riva TNT2 cards. Support for Rage Pro chipsets is on the way, too. So you might want to consider contributing some code to the project rather than shelling out for the new Xi server...
  • It may give them someone to bitch at, but it doesn't mean the company is listening. At least you didn't say "someone to sue if it fails"... I've heard that one before - most licenses specifically disallow legal recourse. Besides, with open-source code, if it's not doing what you want (or what it should), you can always (a) write the code yourself to make it do what you want, or (b) contract out to have the feature you need/want coded for you. (not an option for the home user, but for businesses...)
  • I'm not saying it was dishonest, but that it was using Microsoftian half-truths. X servers can quite easily crash the kernel, yes, and AccelX is just as likely as XFree, though XFree has the distinct advantage that someone who is so inclined can fix it.

    I personally feel that free software has caught up to commercial software. We don't need CDE or Motif; we have KDE and Qt, or Gnome and GTK, or Windowmaker and GNUstep, or...

    I think you're getting drivers (the different servers/drivers in XFree) and 'editions' (having different versions of CDE for developers and executives, and different versions for notebooks and desktops) confused. The difference between the different Xi editions seems to be equivalent to WinNT Server vs. Workstation; there's no technology difference, just a price, interface and licensing difference.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Well, shortly after getting the G400 which I won in LokiHack, I tried this out, and all it did was cause Xfree to hang, hard. Then again, I didn't really give it what could be considered a fair shake, but I'm rather busy trying to get my life in order these days. (Though you wouldn't know it by the amount I've been posting to /. recently. :)

    When I had a TNT card (well, I still HAVE it, just not installed :) the nVidia-provided GLX driver was nice, but not nice enough to put up with the server instability it introduced. For now, I'm content with software rendering; as I've said elsewhere, it helps me get my OpenGL code as fast as possible, at the very least. :)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • A lot of people are saying the same thing: "wait for XFree 4.0". I've been hearing it for over a year. So, the question is: when?
  • "the first to market a commercial hardware-accelerated 3D X server." Pardon my ignorance but haven't SGI been doing that for a decade?
  • I really don't like it when people complain about microsoft on technical merits (esp since i think they make quite decent software & hardware most of the time), but it's a different matter when you all abuse the hell out of programmers who just want to make a living. They aren't as big as Microsoft, so they can't survive bashing like this.

    I can't help but feel really sorry for relatively small companies who try to make a living, but then get bashed around by a community which really should either support them or shutup.

    BTW XFree is more unstable, and yes, I do believe it is one of the most unstable aspects of Linux (since it's so important too). XFree + Netscape 4.x == RUN, argh RUN!!

  • Re:Quake 3 and other games (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I run q3test on a dual Celeron 505 with a Creative Labs TNT PCI w/16mb RAM. I use XFree86 3.3.5 with Mesa 3.0 and GLX. It runs beautifully!
  • Hmm it's not so much what they say, it's how they say it. They have a very condescending attitude towards open source development.

    You have to remember, it you are buying a closed source app then you are voting with your dollars. I say either wait for Xfree 4.0 or vote for something from a more supportive and OSS friendly company (like Precission Insight or Metro X).

  • Its always best to check the XFree project's website for updates. They have no set date for release yet, but they do have snapshots available for download. Its worth checking it out!

    http://www.xfree86.org [xfree86.org]
  • maybe when nvidia gets their act together and publishes the complete specs....

    check the glx mailing list archives for complete details.

    henri
  • Well it just seems logical to support companies that in turn support the platform that I want to run. (read Linux). You know, 'you scratch my back and I will scratch yours'.

    Not supporting OSS, and in fact being very antagonistic towards it in general, will not help the Linux comunity in anyway. XiG is just such a company.

    Prime.

  • Re:Dammit! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    interesting they give your post about another (possibly better) site a 0 so must people won't see it, god i'm so tired of lame ass slashdot
  • XFree is not unstable. At least, not on MY system. (Debian potato, running XFree 3.3.5, with a 3Dfx V3-2000 PCI) Also, have you ever USED XiG's X server? It's not as stable (in my experience, and from what I've heard from some others) as XiG likes to claim. At least MetroX doesn't charge as much for their X server, and they don't go out of their way to bash their competition (free or commercial). (Also, MetroX contributes to the XFree86 Project - I think that's important. Maybe you don't. XInside certainly doesn't seem to.)

    If XiG would just stick to promoting THEIR product, instead of bitching about XFree, a lot of people wouldn't complain about them.
  • Anonymous Coward's always start with a score of 0

    As the signal to noise ratio of AC's is fairly low, it makes sense to penalize AC's initially so that people can filter them out.
  • I saw a 3d hardware accelerated 2d setup at LinuxWorld in August. It looked pretty cool, and the rep from 3dfx told me they were planning to get the source code out soon, but I haven't heard anything about it since.
  • people shouldn't have to tailor make their PC's to use an OS...if I bought a new gfx card, I don't want to downgrade to something less powerful just to use XFree86.
  • For some reason the "Reply to This" links aren't showing up for me, so this will have to do. There is a particular AC who posted, complaining loudly about Gnome, XFree86, Enlightenment, and OSS stuff in general. I am so tired of hearing how buggy/bloated/etc. these particular applications are. I run Gnome, Enlightenment, and many other OSS apps, and I find them to be very stable... Especially considering that some of these things (Enlightenment, for example) are still pre-1.0 versions!!! Personally, I think Raster and Mandrake are doing a fantastic job. So, Enlightenment segfaults every now and then. Does it take anything down with it? Nope. So the Gnome help browser crashes every now and then. Personally, I find OctoberGnome to be pretty stable.

    Folks, I come from a Windows background, and 5.0 versions of many proprietary software products crash and burn more often then prerelease stuff from OSS coders! Being a commercial product does not make something better or more stable. Heck, the mighty Windows 2000(TM) RC2 crashed spectacularly on me the other day! Took everything down with it, too, just because the Windows Explorer crashed. So in conclusion, stop complaining about OSS stuff, Enlightenment, etc. If you love commercial stuff so much, please stop running an OSS operating system, and switch to something more "stable" and "reliable" like Windows. I'm sure when you contact Microsoft requesting a bug fix, they'll be very responsive, too! *Snicker*

    --"A man's Palm is his best friend."

  • Re:I don't care about a million boards (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's a nice bit of rhetoric and perhaps FUD. However, the fact remains that you are still spending a non-trivial amount of money to ensure compatibility. In most instances you can ensure that compatibility with the same cost just by replacing hardware.

    This also eliminates any future need for you to deal with the extra complexity of dealing with XiG again for any future version of your Linux distribution.

    Furthermore, there is little likelihood that you will have to downgrade to something less powerful just to use Xfree. The vendors that are supporting Linux now are the top tier. If anything, you would be bending over backwards with XiG just to use something inferior like an ATI product.
  • AccelX doesn't even support the TNT correctly... the *FASTEST* refresh rate I can get with my TNT and my Optiquest V95 (19") is not what I asked for in the config. I asked for 1600x1200 @ 75, witch my hardware is capable of with XFree86. Now, I get 1600x1200 @ 66.7 even if my /etc/Xaccel.ini look like this...

    [SCREEN]
    Board = "nvidia/tnt-16.xqa";
    Monitor = "viewsonic/v95.vda";
    Depth = 24;
    EnergyStar = YES;
    SoftwareCursor = YES;
    Desktop = 1600x1200;

    [RESOLUTIONS]
    1600x1200@75;

    Thats pretty bad for a 100$ piece of software!

    The reply I got from their techsupport was : Yes.... we know, your'e not the only one to complain. We will check that out for future releases.

    WOW what a serious compagnie!

    So guess what... XFree is what I use! =))
  • Thanks for this link. It seems like a cool site.
  • "something inferior like an ATI product."

    Funny, really it is. Actually, everyone I know who has an ATI board is more than happy with it. Never has problems, etc. And I'm not talking about costs, yes the X server costs more...I have no reason nor need to buy AccelX, but the fact remains, that it's somethign you shoudln't have to do.
  • >Blender/GIMP offer the 3d tools for the GNU generation.

    Blender isn't GNU. And gimp isn't 3d.

    >SGI may have invented OpenGL, but Linux perfected it!

    The only thing linux has perfected is idiotic
    statments like yours.

  • Commercial software gives people someone to rightfully bitch to if it doesn't work.

    As a rather unsatisfied Xig customer, let me address this comment. Yes, you can "rightfully bitch" to Xig if you aren't happy with their product. I hope it makes you happy to do so, because it won't do much else--the only satisfaction I have ever gotten from Xig about some serious failures of their servers is "Hmm. We may have a fix for that coming up. Watch our ftp site for the next patch, which should be out sometime in the future."

    And that's when they're being pleasant. The normal tone of their tech support is rather more caustic ... I'd have to rate it as "grudging". Like they were doing me a favor by fixing their own mistakes. Jeremy Chatfield especially seems to have a chip on his shoulder.

    I am now using AccelX 4.1 with my Matrox Millenium II. It has all the latest patches, and it still biffs one or two characters on every page. It's a transient failure--if I repaint the page, different letters are blotted out. Probably why they haven't fixed it yet. So why don't I use XFree? Because the latest version I've tried (3.3.1--old now, admittedly) had even more serious problems. I'd drop AccelX in a heartbeat if those were fixed. Hmm ... maybe I should download the latest and try again!

  • >nothing to offer the linux community that we dont already have---ten times better.

    No... they haven't perfected ignorance like you have. Maybe you should patent it, err GPL it..
    whatever.
  • I've been using XFree 3.9.16 with an unfinished Voodoo3 driver. Not only is it faster than 3.3.5 but its more stable. I haven't had it crash ever.
    XFree86 is just over a meg and you can load font renderers and drivers as you need to. Plus xinerama is something no one else is supporting. I'm using enlightenment and its working great.
  • Admittedly, I've never had to deal with XiG's tech support, but everything I've heard about them is that they never acknowledge bug reports and just tend to sit on bugs for a long time. Just because a company has a support department doesn't mean things will get fixed. To the contrary, if you email the XFree people about a bug, they will try their best to fix it.

    I wasn't making any claims as to Gnome's reliability. I know how much it sucks. I was just citing it as an example of one of the many free software choices which you can use instead of CDE. Personally, I prefer KDE, and I rarely even use a desktop environment anyway (I just use straight fvwm2). Also, if you want a functional, usable system without any downtime, Enlightenment isn't exactly the best WM to use.

    Also, XFree 4.0 does have separate drivers dynamically linked to a single server.

    For developer vs. executive... well, yes, you have a valid point assuming proprietary, binary-only closed-source software. The only such program I use is Netscape. I'm not paying for RAID on my home system, but that has more to do with the fact that Linux didn't cost me anything for the total package anyway.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Xig from a long-time customer (Score:5)

    by Scurrilous Knave ( 66691 ) on Saturday November 13, 1999 @11:14AM (#1537046) Homepage

    I've been using AccelX on and off for years now, since before Caldera bundled it with their first product. And here's my analysis of the company, to add a data point to help folks make an informed decision.

    Pros:

    • They sign NDAs and pay for hardware specs, so they'll nearly always support a new board before XFree does. These days, more vendors seem to be releasing specs freely, so this may change. But Xig will still have paid staff to devote to supporting even unpopular cards, so it won't change completely.
    • They're fast. In only one case have I seen XFree outperform AccelX, and that didn't last long. In most cases, AccelX is faster (sometimes considerably faster) and almost always more compliant with X specs. Especially in certain obscure points of the spec, that only a programmer would notice.
    • Their installation is almost always smooth and trouble-free. XFree has come a long way in this area, but AccelX still has a bit of an edge.
    • The price isn't prohibitive. Higher than it needs to be, probably, but not outrageous.

    Cons:

    • Their tech support is wretched. Their personnel are surly, and their fixes are released Microsoft-style, in periodic large patches.
    • They're inflexible. XFree often supports more of a card's modes, and always allows more tweaking, than AccelX. (On the downside, XFree often requires more tweaking to achieve acceptable operation.)
    • Their software quality is only average. I've seen far far more outright crashes with AccelX than ever with XFree. Their non-crash bug rate is comparable to XFree, if not a tad higher.
    • Their corporate attitude is reprehensible. As others have pointed out here, they have frequently tried to promote their own products not by extolling their own virtues, but by bashing the competition. They have been especially vicious and outspoken in their attacks on XFree. And their attitude toward Linux as a platform is one of reluctant tolerance.

    On the other hand, I've never actually gotten a MetroX server to even work, so I cannot even compare their product to the others.

    I hope this helps folks in their quest for knowledge.

  • Is that why even MS has better graphics performance that Linux?

  • A little history lesson... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Some times these baby linux weenies get 'right on my tit' (to use a turn of phase common in Yorkshire, England. So a little history lesson is in order for those of narrow vision posessed of flame throwers. The port of X11 to X86 unix that XFree86 is based on was contributed by one Thomas Roell. It supported only the Tseng series chip. 3000 I think. Mr. Roell is boss of XiG. So please don't toast his company, because he provided the first free X servers on Intel UNIX. You owe the lad a debt if you use XFree86. And if you want to look at the XiG product, then you can get a trial license. If you don't like it, ditch it -- but dont flame unless you have tried it. Caveat Emptor. n.
  • I think it would be a lot easier if you make the drivers pluggable into XFree, thus companies can publish binary only drivers and Linux hardware support would not be a problem. I understand wanting to be able to hack your userspace apps, and maybe part of the kernel, but think about it, even if you have the sources to the drivers, why would you hack it considering that nVidia knows a hell of a lot more about the hardware than you do?
    Don't say bug fixing cuz nVidia drivers are rock solid on windows9x (quite a feat that is too.)
  • Isn't Xinside the one who started all this DRI stuff for XFree?
  • I wonder what 'added functionality' will be in the professional edition on top of the entertainment edition.

    According to Xi's website [acceleratedx.com], the "entertainment" server can only render into a single OpenGL window, while the "pro" version allows multiple windows at once.

    The "pro" server also does "hardware antialiasing" (which will soon be utilized in games, no?)
  • I assume that you are serious about that statement, which allows me to put you down with a clean consience. First. Windows has better HW acceleration that ANY OS on intel. Beats BeOS too (but the graphics card makers don't speed a huge amount of time tweeking alternative OS code now do the? Look for BeOS to whoop some HW accellerated ass since I think they will code a few good drivers instead of nVidia family and you have 50% or more of the market right there.) But I digress. SGI just plain has better hardware. I doubt even the new nVida GPU will stand up to one of those infinate reality monster cards in SGIs. Second, Blender is crap. It has the most confusing interface (what hotkeys only!) and crappy layout of any 3D renderer I have worked wiht. (MAX, Truespace, Pixel3D, etc.) When compared to MAX or Truespace it gets its ass kicked. Second, GIMP is still nowhere near photoshop, and the buttons aren't in color. Third, well you could render titanic on BSD or anything that doesn't crash every few minutes. If you are talking about modleing, that was done on Windows NT workstations running Alphas. Lastly, linux doesn't even have a full open GL library, how could it have prefected it? (Mesa is not fully GL complient, not only officialy, it lacks some features in 1.2) Addendum. Even this xIG thing is only GL 1.1.1, the world has moved on to 1.2 if you hadn't noticed!
  • If he had an account then he wouldn't be able to astroturf.
  • That certainly wasn't the point of my post. I'll admit, many pre-release apps are buggy, but hey, they're pre-release. And this does include many apps being developed for Gnome, etc. But as for other major pre-release software (such as Enlightenment)... I find E far more stable than Windows. And Gnome itself is pretty stable as well. Add to that the fact that this is free software (free as in both freedom, AND beer), and I think you have a great combination. I guess it all depends on the software you try, and the developers themselves. You have to expect that pre-releases will be buggy - and if they aren't (as in many cases), then more power to those developers.

    --"A man's Palm is his best friend."
  • Uhh. Nope. Are you thinking or Precision Insight?
  • I also have a MII and switched from the Xig server to Xfree86. As of version 3.3.3.1 it seems to work very well. In earlier versions I had trouble with an annoying little streak along one side of the screen, but that's been fixed. Also I had problems with 24 bit color depths and don't know if that works, but at 32 bit depth it's fine.
  • i'm pretty sure the next version of Xfree86 (version 4.0) supports pluggable drivers-from my understanding, there is one X server and drivers are loaded into it to interface with the hardware. I don't know the licensing issues with binary only drivers though.
  • Did anybody else notice that a link off the main page mentions anti-aliased fonts as a feature in the "professional" version of the 3D X. It did mention that it was based on hardware compatibility. Does anyone know which of the 30 cards is considered compatible with anti-aliased fonts?

    ---jeff
  • Sure it isn't so nice from them, but that's what all commercial compagnies do..
    Is that a good reason not to buy their products even if they are good?
    Okay, I tried the AX5 demo and I'm using Xfree86 3.3.5 and both suck on my Diamond G460, especially in 24bit mode, but hey, a lot of people are using it happily on their laptops etc..
    I take it you're also against others, like 4front's OSS, VMware etc.. Well I tell you this, I rather have payware, than waiting and waiting for things that are suppose to happen.. I would love to get my hands on a commercial product like a DVD player (MpegTV?), with the Cinemaster engine or like VaroDVD running under Linux.( yes I tried Nist, nice, but why don't we have a better MPEG2 player yet? I thought MPEG2 already exist for quite some time, anyway..)
  • Umm. I like Linux just fine... but are you mental? Linux still has a ways to go before it's the 3D platform of choice.
  • I just put a MII into my PC today and have been pleasantly surprised by how well it works now. I am using 3.3.5 and running at 1600x1200x16. Perfect. The snow problem seems to have been solved.

    Prime

  • GLX (Score:1)

    by rangek ( 16645 )
    Let me tell you about my travails with Xig and GLX. Our research group just bought Xi's ~$300 package that promises to allow us to run on an SGI, display on Linux. (Which I couldn't get XFree to do). Well, imagine our surprise when we fire up this expensive boondoggle, and find that we are getting the same error!

    Needless to say, I fired off a pretty scathing email to their tech support, to which I got a "we are forwarding this to our head programmer." Somewhere along the way, his reply got lost, but when I finally got it, it was basically a very techincal, "It is the application's fault for not doing OpenGL right."

    Well, this maybe true, and I am tracking it down. But I have my doubts about this explaination. It is too convienent... It is like they know I don't have time to fiddle with this...

    BTW, I promise to post a nice little ditty about Xig if this all eventually turns out to be the application's fault. But ofr now, I am pissed.
  • Too bad the drivers for Mesa are much slower than the OpenGL ICD included in the Windows version of the Detonator drivers. :P
  • The only 3dfx cards that support in a window rendering are the Voodoo Rush, Voodoo Banshee, and Voodoo 3 series cards.

    Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2 use a pass-through trick to send their video signals to the monitor, therefore only being able to display in fullscreen mode.
  • Doubt it. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that the reason why XFree86 4.0 would be a big deal was because it would (for companies that support Linux at all) make products like Accelerated-X and Metro-X fear for their product lives. Modularized drivers for not only video, but also pen-tablet input and many other cool things.
  • Look at the card list supported in Xi Graphics 3D Accelerated-X and you'll see big name workstation OpenGL cards that previously have not been able to run under Linux. Look at the "Professional" edition of the product and you'll see, "Ability to run multiple windowed 3D renderings", etc. Their main draw is going to be people who can't wait for 3D support from XFree86 and need *real* OpenGL 1.1.1 compliance, not this Mesa 3.0 GL-clone, and also people who will want better support for their expensive workstation graphics cards than what's available elsewhere. :)
  • > oh please, Linux thrashes SGI in scalability, reliability and more importantly Innovation.
    Well, I would like you to take a look at http://www.top500.org/lists/TOP500List.php3?Y=1999 &M=11 ... its a list of the top 500 supercomputers in the world(well, those rated, but its pretty complete). Notice that SGI and SGI/Cray(SGI bought cray) take numbers 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 18, 19, and 20. Thats pretty scalable ... those machines range from 540 to 6144 processors ... dont think linux scales there too well.
    > SGI lost, they are a dead company and have absolutely nothing to offer the linux community that we dont already have---ten times better.
    XFS anyone? linux so far has nothing even close to XFS, but we will, when SGI finishes porting XFS to linux and releasing it to the open source community ...

    SGI is still far ahead of linux in many catagories ...

    Erik
  • Well, antialiasing should be up to the game to do, as it typically involves fun manipulations of the accumulator buffer and multiply-rendering the scene using knowledge which, frankly, only the application can have. It looks like they're not allowing the application to access an accumulation buffer at all - this is bad, because then not even pro applications can do depth buffering or motionblur, since the accumulator buffer will be presumably tied up doing fullscreen AA. (You can mix-and-match these effects, but only if you're careful, know what you're doing, and don't mind a HUGE hit to the fillrate. It's all too easy to overflow the accumulator buffer, resulting in very nasty side effects.)

    Now, I could be charitable and say that Xi is somehow just doing supersampling, but I know that isn't true because none of the chipsets it supports support supersampled operations. The only graphics hardware I know of which does are the top-of-the-line SGIs (in the Onyx2 territory); even the higher-end Octanes don't have this capability. Also, I think SGI has some evil patents on their particular technique, which I think involves doing the equivalent of accumulation-based AA but on a per-primitive basis; like, I think it stores the area affected by the primitive into a dedicated multisample buffer, does some serious blend-intensive stuff, and then blits the multisample buffer back into the image buffer. Someone else might be able to clear this up.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • I'm all for payware. If someone wants to pay for it, they can. In the meantime, I prefer to use free equivalents, since even if they're later in coming, they tend to be a lot better. That and it doesn't cost me money up the wazoo.

    Let me tell you my experience with 4front's OSS. It was decent, and nearly worth the $30 I paid for it ($20 base license, $10 additional for AWE64 functionality). Then I upgraded my computer (from a K6-233 to a Celeron 300A), and then the troubles began. First off, I changed my kernel's scheduler to operate at 1000Hz instead of the default 100Hz, and OSS was horribly confused by this. So I tried explaining this to the 4front guys. Their response was that I was obviously an evil overclocker, that soundcards are proven not to work on overclocked PCs, and that their product was only for newbies. This angered me, and I responded my views, stating that I wasn't an overclocker, but even if I was, a Celeron 300A overclocked to 450 looks to the bus just like a normally-clocked P2-450, and that it would make no difference. This was all the 'proof' that the 4front representative needed to claim that I was a dirty overclocker. It took many messages to explain that I wasn't overclocking, and the problem was with the kernel scheduler, and that I had bought OSS for the purpose of having a fully-functioning AWE64, and if there wasn't any way for OSS to deal with a simple change in kernel scheduling latency, then there is a problem with OSS, and not with me, whether I was a "dirty overclocker" or not.

    Eventually, I got my money back (I didn't even care about it, but they sent me a refund anyway even though it was over a year after I'd purchased the license), but it was still frustrating to have assumptions made about me and to be lambasted for something which was irrelevant to the discussion.

    To sum up, they (4front) evidently only care about their largest market segment, because that's where their profit is, and don't care about any sort of improved quality of Linux multimedia, which is their business. I think 4front can go collectively screw an active toaster for all I care.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Actually, his exact words (I was at that talk too) were, "Currently, it's sometime around December the 48th."
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • I've noticed a huge influx of ACs lately who don't seem to understand the concept of a default score. I've gotten into quite a few flamewars recently because people were wondering why my crap posts are "moderated up" when really they start at 2, due to my high karma.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Hey, now, no need to be rude. A lot of rendering is done with OpenGL these days, as although it's not as high-quality as true raytracing, a lot of raytracing can be faked very well. 3DS Max, for example, is all polygonal and OpenGL-accelerated. Also, with OpenGL it's relatively simple to get procedural curve primitives (such as NURBS) which are just as pixel-accurate as the raytraced counterparts (though you generally have to forego reflections, in that case).

    Using OpenGL to do rendering is more common than you'd think. Also, there's more to rendering than doing the final render - it's nice to have a preview of the image too, and even if it's at lower quality, it's better to wait 10 seconds for a high-quality OpenGL render than 10 minutes for a low-quality raytrace.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • If your OpenGL-using program is dynamically linked against some GL (such as Mesa), it will generally immediately use the new GL libraries, and thus use the 3D functions. It has very little to do with X itself, and mostly to do with OpenGL. The only time the X server gets involved in the rendering itself (aside from synchronization, anyway) is if it's doing GLX (remote rendering where GL calls are encapsulated in X protocol messages).

    For the most part, it's automatic. Quake3 will be pretty much automatic, for example, since it's linked against OpenGL correctly (i.e. dynamically against libGL). Quake2 is kinda borked in how it's linked to OpenGL, and so can only work with fxmesa unless you do a lot of serious tweaking. I'm not sure how Quake1 is. Since most Linux programs are distributed in source form, on average all you have to do is recompile, and at worst you'll just have to fire off an email to the maintainers of the program to properly link their binary dynamically against libGL (and ones improperly dynamically linked to libMesaGL, which has been deprecated, can be coerced into working with libGL anyway by just symlinking libMesaGL to libGL).
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • My opinion (and this is, of course, just opinion) is somewhat the opposite... I find KDE/Qt to be much better, in many respects, than CDE/Motif. Qt is much more streamlined, efficient, and modern, and KDE is, as a result much faster. KDE is also much more flexible and configurable, and easier to use (IMO). It also looks much nicer, and if you don't like the look of it, you can change it easily.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • http://www.rarcoa.com/~thebard/X11-perf-news.epl has some decent benchmarks ... perhaps later on some XiG benchmarks and MetroX will be worked in there, but who knows.
  • Of course Mesa's slower. With the exception of fxmesa, it's a software-only renderer right now. DRI and GLX are separate things which work with Mesa, but don't replace it and aren't part of it. Comparing Mesa to the OpenGL ICD is like comparing a Honda Civic with a racecar.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Apparently they think Motif and CDE are God's Own GUI, rather than the horrible abortion they actually are. Motif's goal was to "capture the visual elegance of Windows 3.1," for Pete's sake. Well, they certainly achieved THAT goal, didn't they? "Xi Graphics. Bringing you the Interface Of The Future, 15 Years From Now."

    This is particularly funny:
    If the freeware X server and GUI pieces in your Linux distribution do not live up to your standards of quality, performance, and stability, we urge you to try MaximumCDE and make your Linux the best it can be, graphically speaking. Especially with the new hot graphics chips and laptops and in TrueColor.
    Hm. I suppose I HAVE been living in the stone age, with my GLX-supported, 1600x1200x32-bit@85Hz Matrox G200 and Gnome. What I need is MOTIF! And a sharp stick in my eye! Because I'm just not using a Complete Graphical OS!

    Make Linux a Complete Graphical OS Linux right out of the box is just a kernel, the beginning of what most folks think of as an operating system. For a laptop or desktop system, a Graphical User Interface needs to be added on top of the Linux kernel. A GUI can be put together with pieces of freeware, but for a commercial, integrated, high-quality GUI that is an industry standard for UNIX systems, the Common Desktop Environment with Motif, licensed from The Open Group, is tops. We port and integrate CDE and Motif with Accelerated-X Display Server and call it maXimum cde, or cde for short. Lcde is the laptop version. Both packages provide the benefits of CDE with the premier graphics capabilities of Accelerated-X and present a stable, standard GUI target for the Application Developers we hope will port to Linux. ( Adobe, Microsoft, Lotus come to mind). Works on Red Hat, Debian, Caldera, S.u.S.E., Delix, and Slackware Linux.
    Well THANK GOD they support Slackware! It uses a DIFFERENT KERNEL after all, and we want to be sure the MS BOB gets ported to it! I love these people! I kiss them!
  • Easy solution: unless you really think your post deserves that +1 for some reason, check that "No Score +1 Bonus" widget right below this textarea, like I'm doing now.
  • I heard that Linus is going to say something about 3dfx in his keynote at Comdex. I don't know what though.
  • I didn't see any qualification in the trailer as to what this was the first hardware 3D X server for.

    Hardware accelerated 3D integrated with X has been around for a looooong time - Tektronix, SGI, etc.

    As for current standards, OpenGL in X has been supported for 2-3 years by SGI, HP, Sun and countless others.

    Are we in danger of becoming as introspective as the boys in Redmond....
  • I wonder whatever happened to the days that an automatic +1 was a mark of pride, a reward. Come on, seriously now, does any post inherently deserve a higher initial score?
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
  • Not to say xfree86 4.0 is inferior to Xi, this is only speculation..


    To the question: Why bother?


    With X and in general, "supported" and "unsupported" isn't as simple as it sounds. It's the EXTENT of support that is relevant, as well as the speed of the X server. It's very likely that even a fine peice of software like XFree86 4.0 may lack some features high-end CAD users want. Not all video cards may be taken fully advantage of, and some 3d features could be missing. Sad but true: some of the proprieatary chipsets are not well supported by free software projects because the hardware makers require non-disclosure agreements to procure spec.



    When it comes down to it, there is room for Xi competing with XFree86. Let's home XFree86 4 does pull through as the established powerful 3d X server, as we all prefer the free to the non-free software. :)


    • To free software!
  • 3D acceleration, for most home users, means games. While Linux is finally starting to take off as a games platform, it won't be able to seriously compete there for a long time.


    However... Have you considered the cost of, say, a PlayStation 2 as compared to a CD/DVD drive + a 3D accelerator card + TV output convertor + sound card? Granted the PS2 will not be a good "computer" (integer performance is weak), but it seems to be a wonderful "peripherials package" for one.


    Given that a PS2 has plenty of I/O connectors (FireWire is especially interesting), it should be possible to run a (3D accelerated!) X-windows server "game" on it, and access that from the linux box. Likewise it should be possible to access the DVD and sound capabilities from the Linux box as if they were a local device, given appropriate servers running on the PS2 and "device drivers" or clients on the Linux box.


    And, best of all, one could still play games and DVDs on the PS2. The combination would be just the thing for finally getting rid of Windows out of my house...

  • i've seen this talked about earlier but never saw a straight answer. Will Accel-X or even xfree4.0 support window'd rendering for the voodoo banshee/voodoo3?
  • It was never a mark of pride or a reward. From the start, it was designed to save moderation points by automatically bumping up posts whose posters had a good history of making worthwhile posts that people reading at 2 would want to read. However, because high-karma-wielders wanted to sometimes make posts that weren't worthwhile of positive moderation, Rob added that little checkbox. Karma isn't something to show off or compare: it serves a purpose, and really doesn't mean anything beyond that. High karma isn't a sign of worth; all it means is that you post what moderators like. I've made many posts which I feel were moderated too highly. Someone who reads at 2 shouldn't have to wade through offtopic one-liners made by high-karma people displaying their mark of pride.
  • Point taken, but you know, you can also have bad luck when it comes to getting support for a commercial technical product... Maybe OSS and XiG are lame, I dunno..

    But I myself also am experiencing this kind of thing al the time, when contacting SuSE, Maxtor, Promise, Seagate and yes, Creative. I'm overclocking my 300a, but that's not related to my computer problems...
    (A lot of OC-ers however, are being stupid and messing with their system speed, ignorant of the concequences. Maybe, the OSS guy wasn't very bright if it comes to technical issues or you were holding the wrong end of the stick)

    You just have to get in contact with the right person, at the right position... My contact with Creative Developer support for Europe brought me nothing for Linux, Creative USA, however eventually did try to understand what I was saying.. While my Seagate HD still doesn't works right, thanks to Seagates crappy support; Maxtor even send me a firmware update, that I passed through to someone who had been on the phone for hours with them already, talking to several "Techs", leading to nothing for him... ("Must be Linux") The only thing I can say, before writing to support helpdesks, image how they are receiving it.. Often trowing in some technical weight at the start can buy you some credit.. and being reasonable and persistant can also help out..

    Just my thoughts, Manuel
  • You made me think an interesting thought:

    Linux is open source, so supporting open source is implicitly supporting Linux (and other OSS operating systems, I'm not trying to be a bigot her), but it's possible to support Linux without being open source.

    It's not only possible, it is increasingly the case; a lot of companies are starting to support Linux without giving much more than lip service to open source. Sometimes (as in the case of Xi), without giving even that.

    So, the question arises: is it more important to support Linux right now that it is to support open source? Should we turn away companies because they support only part of what we stand for?

    Take Xi, for instance. The situation isn't as abysmal as it might seem. They may not support open source (and their marketing drones might make disparaging comments), but they aren't opposed to it. If they were, I doubt they'd be using Apache as their web server.

    Leaving them out of support from us would hurt them, and it would indirectly affect Linux in a negative way. Is that cost too much to pay to protect open source from a contest against a competing ideology? Or is this a holy war where we are fighting for the very heart and soul of our movement? Or do I just need to lay off the chronic?

  • I'm sorry, I was referring to the GLX drivers released for the TNT series of cards and their interaction with Mesa.

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