openGL

[Ryan C. Gordon]

> Maybe I'm missing something, but *why* would OpenGL (the library) be 
> particularly likely to perform horribly?  OpenGL is a fairly efficient 
> mechanism for describing certain types of smooth, elegantly coded 
> transformations AFAICS.

Yes, but the management of all the state and the rasterization of it 
makes it both CPU and memory bandwidth intensive. Some of this is 
OpenGL's fault and some of it is Mesa's fault.

You really need either 3D hardware or no need to render in realtime to 
use Mesa. This is true on desktop machines and the laptops.

People have definitely done 3D rendering with less powerful hardware, 
though, so dropping some features and writing one's own renderer (or 
finding one that cares more about speed than OpenGL correctness or 
quality than Mesa) might be possible.

--ryan.