openGL

[Jordan Crouse]

On 18/04/07 00:58 -0400, Mike C. Fletcher wrote:
> 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.  The processor has 3DNow and SSE extensions, 
> which can be compiled in to help accelerate MESA's matrix transformation 
> operations if I understand correctly.  I'm not saying we would try to 
> write a latest-and-greatest first-person-shooter, but the library itself 
> is reasonably efficient at what it does.

its not so much that OpenGL itself is bad, but over the years, as hardware
openGL support improved, applications started to use the hardware as a
crutch.  You mentioned Quake in another e-mail.  True, that uses OpenGL
for rendering, but also remember that Quake is a classic shining example
of software engineering gone right - they shook out every single possible
clock that they could from the critical path.   Most other OpenGL based
applications, especially ones written in the last 5 years or so will be 
just painful to use, even on the LX.   

There are far more interesting things to do on the OLPC platform. 

Jordan