GLX available?

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 13:11 +0100, NoiseEHC wrote:
> Try to contact him, he ported TinyGL successfully:
> http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-June/005375.html
> 
> 
> 
> > As a data point, Doom runs quite fast even at full resolution on a  
> > B4. Have not heard reports on getting Quake running. But I suspect  
> > that a software renderer hand-optimized towards the XO could be made  
> > to work at decent frame rate.
> >
> >   
> The databook of the LX is so low quality that hand optimization requires 
> testing everything (including if the published clock counts are matching 
> reality) and it has not been done yet. Also the hight cache hit penalty 
> and the in-order nature of the Geode means that a different algorithm 
> could be required than naively fetching texels while texture mapping. 
> Quake requires a preprocessed/prelit BSP tree so unless you want to 
> write an FPS it is not a perfect fit. Preprocessing also could take 
> hours on an XO (if you want children to design levels).
> 
> Just a quick calculation (400x300, 30 fps):
> 400x300x30 = 3 600 000 pixels/sec filled (with no overdraw)
> 433 000 000/3 600 000 = 120 clock/pixel (if you do not do anything else 
> in the code, but just divide it by 4 because of game logic/geometry 
> transform/overdraw)
> So you have ~30 clock/pixel and a cache miss takes 25 clocks (if the 
> documentation is ok but not tested)...

At age 11-16, I spent considerable time using 3D Studio Max to do 3D
modeling on a Pentium II 266 with 64MB of RAM.

I have two questions:
1. Do you think you could implement realtime wireframes at 400x300? What
about higher resolution?

This would be enough to provide a preview for a 3D modeler.  3D Studio
Max and similar tools only showed wireframes until you asked for a
render, which could take several minutes.

2. Do you think you could implement a real-time OpenGL renderer with
flat shading, one light-source, and no textures, at 400x300? How about
Phong, or another interpolated shading model?

This would be enough to implement 3D environments at the level of the
original Starfox (which was fantastic).  With Phong at 1200x900, it
could even be the slow, "high-quality" final output of a 3D modeler
program.

--Ben Schwartz