Now that I finally have some level of hardware 3D acceleration working at all on my linux computer, Istarted to look at wheather Squeak is able to access it.
Attempting to toggle hardware acceleration with the menu checkbox was ineffectual.
Now I have these questions:
1. On what platforms is hardware 3D acceleration supported? 2. What things need to be done to make it work on linux?
My actual motovation for poking around with Squeak's 3D facilities comes from my good old AI project. The development plan which I am in the process of writing calls for a 3D environment with a very good facimilie of a physicality, implementing all of newtonian physics if not some parts of the laws of thermodynamics.
The present implementation appears to be purely a rendering engine. Does anyone have any suggestions on where I should go to learn about how to add physical simulation features to the engine?
I had attempted to make a posting that included some comments about a possible VM enhancement from the image itself with mixed results. I'll repeat them here because I don't think many people were able to read the earlier posting.
In working on the VM, I noticed that it actually had 3 stacks instead of the two mentioned to me earlier. These include the parameters stack, the context stack, and the hardware stack.
While a fair ammount of effort has gone into minimizing the use of the hardware stack, for good reason apparently, It _MIGHT_ be advantageous to attempt to combine either of the two software-managed stacks with the hardware stack for the sake of conserving registers and reducing the number of data items that need to be maintained explicitly by the VM code.
I was wondering if anyone had done any work along these lines or may be able to point me to an argument that shows the current design to be superior.
Am 28.09.2004 um 17:33 schrieb Alan Grimes:
- On what platforms is hardware 3D acceleration supported?
MacOS X, Linux, Win32, at least. Probably anything with an OpenGL library.
- What things need to be done to make it work on linux?
Make sure your OpenGL is working in other apps, e.g. glxgears. Use ldd to find out which library it is actually linked against (should be /usr/lib/libGL.so.1). Make sure /usr/lib/libGL.so is a symlink to that library. Make sure you have the Squeak B3DAcceleratorPlugin.
Does anyone have any suggestions on where I should go to learn about how to add physical simulation features to the engine?
Well, nobody is seriously working with the Balloon3D engine anymore. But you surely could employ Takashi Yamamiya's ODE plugin (http://languagegame.org:8080/ggame/15). We used it successfully with Croquet.
- Bert -
"Alan Grimes" alangrimes@starpower.net wrote:
Now that I finally have some level of hardware 3D acceleration working at all on my linux computer, Istarted to look at wheather Squeak is able to access it.
I am on windows and never had a Linux, but I will try my best to share my experience.
Attempting to toggle hardware acceleration with the menu checkbox was ineffectual.
I think that "menu checkbox" means the item on the top left of the B3DSceneExplorerMorph. That checkbox is labelled "Enable hardware acceleration". Right? On Squeak for Windows, we have a menu item (in the window menu) "VM preferences" and a submenu "Display and Sound" with three items. It is important to check "Use OpenGL (instead of D3D)" Hardware acceleration needs OpenGL; it will not work when you use D3D.
When you try Hardware acceleration with the rotating cube, the effect is not very impressive (IMHO). For more complicated scenes, I found hardware acceleration more impressive. When you use hardware acceleration on a Windows PC, the colors of the scene change, this is a well-known bug, but also an indication that hw acceleration works.
Now I have these questions:
- On what platforms is hardware 3D acceleration supported?
You need an OpenGL driver. Most modern operating systems have one, but if you need one, you will find it on http://www.opengl.org/
Greetings, Boris
On Squeak for Windows, we have a menu item (in the window menu) "VM preferences" and a submenu "Display and Sound" with three items. It is important to check "Use OpenGL (instead of D3D)" Hardware acceleration needs OpenGL; it will not work when you use D3D.
There is nothing like that Linux. I generally run it in framebuffer mode despite the fact that the framebuffer driver constrains me to 640x480x8....=(
Or with the TWM for X'doze. -- hardly any menus at all....
The OpenGL libraries, or at least _SOME_ 3D libraries are working and they work extremely well for "tuxracer". -- to within the limits of Linux's inexhaustable suckeyness....
The card isn't very impressive but then there isn't much that's fully supported by the flaming kernel.
I am supprised that the work on this 3D stuff stopped years ago, I thought it was an active area of research.
Am 29.09.2004 um 00:53 schrieb Alan Grimes:
On Squeak for Windows, we have a menu item (in the window menu) "VM preferences" and a submenu "Display and Sound" with three items. It is important to check "Use OpenGL (instead of D3D)" Hardware acceleration needs OpenGL; it will not work when you use D3D.
There is nothing like that Linux.
Of course not. Didn't you see my previous message?
I generally run it in framebuffer mode despite the fact that the framebuffer driver constrains me to 640x480x8....=(
There is no hardware-accelerated lib for fbuffer, AFAIK.
Or with the TWM for X'doze. -- hardly any menus at all....
Don't need no stinkin' TWM either. I just run Squeak fullscreen from a .xsession file =)
The OpenGL libraries, or at least _SOME_ 3D libraries are working and they work extremely well for "tuxracer". -- to within the limits of Linux's inexhaustable suckeyness....
"some" 3D libraries won't cut it, you need OpenGL. Or extend B3DAcceleratorPlugin to use "some" 3D library. But since "some" 3D library is most likely using a software renderer you wouldn't win anything over the Balloon3D engine, which is precisely that, and optimized towards Squeak's needs.
The card isn't very impressive but then there isn't much that's fully supported by the flaming kernel.
NVIDIA's drivers work pretty well. FireGL used to be fine, but since ATI layed off the German driver developers not much has been done in that department.
I am supprised that the work on this 3D stuff stopped years ago, I thought it was an active area of research.
Development didn't stop, it moved on. Everyone interested in 3D is working on Croquet now.
- Bert -
Am 29.09.2004 um 00:53 schrieb Alan Grimes:
On Squeak for Windows, we have a menu item (in the window menu) "VM preferences" and a submenu "Display and Sound" with three items. It is important to check "Use OpenGL (instead of D3D)" Hardware acceleration needs OpenGL; it will not work when you use D3D.
There is nothing like that Linux.
Of course not. Didn't you see my previous message?
There ain't no stinkin "Window menu". =(
There ain't no string in the entire image, that I was able to find, which matches the description of "VM Preferences". A also searched, in futility, through a large portion of the image, for the string "OpenGL" to no avail.
Am 30.09.2004 um 11:22 schrieb Alan Grimes:
Am 29.09.2004 um 00:53 schrieb Alan Grimes:
On Squeak for Windows, we have a menu item (in the window menu) "VM preferences" and a submenu "Display and Sound" with three items. It is important to check "Use OpenGL (instead of D3D)" Hardware acceleration needs OpenGL; it will not work when you use D3D.
There is nothing like that Linux.
Of course not. Didn't you see my previous message?
There ain't no stinkin "Window menu". =(
I know. Why do you insist on pointing out the obvious?
I was referring to *my* previous message, not the one cited above. This one: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/squeak/message/85936
There ain't no string in the entire image, that I was able to find, which matches the description of "VM Preferences". A also searched, in futility, through a large portion of the image, for the string "OpenGL" to no avail.
Well, as the message above (which was not written by me, mind you) clearly stated: "On Squeak for Windows, ...". This is not in the image but in the Windows VM, so pretty much irrelevant in this discussion.
- Bert -
Am 28.09.2004 um 23:18 schrieb Boris Gaertner:
Attempting to toggle hardware acceleration with the menu checkbox was ineffectual.
I think that "menu checkbox" means the item on the top left of the B3DSceneExplorerMorph. That checkbox is labelled "Enable hardware acceleration". Right? On Squeak for Windows, we have a menu item (in the window menu) "VM preferences" and a submenu "Display and Sound" with three items. It is important to check "Use OpenGL (instead of D3D)" Hardware acceleration needs OpenGL; it will not work when you use D3D.
Really? Balloon3D is supposed to work with either D3D or OpenGL on Windows. If it does not you should file that as a bug. Only Croquet requires OpenGL.
When you try Hardware acceleration with the rotating cube, the effect is not very impressive (IMHO). For more complicated scenes, I found hardware acceleration more impressive. When you use hardware acceleration on a Windows PC, the colors of the scene change, this is a well-known bug, but also an indication that hw acceleration works.
The bug was not particular to Windows PCs, and it should be gone in 3.7 VMs.
- Bert -
Hello,
When you use hardware acceleration on a Windows PC, the colors of the scene change, this is a well-known bug, but also an indication that hw acceleration works.
The bug was not particular to Windows PCs, and it should be gone in 3.7 VMs.
its still there at least in MacOSX 3.7.5Beta1. When switched to hardware acceleration color shift appears and the wonderland doesn't like mouse input very much and crash the render context when it comes to halos.
With friendly greetings,
Malte Steiner media art + development -www.block4.com-
next events: Notstandsnacht webradio 03.10. 7pm radio2b.org concert + DJ set with Xyramat: 10.10. Schilleroper, Hamburg, Germany Elektronengehirn concert: 09.10. Astrastube, Hamburg, Germany pure-data workshop 18.10-22.10 vivid, Birmingham, UK
Am 29.09.2004 um 12:36 schrieb Malte Steiner:
Hello,
When you use hardware acceleration on a Windows PC, the colors of the scene change, this is a well-known bug, but also an indication that hw acceleration works.
The bug was not particular to Windows PCs, and it should be gone in 3.7 VMs.
its still there at least in MacOSX 3.7.5Beta1. When switched to hardware acceleration color shift appears
Yep, I meant the final 3.7 VMs. It's in 3.7.5b3.
and the wonderland doesn't like mouse input very much and crash the render context when it comes to halos.
You need this fix: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2004-September/ 081961.html
- Bert -
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Alan Grimes -
Bert Freudenberg -
Boris Gaertner -
Malte Steiner