Hi Lorenzo, > Well, in opengl you're forced to redraw *everything* at each frame > (excluding clever FBO usage),
Nope, for example I don't redraw everything for the cursor. At the moment I'm copying the pixels to the main memory. > Yep, the 'clever' FBO usage is exactly what you called an 'aux buffer' > (which in opengl is another kind of thing:P) Also double buffering is > mandatory for acceleration these days, anyway. OTOH maybe you could > simply stuff the 'other' things in a display list and replay it. Just > because FBO are not a core feature but yet another extension, IIRC. Yes, I know the FBO extension, but I mean the auxiliary buffers - usually you have up to four - I'll try that at the weekend. I don't know if they work with any OpenGL implementation, because these are optional. > I keep wondering what kind of graphic primitive do you need to use > opengl instead of 2D graphics primitives (which are already being > accelerated by the X server). Depends on the graphics library - Cairo isn't accelerated (there are backends in development) - I don't know if wxDC has some hardware acceleration. >Also keep in mind that most consumer cards > are optimized for full screen opengl only (at least in the times of > nvidia-8, years ago, I know). Perhaps it was in history, today hardware acceleration works in the windowed mode well. > /me is usually working more in software to go on cheaper hardware since > we produce the hardware too (so, in the end, hardware is *more expensive* > than development time). And don't forget that kicad is, at the moment, > an entry level product... while Mentor could ask for a ginormous box > (since anyway with their licence you can buy about 4-6 top-class PCs, > these days:D) we would risk to loss some of the eagle-level audience. Well, almost any entry PC has these days a 3D accelerator. Also OpenGL doesn't mean that its suited only 3D drawing, there are a lot of operations for manipulating 2D surfaces. Eagle should be no reference for us - why only entry level? Eagle seems not to be much further developed, I've used 10 years ago and it looks still the same. I know myself Mentor Expedition - have used it for my diploma thesis. The router is the best on the market (fast push&shove), but the schematic entry sucks - IMHO its much quicker to draw schematics with KiCad. > At the moment the only thing is a little slow on kicad is zone filling > (which I usually keep disabled anyway because it distracts from the > track layout...). I guess it could be a little sluggish on my box with > an 8-plane in 6 mil technology (well, such a board could use a faster > box anyway). I'd assume that you have tried only the Linux version. On Windows7 (and Jerry has written on OS X) the drawing is really pretty slow - the OpenGL 3D view is much faster. This is a motivation for such a backend. On Windows you have usually no problems with an OpenGL driver. > Cairo is slow by definition until it isn't accelerated some way... gerbv > with cairo is absolutely not useful! (BTW transparency in a gerber > viewer is not useful for checking stuff. XOR combining IS useful) I don't know if that can be said without trying; sure its slower than the OpenGL variant - but I've found it for my examples still OK. However, it has to be tried with many objects on the screen. I don't know how efficiently it was implemented in gerbv. Another backends are possible if required; wxDC isn't my favorite because it has several restictions compared to other graphics APIs - but with some work its possible to integrate it too. Bye.. Torsten -- PS: Sorry, again the wrong reply address :( -- GRATIS für alle GMX-Mitglieder: Die maxdome Movie-FLAT! Jetzt freischalten unter http://portal.gmx.net/de/go/maxdome01 _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
