Re: Status of the GNU 3DKit

[Pete French]

> Uhm, not sure what you exactly mean by Mesa off-screen buffer...? Do you mean

Mesa lets you render into a block of memory rather than direct to the screen.
Thats how I have used OpenGL under NextStep and OpenStep until now.
Basically it renders into the memory and you can then do what you want
with that. In my case this was to add it to an NSBitmapImageRep and
throw it into an NSView.  Effectively you get an NSView that you can
"draw" OpenGL into. But of cousre theres no acceleration using this method.

> a GLXPixmap? Anyway, keep in mind that rendering to anything else than the 
> framebuffer involves pixel transfer which is always slow. You can use 

Indeed. Tgough opefully faster than using Mesa's implementation ?

> does is it bypasses the X server to gain maximum performance.

Yes. Obvously the ideal solution is to have it drawing directly into
the window, but as a "quick and dirty" solution the Meas approach does have
the attraction of at least getting a working system up with the minimum of
fuss and letting programs that use the OpenGL interface run. No good if
you are doing 3D animated games, but for rendering static scenes will
do fine, and gives somethign to build on (or possibly completely
rip out and start again at a later date),. I generally work on the basis
that having a working-but-slow API is a good starting point as it means people
witshingto port programs can at least start without twiddling their
thumbs waiting for the accelerated version...

-bat.