Olgun Guvench (og32 at columbia.edu) wrote:
: One caveat: as far as I know OpenGL acceleration is not available at the
: hardware level, so it probably is not worth spending lots of $$ on a video
: card which has OpenGL acceleration at the hardware level (I think there
: are some commercial X vendors which claim accleration for OpenGL, but this
: is done only on the software level).
I've just heard (though havn't confirmed myself) that the free OpenGL
compatible library, Mesa, now has direct hardware support for Voodoo 3D
graphics cards. This apparently works VERY well....
: p.s.: Linux is also available on the Alpha architecture (by Digital, which
: is now owned by Compaq, I believe). The Alpha has the fastest floating
: point unit on the planet right now, but unfortunately, the math library
: for Linux is not very good on Alpha's at this point, so the Alpha's full
: potential cannot be realized (although someone is re-writing the library
: and it should be ready for use on Alpha in a couple of weeks from what I
: have heard...). So, if you are running Linux, it is probably better to
: stick with Intel if you will be compiling your own code using gcc.
Many of the problems with Alpha Linux maths libraries were ironed out
for the Titanic. Animation for this movie was done on 160 Alpha, over
100 of which were running Linux (the rest NT). Take a look at the
February 1998 issue of Linux Journal (www.linuxjournal.com)
Andrew
