NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/comp/graphics/opengl/220

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-17 | 1.8 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!ames!sgi!fido!krypton!gavin
From: [e-mail] (Gavin Bell)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.opengl
Subject: Re: conformance question
Date: 17 Dec 1992 19:11:55 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA
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Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: krypton.asd.sgi.com

In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Rich Thomson) writes:
>I'm beginning to think that applications will still have a big
>platform-specific "switch" statement figuring out which visual to use
>in order to find the fastest visual.
>                        -- Rich

I think most applications will have a very good idea of what
functionality they require, and will know what visual they need.  For
example, most interactive 3D applications will require front, back,
and z-buffers.  I don't think many application programmers will be
willing to invest the programming effort to try to support 3D graphics
on a non-zbuffer, non-double-buffered visual (but I may just be,
spoiled and lazy, and not a Real(tm) graphics programmer).

I think this will be more of an issue with more general data-driven
programs.  For example, imagine a program that could display CSG
object by using the stencil bitplanes and an auxilary framebuffer.  It
would be nice if that application didn't allocate those resources
until it read in a file that contained an object that needed them,
especially since the more full-function visuals might have degraded
performance.  A big switch statement will be called to try to figure
out if the visual we have is the visual we need to display the objects
in our scene.

--
--gavin     ([e-mail],  [phone])