Introducing Warp3D Nova for AmigaOS 4.1

[BSzili]

From what I can tell people have been happily using Warp3d for a good few years. Just because you're on the wrong team and didn't get a kick of the ball doesn't give the right to be obnoxious and ignorant.

Most programs didn't use Warp3D directly, but through OpenGL implementations, like MiniGL or StormMesa.

[BSzili]

It's not like Mesa must to be implemented on top of a Gallim3D-compatible driver. Mesa had drivers long before Gallium3D was conceived. It was only introduced to simplify driver creation by implementing boilerplate for a state tracker. My point is that one could use Warp3D Nova as a low-level layer to make a Mesa driver, just like they did with StormMesa back in the day.

[BSzili]

Warp3D Nova offers no backwards compatibility, just as OpenGL ES2 is not compatible with OpenGL ES1, thus mobile drivers implement both. I don't think Mesa was even considered, otherwise they would have gone straight for a Gallium3D driver, which would have worked with Mesa out of the box. IMHO that would have made more sense, since it'd have offered backwards compatibility with old software with a nice speedup, plus the new shader-based OpenGL APIs. Best of both worlds.

Since neither Warp3D Nova, nor the planned OpenGL ES2 wrapper implements the fixed function pipeline, old software can only use it, if someone provides a full OpenGL implementation. This can be Mesa, Regal, or whatever else there's out there.

[BSzili]

Looks like Startech makes such a device. Anybody tried this?

https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/Slot-Extension/PCI-to-PCI-Express-Adapter-Card~PCI1PEX1

I've never seen a PCI-E 1x graphics card.

[BSzili]

Indeed there is no harm in plugging in even a PCI-e 16x card in a 1x slot. I imagine it would be faster than those awful low-end PCI cards, mostly meant for HTPC-s.

[BSzili]

CPU usage without the actual framerate doesn't say a lot. You can produce 100% CPU usage drawing a single triangle at 1000 FPS.

[BSzili]

Cow3D gives about 114 FPS.

Sure, but Cow3D is a Warp3D program. My point was, that the Warp3D Nova example programs by themselves, without CANDI running, locked at a sensible framerate would probably consume very little CPU power compared to Warp3D. CANDI can skew the results, since 2D Compositing API is still very CPU bound.

[BSzili]

Implementing Warp3D functions on top of Warp3D Nova wouldn't give any benefits. The main bottleneck of Warp3D if that most of the graphics pipeline is on the CPU. The GPU is only rasterizing triangles either way.

[BSzili]

What about support for new cards in the future? I'm assuming they won't have Warp3D drivers for them, so is Warp3D deprecated like Goa for R300+ is on MorphOS?

Sure, technically it's possible. The principle is the same as Regal and GLES2.