Would you support a new Unified Opensource RTG standart?

[Gulliver]

This thread and its corresponding poll are meant to gauge interest in a new Unified open source RTG standart that attempts to support both earlier Piccasso96 and Cybergaphx RTG systems.

[bloodline]

What's wrong with P96?

[Golem!dk]

What's wrong with P96?

Is anyone but OS4 developers able to create new drivers for it?


Oh btw... do you have any qualified developer lined up? and what exactly do you mean with support?

[Gulliver]

It is closed source, there is no freely available SDK, and no one supports it any longer.
On an opensource solution you are able to update and bugfix the rtg standart, whenever you feel to. New drivers can be easily created, and every graphics card can stand the chance of being included, unlike Picasso96 and Cybergraphx.

[Karlos]

What's wrong with P96?

Lack of readily available SDK for developing new drivers?

[Karlos]

I voted maybe. If the driver SDK for an existing standard can be made available to developers, I would probably prefer that route, since creating an entirely new one is a much larger project.

[arnljot]

I´m with Karlos on this one.

Gulliver has exchanged emails with the P96 IP holder, and his request to open up P96 has been declined.

No attempt as far as I know has been made to have CGX4 opened up. I don´t know who one would contact for that.

So, if CGX4 could be opened up to support Mediator graphic cards and UAE, then we´d be there.

Also, the community could patch and improve CGX for classic systems and bring it inline with MOS and AROS, and P96 on OS4 eventually. It would make life a little better for Amigans all over I  think.

But if the CGX4 IP holders won´t or can´t make CGX4 LGPL or another open lisence, then this poll is about making a new open compatible unified RTG system.

Would you support it. Either by helping out in a non coding capacity (finding documentation, writing documentation, etc), provide coding skills or contribute to a bounty.

This issue was in a way sparked by the excellent Cosmos´ efforts to modernize and update graphics library.

[wawrzon]

since we have several ongoing projects involved with 68k gfx solutuions, i would just mention wazp3d by alain, warp3d voodoo/mediator hw optimization-fix by matthey, sdl by bernd r, graphics.library with planned gfx support by cosmos, not to mention some approach on aros that might come handy like gallium 3d by deadwood (am i right)... i think it is nothing wrong to call together an initiative to unify the graphic standard as open source.

whoever will pick up this subject - for what i see from last year experience - there will not be many people to attend. there will be an one leading dev. no questions asked. but there is a spirit of cooperative support already. the only chance is to improve something. if it goes  broken we will just have to stick to what we already have anyway. so : no risk, only gain possible.

i vote : yes-!

[Golem!dk]

No attempt as far as I know has been made to have CGX4 opened up. I don´t know who one would contact for that.

I thought this was covered in the other thread, besides it is still in development in case you missed it.

[Karlos]

I thought this was covered in the other thread, besides it is still in development in case you missed it.

What about making the m68k CGX v4.2 driver SDK available? That's all that's really being asked. Nobody is expecting CGX5 to be opened up.

[Jose]

Yes if the user API (i.e. to write programs that use it) is to be CGX/P6 compatible.

[arnljot]

I thought this was covered in the other thread, besides it is still in development in case you missed it.

No, I didn´t miss it. But I didn´t take pirus post as a definitive answer as he said it was unlikely. That is hardly an official request, or an official answer.

And yes, I know that CGX is part of MOS, but it´s no longer developed for classics, and I thing they´ve reached version 5.

So what we´re asking, got to ask, is can version 4 codebase for classics be released. Posted on Aminet as open source.

Until someone step forward and take ownership of CGX4 and denies it going opensource I´ll hope that it will. Or until someone points to the IP owners so that we can direct a request to them. Gulliver has done a good job so far of tracking down various IP holders and asking them, and I think we better should get hold of the CGX4 IP holders and ask them propperly.

I respect Piru a great deal, and I appreciate that he´s part of the MOS team, but I think he was voicing an opinion and not speaking officially for them when he replied.

And I don´t know if the MOS team has ownership to CGX4 or if they have lisence rights to it. All this has to be uncovered so that we know where we stand so that we know we´re proceeding in the right direction.

The AROS team might shed some light on this. Are they for instance reimplementing the CGX system from scratch like they do with the OS3.1 APIs, or have they had a code donation from the CGX code base? Things like this might help us sort this out.

[trekiej]

I voted maybe. I am wondering how it will help the community exactly.

[arnljot]

What about making the m68k CGX v4.2 driver SDK available? That's all that's really being asked. Nobody is expecting CGX5 to be opened up.

Precicely. The first goal would to bring P96 m68k "into" CGX4.2 m68k. Next step would be to see if "Open CGX" could implement features from CGX5 and "OS4 P96". Or if the community wanted something else After all, it would be open.

[Tumbleweed]

I voted maybe. I use P96 with my CV64-3D (A4000D), CV64 (A3000D) and Picasso-II (A2000) cards.

What advantages would an open source RTG standard have over what I've already got?

Weed