[forum] Re: FW: XFree86 future

[Michel Dänzer]

On Son, 2003-03-23 at 19:49, Havoc Pennington wrote: 
> On Sun, Mar 23, 2003 at 01:30:42PM +0100, Lukas Molzberger wrote:
> > > > If direct rendered 2D would bring little to no benefit why then is the 
> > > > performance of direct rendered 3D under XFree so much better than the 2D 
> > > 
> > > How can you compare them ? 
> > I admit that this is mainly a subjective thing, but in 3D I can load really 
> > complex objects and I can move them around and it feels smooth and fluent. 
> > The 3D won't let me see any broken or incompletly drawing states. But that's 
> > the case on the X11 desktop. Sometimes I can watch the system redrawing a 
> > window. The X11 desktop just doesn't feel good.
> 
> This isn't primarily about speed, it's about
> flicker/tearing/lack-of-animation, as already discussed.
> 
> What makes it harder in the X11 case vs. the 3D/direct-rendering case
> is not network protocol vs. direct-rendering, but the fact that
> multiple applications are involved that need to be synchronized.  If
> you are doing direct rendering, you still need some way to do that.

Absolutely, and I'd argue it's easier and cleaner in a central server
than with several direct rendering clients.

E.g., it might be possible for the server to transparently use double
buffering.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)/ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
XFree86 and DRI project member   /  CS student, Free Software enthusiast