Wild and crazy times for the development tree

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 07:06 -0500, sean wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 05:19:49 +0100
> Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> 
> > > > What do you guys do when you want decent 3D performance?
> > 
> > Use the proprietary drivers ... :-)
> 
> There are few cases where resorting to proprietary drivers is required.
> There are open source drivers that provide good-enough 3d for the needs 
> of many Linux users.
Wishful thinking - Try finding a notebook without an ATI or Nvidia
graphics card ...

> > You are ignoring the fact, Linux has a strong user base in people with a
> > scientific/engineering/technical background ...
> 
> Engineers may have needs which can't be met by open source 3d drivers 
> today.   Not sure who you're grouping into the scientific and technical 
> categories though, i have a technical background and my needs are met 
> perfectly well by open source 3d drivers.
Mine are not - I am working on 3d simulations/animations/visualizations.
For my applications, the nvidia driver outperforms the nv driver by ca.
factor 10. On top of that, for the hardware I have available, the nv
driver had been non-functional on one machine before FC4.

> > Whether you like it or not ... reality is different.
> 
> You should speak for yourself instead of imagining you have 
> a better grasp of reality than everyone else :oP
ROTFL ... 

> > People are pragmatically using what they have/can get/are supplied with,
> > and will ditch the distro or even the OS if it doesn't suite to their
> > demands. Fortunately for Fedora, the proprietary drivers have worked
> > sufficiently well.
> 
> Many people have been misinformed on this matter by others who are fixated 
> on the latest-and-greatest graphics speed. 
I am not talking about squeezing the "max" out of the latest and
greatest graphics HW, I am talking about:
- Getting 3D/GL functional at all.
- Getting a reasonable 3D/GL performance.
- Getting access to advanced GL features.
all on moderate to old graphic NVidia cards.

>  Personally I think it's time for 
> a more rational discussion about the capabilities and performance levels 
> actually needed by most people.
If you want to get a feeling about what I am talking about, try
SceneViewer (From Inventor, in FE) with one of the models from the Large
Geometry Repository, or try the Coin Examples from sim.no (Not in FE).

Ralf