Re: how to test hardware acceleration / GL / utahglx?

[Willy Lee <willy2@jps.net>]

"Krzys" == Krzys Majewski <majewski@cs.ubc.ca> writes:

> OK, I'm extremely confused by this hardware GL thing. My card is an
> ATI Xpert 98 (aka "Rage"), so presumably it has it?

Yes, somewhat.

> Will utahglx support it?

utah-glx.sourceforge.net says 'ATI RagePro'; going to ATI page shows
Xpert 98 listed under Rage Pro cards. 

> What is the difference between, say, libutahglx
> and mesag3 and libglide and so on.

libglide is the Glide library, used by 3Dfx cards only.

mesag3 is the Mesa implementation of OpenGL.  It runs on top of a
driver layer which does the actual talking to the hardware to get
accelerated 3D.  On 3Dfx cards, the driver layer uses Glide.  Utah-GLX
is a project which provides that driver layer for ATI and Matrox
cards among others.  

> Why is it so hard to play quake
> under linux compared to dos?

Um, have you tried playing quake under DOS lately?  Or perhaps you
actually mean Win32, where you have the card manufacturers actually
writing the OpenGL drivers (and that was still a pain to get set up,
and limited to certain cards, until fairly recently, with the advent
of things like GLSetup).

> Finally, I've got some utahglx debs
> installed, how do I test whether the hardware acceleration is
> working?
>> chris

Run a demo that uses textures (almost always runs painfully slow using
software rendering).

=wl

-- 
Albert ``Willy'' Lee, Emacs user, game programmer
"They call me CRAZY - just because I DARE to DREAM of a RACE of 
SUPERHUMAN MONSTERS!"