3dfx Archive - VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?!

paulpsomiadis God Member Offline -=3Dfx still rox!=- Posts: 2011 Newcastle U.K. Gender:	Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?! Reply #15 - 10.11.03 at 17:34:49 Mouth watering... Tension building... MUST...GET...NEW...DRIVER!!! (Keep up the cool work guys!) RESULT!!! 8)
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Micha Senior Member Offline Got milk? Posts: 317 Gender:	Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?! Reply #16 - 11.11.03 at 12:05:53 obviously the compatibility to opengl 1.3 isn't as high as with original drivers...why that?
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batracio Junior Member Offline An evil petting zoo? Posts: 69 Spain Gender:	Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?! Reply #17 - 11.11.03 at 12:46:39 Quote: obviously the compatibility to opengl 1.3 isn't as high as with original drivers...why that? Texture compression is disabled due to legal issues... Daniel explained it above.
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Micha Senior Member Offline Got milk? Posts: 317 Gender:	Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?! Reply #18 - 11.11.03 at 22:21:03 is it disabled in all opengl step-ups or just in opengl 1.3?
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batracio Junior Member Offline An evil petting zoo? Posts: 69 Spain Gender:	Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?! Reply #19 - 12.11.03 at 12:02:30 Texture compression will always be disabled (unless these guys find a way to avoid legal issues), but it is considered as an OpenGL 1.3 requirement, so in glview extensions tree, only OpenGL 1.3 compliance will be affected by the absence of GL_ARB_texture_compression.
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Andrew Boiu Senior Member Offline LDE-BDreams Posts: 267 LDE-BDreams Gender:	Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?! Reply #20 - 14.11.03 at 09:40:15 The wonder is what kind of "legal" issues are involved, what could be problematic if texture compression would be enabled by default???
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batracio

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;DRe: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?!
Reply #21 - 14.11.03 at 13:05:38

AFAIK, 3dfx's texture compression algorithm (FXTC) is Open Source, but S3's algorithm (S3TC) must be licensed in order to be implemented. Unfortunately, GL_ARB_texture_compression extension isn't enough to provide compatibility with games that use pre-compressed textures, as it doesn't define any standard compression format (being S3TC/DXTC the most used). OpenGL ICDs should also implement GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc extension to enhance functionality of GL_ARB_texture_compression, but the patent of S3TC belongs to VIA (formerly to S3), so drivers developers must pay royalties. Microsoft paid those royalties to support S3TC in DirectX (renaming it to DXTC), so anyone can develop a Direct3D driver with S3TC support for free. However, OpenGL ICD vendors must afford their own S3TC license, as ARB is just a consortium that governs the OpenGL specification, and they cannot legally buy an S3TC license to be used by every OpenGL implementation. Even if ARB could license S3TC algorithm, MESA would't be allowed to use it because MESA isn't an OpenGL implementation.

Possible workarounds? Paying S3TC royalties for MESA (com'on guys, let's collect some money and donate it for a good cause Grin

), or adding S3TC without buying the license, and hope not to be sued by patent violation.

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« Last Edit: 14.11.03 at 13:09:01 by batracio »

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Blazkowicz

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Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?!
Reply #22 - 14.11.03 at 14:12:53

what about a driver that decompress S3TC textures when loading, then recompress it to FXT1 (S3TC being perhaps decompressed by an amateur algorithm made with some reverse-engeneering)

maybe this would be still "illegal"

So what about a "Europe only" version Cheesy

Patents on algorithms are (still) illegal here, as they're just mathematic expressions

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batracio

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Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?!
Reply #23 - 14.11.03 at 16:23:28

Quote:

So what about a "Europe only" version Cheesy

Patents on algorithms are (still) illegal here, as they're just mathematic expressions

Interesting point. European Parliament recently rejected to legalize Software Patents in Europe, and Daniel Borca is european:

http://www.geocities.com/dborca/about/db-en.htm

Grin

Quote:

what about a driver that decompress S3TC textures when loading, then recompress it to FXT1 (S3TC being perhaps decompressed by an amateur algorithm made with some reverse-engeneering)

Great performance hit if you recompress to FXT1 "on the fly", and you still need an algorithm to decompress S3TC textures; the algorithm itself is well known, no reverse-engineering needed. The license to use it is the problem.

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Lecram25

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Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?!
Reply #24 - 14.11.03 at 20:50:34

Like batracio said, decompressing and then compressing them into fxt1 would give you a nasty performance hit...Dan was gonna do that I believe

Quote:

or adding S3TC without buying the license, and hope not to be sued by patent violation.

I like that one Grin

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Micha

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Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?!
Reply #25 - 15.11.03 at 15:03:18

Quote:

what about a driver that decompress S3TC textures when loading, then recompress it to FXT1 (S3TC being perhaps decompressed by an amateur algorithm made with some reverse-engeneering)

maybe this would be still "illegal"

i thought that's exactly what FXTC does when used in OpenGL games that use compressed S3TC textures..otherwise it wouldn't be possible to use FXTC in those quake3 based games (remember this option in 3dfx voodoo4/5 drivers --> legacy texture compression)

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Andrew Boiu Senior Member Offline LDE-BDreams Posts: 267 LDE-BDreams Gender:	Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?! Reply #26 - 18.11.03 at 10:21:57 Unfortunatly, there are some differences between DXTC, S3TC, and FXT1. If we will be able to turn every compressed (or non-compressed) texture into FXT1, we might have one of the big performance achievement on the Voodoos. How will we make that one possible? There is the real question and the big challenge...
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paulpsomiadis God Member Offline -=3Dfx still rox!=- Posts: 2011 Newcastle U.K. Gender:	Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?! Reply #27 - 18.11.03 at 14:07:14 We need a visit from the 'magic' FXT1 fairy! LOL!
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dborca

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Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?!
Reply #28 - 19.11.03 at 15:31:29

Sorry, guys, I was away for a while!

Many thanks to

batracio

for his replies!
He's right, especially wrt to already-compressed textures!

The "european version" is not feasible, because Brian Paul is not european! Tongue

And the de-compression hack will be terribly slow... Sad

Oh, I almost forgot! I took sexeh Vulpine last night for a ride Grin

And it was good Grin

Err... hmmm... I mean it works! We still have problems with the win32 interface, but I'm not doing win32 specific programming... at least not without a good reason! The trick to start Vulpine is to run it fullscreen form the command-line!

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Micha Senior Member Offline Got milk? Posts: 317 Gender:	Re: VooDoo 5 & openGL v1.2 ---?! Reply #29 - 20.11.03 at 11:51:07 so which driver package will distribute the new mesa drivers? just stand-alone version?
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