[Xquartz-dev] 2.3.3_rc1

[George Peter Staplin]

Quoted Jack Howarth <howarth at bromo.med.uc.edu>:

> George,
>    I surveyed the behavior of vmd-xplor on the two PowerPC machines
> I have here at work. In both cases...
>
> 1) dual G4 QuickSilver with ATI Radeon 7500 running 10.5.6 and X.org  
>  2.3.2.1 or 2.3.3-rc1
> 2) dual G5 PowerMac with ATI Radeon 9600 running 10.5.6 and X.org 2.3.2.1
>
> ...I found that vmd-xplor works fine but only shows Apple Software Rendering
> for the OpenGL render as reported with the -nowin -debug flags. As I  
>  mentioned
> before, I see the same behavior on a MacBook Pro with Radeon X1600 graphics
> using either X.org 2.3.2.1 or 2.3.3-rc1. In both cases, vmd-xplor works
> fine but the OpenGL render is Apple Software Rendering. Only in the case of
> a 2008 MacPro with Radeon HD2600 do I see the vmd-xplor failures and only for
> 2.3.3-rc1 under 10.5.6.  The 2.3.2.1 Xorg doesn't have the problem however in
> both cases hardware rendering is used rather than Apple Software Rendering.
> So the first question is why doesn't most ATI hardware use hardware rendering
> for vmd-xplor? The second question is what in the new GLX/DRI breaks the
> hardware rendering on a HD2600.
>                       Jack

What exactly does the -nowin flag do?  I searched for a bit online,  
and I couldn't find it in a vmd-xplor manual.  I found people  
suggesting it, but I don't know what it does.

I also found that the -dispdev allows for a text mode.  Is that what  
you're enabling?

It may be using the new GLXPixmap code for that path, which uses  
software rendering for offscreen drawables.

I found something else:

"Fixed 64-bit MacOS X ifdefs. Disabled the use of OpenGL extensions  
for 64-bit MacOS X builds until more details are ironed out."

from:
http://ftp.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/vmd-new/devel.html

They were probably trying to work around a bug in the old libGL.  I  
still need to contact the developers, and try to get vmd-xplor setup.


George
-- 
http://people.freedesktop.org/~gstaplin/