AIGLX, metacity, nvidia and Xgl

[Patrick McFarland]

On Friday 24 February 2006 03:49, Benjy Grogan wrote:
> I would like to know what advantages Xgl or AIGLX will have other than the
> eye candy.  Will it be possible to develop an application that will use
> openGL and then be able to run the application remotely, as is currently
> possible with gnome applications?
>
> Say if I were to develop a medical imaging application that allowed the
> user to traverse a human skull, would I be able to run this program
> remotely using Xgl, and only send GL commands using XML over the network? 
> Is XGL related to the XGL File Format Specification
> <http://www.xglspec.org/> ?
>
> There has to be more to these next gen desktop technologies than eye candy.

Well, I assume accelerated indirect rendering would eventually allow me to 
accelerate opengl apps over the networked X (which is something I've been 
wanting to do for awhile now).

Also, Xgl allows me to use my gpu to offload a large part of X's cpu load 
(well, in theory anyways). In a way, X, and any other drawing api that 
doesn't use the gpu to do everything, is uselessly wasting both cpu time and 
wasting the idlying gpu hardware.

That said, I think Xgl and AIGLX are complementary technologies. From what 
I've seen of their descriptions, they should be able to work together to 
accelerate everything on the desktop, from complex widgetry in buisness apps, 
to the newest game.

Now only if I could get Xgl to actually run on my hardware... (damn r300 >_<)

-- 
Patrick "Diablo-D3" McFarland || diablod3 at gmail.com
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids,
we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and
listening to repetitive electronic music." -- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo,
Inc, 1989