Performance change from X in Fedora Core 4 to Fedora Core 5

[Felix Bellaby]

On Fri, 2006-07-14 at 23:46 +0900, Carsten Haitzler wrote: 
> in my experience of using gl as a 2d api and treating it with painters
> algorithm... it works just fine speed-wise and can manage all of this easily -
> without blinking, on any vaguely modern hardware. most of what we need is
> compositing and transforms - both of which are relatively cheap and fast even
> brute-force on a modern gpu.

Okay, I am being too hard on the capacity of current GPUs to composite
2D apps using textures. Glitz can already draw into the pixmaps quick
enough to fulfill users current expectations and texture mapping is
sufficiently fast to produce acceptable frame rates from the 2D output. 

My real worry with this environment is its impact on GL apps. Users are
naturally going to want 3D apps to go with their 3D desktops. Are we
going to be able to accomodate these at acceptable frame rates into a
desktop that is being drawn into masses of large framebuffers before
being distorted onto the screen?

Users may even start to notice that their familiar pseudo-3D widget sets
do not behave like 3D objects on their 3D desktop. Aaron Platter's
visually impressive version of glxgears, which maps the normal anim onto
the faces of a translucent cube, loses part of its gloss when you notice
that the orientation of the gears is all wrong on the reverse faces.

Perhaps users will take years to become this demanding, and we can
afford a long grace period using an inefficient hotchpotch of 2D and 3D
drawing methods. Perhaps not.

Felix