3D hardware acceleration (3dfx, opengl, ...)

Bamse123 · 05-23-2004, 03:16 AM

I have an ancient 3Dfx Voodoo3 AGP card and would definitely like to have a hardware accelerated graphics for my 3D screensavers. I had this same problem on Windows, and I failed to get any opengl support because there were no drivers. It's kinda annoying when people just kept telling to go to "www.glsetup.com" and as we know, that thing hasn't been existed for some time now...

But how do I know whether I have a hardware acceleration on my Slackware Linux 9.1? I'm pretty much confused with all this DRI/GL/OpenGL/glide/Mesa/GLUT/GLX/... thing. It's actually been so long since I played games (on Windows, that is) and knew more about this stuff. I had this same machine but can't remember how I got these things to work. Well, maybe it was only the mighty mysterious DirectX, which one just installed and that was everything you could ever need...

I use xscreensaver and received GLX error messages when trying to view 3D savers (like the 3D bubbles thing and the trampoline cow...

). So I went to /etc/X11/XF86Config and uncommented the Load "glx" and Load "dri". No idea what that means, but it worked. But they are very slow and it definitely seems that they aren't using the hardware.

I've already installed this package: ftp://ftp.slackware.no/pub/Linux/sla....10-i386-1.txt

What packages/software/config do I need? I'm kinda lost.

Regards,
Bamse

Mara · 05-23-2004, 06:51 AM

Look into your /etc/X11/XFree86 once again and check what you have in "Device" section. One of the lines should be

Code:

Driver "tdfx"

Bamse123 · 05-23-2004, 10:42 AM

Quote:

Look into your /etc/X11/XFree86 once again...

You meant /etc/X11/XF86Config.

Quote:

...check what you have in "Device" section.

I checked. Yep, tdfx driver is configured there. Just how I set up with xf86config.

Code:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Voodoo3 AGP"
    Driver      "tdfx"
    VideoRam    16384
    # Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection

Ok, well my question is more simple than that novel I first wrote. How do I get 3dfx Voodoo3 hardware acceleration for xscreensaver? What graphics library does xscreensaver use? Do I need OpenGL or what?

In case of OpenGL,

. I spent so big amount of my valuable time trying to get it (Really Slick Screensavers, GPL, www.reallyslick.com) work in Win98, no luck. I have glide, glut, sdl, working drivers and dri already. I can clearly see that the screensaver isn't using hardware. Celeron 333Mhz + 128Mb RAM + Voodoo3 in AGP slot is like a dream when configured correctly.

Regards,
Bamse

Bamse123 · 05-24-2004, 12:18 AM

Hey this one hasn't been solved yet...

Is this a graphics card specific problem?

Regards,
Bamse

Bamse123 · 05-24-2004, 07:43 AM

Hey I figured it out. I uncommented the DRI section in XF86Config and now the 3D screensavers seem to run smooth. Here:

Code:

Section "DRI"
   Mode 0666
EndSection

Still there seems to be minor problems, but the GL savers work now. I couldn't even preview them before. I wonder if that DRI thing made them work, no?

Regards,
Bamse

Mara · 05-24-2004, 03:46 PM

It's absolutely possible. DRI stays for Direct Rendering Infrastructure and allows to use hardware directly (in this case, graphic card). So it means DRI wasn't running correctly before you uncommented its section. Now you can probably run 'glxinfo' and see if its' output looks correctly (may be a bit cryptic, but if you don't find much about software rendering, there's a big chance you have acceleration fully running).

Bamse123 · 05-25-2004, 08:04 AM

Well the output says nothing to me because of those abbreviations. It (glxinfo) seems to understand that I have a Voodoo3 card.

Code:

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI 20021125 Voodoo3 x86/MMX

The reason I still bring this up is the "Atlantis" screensaver (http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/atlantis.gif). It has once again got unbearably slow but used to run smoothly. Sometimes it works, sometimes doesn't?

I'd paste parts of the output table here but I don't know how to copy text from Eterm.

EDIT:
I used gnome-terminal and succesfully copied the glxinfo table. I'm not going to paste the whole thing, just parts of it. I hope it will clear things.

Code:

   visual  x  bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer  ms  cav
 id dep cl sp sz l  ci b ro  r  g  b  a bf th cl  r  g  b  a ns b eat
----------------------------------------------------------------------
0x23 16 tc  0 16  0 r  .  .  5  6  5  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0 0 None
0x24 16 tc  0 16  0 r  .  .  5  6  5  0  0  0  8  0  0  0  0  0 0 Slow
0x25 16 tc  0 16  0 r  .  .  5  6  5  0  0  0  0 16 16 16  0  0 0 Slow
0x26 16 tc  0 16  0 r  .  .  5  6  5  0  0  0  8 16 16 16  0  0 0 Slow
0x27 16 tc  0 16  0 r  .  .  5  6  5  0  0 16  0  0  0  0  0  0 0 None
0x28 16 tc  0 16  0 r  .  .  5  6  5  0  0 16  8  0  0  0  0  0 0 Slow

Code:

0x2b 16 tc  0 16  0 r  y  .  5  6  5  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0 0 None
0x2c 16 tc  0 16  0 r  y  .  5  6  5  0  0  0  8  0  0  0  0  0 0 Slow
0x2d 16 tc  0 16  0 r  y  .  5  6  5  0  0  0  0 16 16 16  0  0 0 Slow
0x2e 16 tc  0 16  0 r  y  .  5  6  5  0  0  0  8 16 16 16  0  0 0 Slow
0x2f 16 tc  0 16  0 r  y  .  5  6  5  0  0 16  0  0  0  0  0  0 0 None
0x30 16 tc  0 16  0 r  y  .  5  6  5  0  0 16  8  0  0  0  0  0 0 Slow

Regards,
Bamse

Mara · 05-25-2004, 04:23 PM

Please run glxinfo once more and see if you have

Code:

direct rendering: Yes

It should be in 2nd line.
Could you check if the problem with screensaver running at different speeds may be connected with resolution of you're still running the same?

Bamse123 · 05-26-2004, 06:57 AM

Now I changed the settings a bit and it works perfectly. I just added 2 more sharks and made them more aggressive. Then added a bit more swimming speed for the whales.

I don't know why this happens. It must be the screensaver, not my machine.

glxinfo says direct rendering: yes. I already got the info I needed and all the other screensavers are using hardware without a doubt. All's well that ends well.

Regards,
Bamse

Mara · 05-26-2004, 04:33 PM

Good that it works and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Bamse123 · 05-27-2004, 03:19 PM

Hehe, yes it indeed was my birthday. Thanks. Guess who's my favourite moderator now.

hexadevil · 05-27-2004, 06:34 PM

Another thing you could have tried was to add your display driver to the opengl engine
#> opengl-update tdfx
This works for adding NVidia display drivers to the opengl engine also
#> opengl-update nvidia (note nvidia not nv)