Re: [Fenfire-dev] Yet another libvob API: LWJGL

[Tuukka Hastrup]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, Matti Katila wrote:
> I have been thinking the state of libvob. It's not adequate for the need
> of fenfire. Fenfire needs something that is fast and allows us to build
> non-cubic views. The speed of AWT api is not enough, e.g., with
> scaled images. OpenGL would be the right solution for speed.

In case there's appropriate hardware acceleration. Actually some OpenGL
can be ok even with software rendering.

> Currently there's not many who can work on native gl libvob. The code is
> portable but there's none who is willing to do the port. If a port is
> done to different environment will there be anyone who will be the
> maintainer?

Yes, it's a good idea to use a standard interface for OpenGL, if we can
find one suitable in the current situation.

> So, why not take a portable bindings to OpenGL - say LWJGL - and use that
> rather than make our own native bindings. I think it would make it easier
> for new comers and make fenfire more platform independent. We would like
> to have more users when we have something to provide after all.

Could we make some kind of a test program to try on different bindings to
see if they're any good?

> This would need some work of course. Many of the OpenGL things have been
> done natively for some reason. These include at least fonts, textures,
> drawing loop and coordinatesystems. One may wonder whether it would
> became too slow with Java. I don't see a reason after having seen java
> Quake and tribaltrouble.

You know that OpenGL and the bindings are made for games and Fenfire has
different requirements. I'm not sure - has the speed been an issue also
with the GLAPI? It could be that a lot of stuff is written in C++ simply
to put the line between Java and C++ in the same place as between Libvob
use and Libvob implementation.

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