From:	"Chris Bilson" <chrisb AT ms12 DOT hinet DOT net>
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	The future of graphics programming
Date:	Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:09:41 +0800
Organization:	DCI HiNet
Lines:	50
Message-ID:	<6cvn02$6t5@netnews.hinet.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host:	h27.s11.ts30.hinet.net
To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway:	from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

If you are interested in developing graphics apps with allegro, or other
libraries...

Recently, my company was visited by some Intel people, and they talked with
us about what kinds of apps they'd like to see us developing over the next
few years. It seems that they are planning to have 450 Mhz P IIs as the base
system for most people by sometime next year.

Intel has some really nice tools to help in developing and optomizing
graphics apps, but there is definately a heavy Windows 95/98 slant there.
This is understandable considering the way most people set up there PCs.

Another interesting thing that I saw mentioned was that they want people to
start working on "software" rendering in 3D, not relying just on hardware
acceleration. Judging from the unbelievable differences I've seen in
different manufacturer's implementations of basic 3D graphics operations,
I'm all for this. The problem is that they want us doing something like
20,000 ~ 30,000 polygon's per frame with Phong shading (eventually),
procedural textures, video textures, etc., etc. This sounds like a very tall
order indeed in software only.

I guess what I'd really like to know is if anybody is using libraries like
Allegro to develop apps like this. I like Allegro alot, much better than
DirectX, or some of the other 3D APIs available. I find it easy to learn,
straightfoward to program, and I'm fairly impressed with it's power. It's
also increadibly easy to scale apps with an API like Allegro, as you pretty
much have total control over everything the API does.

The problem is that Allegro doesn't seem to be designed to do 20,000 ~
30,000 polygons per scene, with or without hardware acceleration. I concede
that of course with the right hardware(fast CPUs and mega
memory)/algorithm(totally optomized code) it would definately be possible to
do such things with Allegro, but I can't help but feel that Allegro was
designed with much humbler goals in mind.

Anyway, I guess I am just curious what others are thinking. I am still kind
of in a state of shock about what's going to be happening over the next few
years (and this isn't just vaporware - the guy brought demos!). If anybody
has anything interesting to share, please post, or e-mail me, whatever!

Long live DJGPP and Allegro!

Chris Bilson
chrisb AT NOSPAMms12 DOT hinet DOT net

--
Chris Bilson
chrisb AT NOSPAMms12 DOT hinet DOT net

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