Bounty proposal: OpenGL hardware support

Now, as Chris successfully managed to compile some small OpenGL demo applications to Risc OS, using software emulation (which results of course in quite slow framerate of those), I think it would be great that someone implements hardware Open GL support for Risc OS.

…just imagine all the games and applications that could be ported ! I think no modern OS can live without hardware graphics acceleration. It’s much more important than multi-CPU-core support.

I got no clue if there’s anybody out there who could pick up that work and how much time it would need. I would give a 100 € for the bounty to start.

I’ve uploaded a few simple OpenGL demos here. The bouncing ball one is the fastest.

AFAIK isn’t the problem here closed-source drivers? Most hardware manufacturers won’t give access to source for their 3D drivers for fear of competitive advantage etc (see problems castle had with Nvidia, and slow Beagleboard SGX linux driver dev/fixing/compatibility.

I think you’re right. Isn’t this the PowerVR stuff?

[Edit: There’s been a proposal to reverse engineer it (not just for RISC OS) but it doesn’t seem to be very active, going by that page.]

In any case, "All we need is for someone to sit down and construct a wrapper layer that will allow us to use the Linux binary blobs."

I’m gonna go ahead and bump this, now that Raspberry Pi support is feasible.

I would also make a donation … for RISC OS OpenGL ES support for the RaspPi. I think it is really important for RISC OS.

Have a look: http://hackaday.com/2012/07/06/opengl-on-the-raspi/

I would be willing to donate 100 € towards such a project.

I’d be willing to donate that, as well, and more, at least if it was done in such a way as making it easier to get OpenGL hardware support also for other RISC OS computers.

Has anyone looked at this http://fooishbar.org/tell-me-about/wayland-on-raspberry-pi/ and can any of this be used with Risc Os???
this too http://ppaalanen.blogspot.fi/2013/05/weston-on-raspberry-pi-accelerated.html,
http://www.collabora.com/services/case-studies/raspberrypi/
makes interesting reading.

By the way i wasn’t thinking of using weston more looking at the videocore API hooks they used so that maybe a driver can be written for Risc os in the same way that that Justin Fletcher used for select, or the way that it was done with viewfinder.

I’ve previously looked at the Open* stuff for RPi: OpenMAX is media codecs, OpenGL ES is 3D graphics, and OpenVG is vector graphics. In theory, the Open* userland libraries are freely licensed and could be ported to RISC OS. I’ve not looked into the gory details of what such a port would entail. That then provides an API to start poking into graphics stuff (and potentially port existing Open* apps). My limited understanding of this is that the Open* userland libraries simply create messages they fire at the VideoCore through a mailbox – this means the extra stuff in the Linux kernel is minimal. I’m not sure how DispManX mentioned in the Wayland/Weston work fits in, but I think it’s a compositor running at a lower level than Open*. The advantage of Open* is it’s potentially applicable to more platforms than RPi.

If you look at the Open* API quick references: OpenVG , OpenMAX , OpenGL ES there’s some nice APIs there – for example, imagine a VNC server that used the GPU to do compression of display images. I’m sure you could think of other neat applications…

I would consider donating. I would like to see full hardware acceleration for RISC OS and the Raspberry PI. Think of the possibilities. We would be able to run games like Quake, Marathon (AlephOne), and Duke 3D at much higher frame-rates. Hardware acceleration would also open possibilities for porting other software and games that require it.