This is not much Ogre related, but I think it's pretty cool that you can do this anyway: Running Ogre (and other hardware accelerated 3d applications) on top of the new composite stuff in Xorg. No need to wait for Vista for fancy desktop effects!
Click the image for full screenshot (~3.9MB).
Of course there's a little slow-down but not that much really - this is TwinView at 3520x1200, and the FPS was between 50-150 all the time. I'm impressed that all of Ogre's shader stuff etc. works well through all these layers, but that's probably a lot thanks to the nVidia beta driver, which is necessary to run this.
Steps:
1- Get Edgy Eft from ubuntu.com
2- follow the guides on ubuntuforums.org on how to setup Bery
3- Get ogre up and running
4- Become a smug linux user.
I suppose you are running AIGLX. I checked Xgl a while ago, it only provides indirect rendering for OpenGL clients and a small set of GL extensions (no shaders or fancy stuff).
I managed to get it installed this morning. With my initial impressions of Linux, I thought I'd had to compile 5 separate libraries by hand, and edit some configuration files.
But no, thanks to the Ubuntu website and wiki, I managed to get it up and running quite painlessly.
Well, except it is the 3rd time I installed Unbuntu today.
I've used Xgl previously but as you say it goes through Mesa, and on my machine I got a crash when running OpenGL applications. This is running using the new Xorg 7.1 which supports compositing natively (if you have the beta nvidia driver). IIRC you only need the new Xorg, the beta driver and Beryl (window manager).
I just loaded Fedora Core 6 on my work box, an HP DC5100 SFF, and was floored that Compiz works with the el cheapo onboard Intel 910GL video. All the effects work great using the default open source drivers.
Of course, not the kind of card you'd run Ogre on.
Huzzah. I got it working as well. It's almost across between OS X and what I envision Vista will be like. But I don't know how fast it's supposed to be but it's very very nippy on my 7900GT.
I ignored the Unbuntu wiki instructions this time and followed this wonderful guide. I believe there are a few other guides in that link for setting up Beryl on other distros as well for others who are newbish at this sort of thing.
betajaen wrote:Huzzah. I got it working as well. It's almost across between OS X and what I envision Vista will be like.
Yeah, but the cool thing is that this is open source, so you can make your own effects etc. Unfortunately, last time I checked the source code (compiz at that time) it wasn't well documented (not really at all). Hopefully this has changed/will change in the future.
I think both Apple and Microsoft are going to have APIs to allow you do cool 3D effects with your applications as well. For Apple its Core Animation and for Vista its the Windows Presentation Framework (WMF). I don't if lets you do snazzy 3D effects though.
I just tried to install it, using the guide link provided by Betajean, on my freshly installed Ubuntu Edgy.
It is very unstable on my PC, the cursor freezes, and the window borders are buggy (I'm using a Nvidia 7600GS so I hoped it would work well, but I'm a big Linux noob ). However, when it works, it looks quite impressive, with a lot of possible tweaks.
Both nvidia 9x drivers and beryl are beta software . Nevertheless, it is pretty stable on two systems I have tested it (edgy + gnome + 5200, opensuse + kde + 6600). I have less glitches if I run beryl before the window manager (in ~/.xinitrc).
I haven't tried out beryl in a few months now. I'm using ATI, and it didn't work as well for me. ATI just isn't up to the same level as nvidia for linux. Unfortunately for me, there was a lot of config file tweaking, and over time, with libraries updating and changing it all got very instable for me.
ATI free driver (a.k.a. 'radeon') should work OK for ATI r300-r400 cards. I got compiz working on a PowerBook (ATI 9600) with almost no effort on the lastest ubuntu release.
My suggestion is that if you can't get beryl/compiz working with the free driver (the AIGLX way), don't bother trying the propietary driver
Yeah, Beryl is really great stuff. I've been used it for a couple of months now in combination with Ubuntu, but now with the latest 7.04 Ubuntu release and its default support for AIGLX it runs really well.
Here's what it looks like on my PC, running my little Ogre3D test program:
(Click for larger image)
What's also great about Beryl (and Ubuntu in general) is that, unlike Windows Vista and its Aero Glass, it doesn't tax the computer much at all. My nearly three year old laptop with 512 MB RAM and Radeon Mobility 9200 (using the open source ATi drivers) runs Ubuntu 7.04 with Beryl quite smoothly. I wouldn't even dare to think installing Vista on that machine, it would be horrid.
I regret that I threw out my nVidia Fx5200 card along with my previous machine, in favor of a crappy ATI Radeon X1650 ...
I just can't get Beryl up and running on Ubuntu Farty Fest
ATI Linux driver developers: may you all burn in a-very-hot-place.
<edit> And take your ATI Windows devs with you as well..</edit>
/* Less noise. More signal. */ Ogitor Scenebuilder - powered by Ogre, presented by Qt, fueled by Passion. OgreAddons - the Ogre code suppository.
I've got a 7800GTX and Beryl is still glitchy at best. It frequently locks up when I run stuff in WINE.
To that end, my next PC (parts are in the mail!) will be using an on-board Intel X3000 gpu. Drivers have been open source for over a year and work very well, apparently. (Second hand reports, unfortunately.) Since I'm not trashing my old system, I'll be able to compare the 2 with like apps and see which is really better, which should be interesting.
Please note that I'm not knocking Beryl. They've done an amazing job with it already and I'm very much looking forward to the first truly stable release.
