OSNews

I love this project. Keep it coming!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_3D , lazy

From MESA 3D site:
"Mesa is an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification - a system for rendering interactive 3D graphics.

A variety of device drivers allows Mesa to be used in many different environments ranging from software emulation to complete hardware acceleration for modern GPUs."

1) Mesa is just another version of OpenGL but open source and multi platform ( its advantages ).
2) ( Authentic ) OpenGL belongs to and developed by Silicon Graphics ( & closed source? ).

I've used Mesa 3D OpenGL in BeOS ( software rendering - slow ). It is supposed to work with hardware acceleration too ( on Windows & Linux ) but I've never tried it.

"I've used Mesa 3D OpenGL in BeOS ( software rendering - slow )."

Yeah, they use the same insanely slow approach in Haiku. Basically useless.

I've tried the Linux x port with nvid accelearation, and it is very impressive.

MESA is an API that lets you use the full of OpenGL, with or without actual hardware to accelerate it. If there is hardware that supports a certain OpenGL feature (or whatever the right term is) that feature will hardware-accelerated, else it will be done in software. There's no insanely slow "Haiku approach", as you put it. You simply need to couple MESA with *actual 3D-capable drivers* to have feature-complete, hardware-accelerated 3D. MESA is a good start, but it's only part of the puzzle.

If have you have an actual desire for 3D in Haiku, as opposed to merely complaining about it, support a vendor that is friendly to open-source driver development (i.e. not nvidia) and help the Open Graphics Project.

Jonas is right with his comment.

Haiku is missing 3d drivers so can't use the hardware accelerated features of Mesa for the time being. This is because of the closed specs & missing info from graphic card manufacturers, Nvidia, ATI, etc.,

OpenGL software rendering will be slow no matter what OS is used. Mesa on BeOS/Haiku is only one part and the start of getting 3d onto this OS.

There is a basic *hardware* accelerated OpenGL driver for BeOS but works with older Geforce2 video cards and uses older Mesa. I used it in the past & worked well enough.

3d drivers for Haiku probably won't come around for 2+ years ( my guess ) though anything is possible and though I'd be surprised, it could happen even sooner. Remember, Linux didn't have hardware OpenGL in the beginning either. Takes time.

And back to Mesa. I'm happy to have one more OpenGL out there as it gives users freedom of choice ( SGI OpenGL or Mesa OpenGL ).

Yeah, they use the same insanely slow approach in Haiku. Basically useless.

That's a somewhat-uninformed statement.

Mesa in Haiku is used as a baseline renderer - but has a hardware-acceleration plug-in architecture.

It's only waiting for drivers now... please let us know when your favorite hardware vendor is ready to support Haiku and/or someone is willing to port an already-OSS driver.

And, the owners of the name "OpenGL" blessed the introduction of Mesa as an independent, free implementation of the OpenGL api. SGI's licensing conditions appear to be very generous, to say the least.

"Finally, to call something "Open" as part of the name and then to charge royalties for it is, at the very least, being somewhat deceptive in the choice of name in the first place."

Not really. OGL is a pretty complex beast. For a long time there were half baked implementations and SGI quite rightly disallowed a half baked implementation to be called OpenGL.

The Open in this context doesn't mean OpenSource or free, it means an Open (Ie documented and transparent) API. In the context of 1992, this was pretty open - the expression open has subsequently evolved, but still lacks any formal definition....

I don't think licensing was a great revenue stream for SGI, and the have contributed -

http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/

IMHO.

Cheers!