The Iyonix desktop graphics acceleration package Geminus has been officially launched after last month’s initial beta release. ArtWorks, Oregano 2, MessengerPro, PDF and similar applications will benefit from Geminus’s ability to speed up graphics that are repeatedly drawn on the screen. It is understood there are early plans to make the acceleration available for the RiscPC and A9home platforms. Blueprints also include future support for digital DVI output and alleviating the need for physical modifications to be made to Iyonix video cards for them to work on RISC OS.
The extra resources of the graphics card on Iyonix machines have been underutilised for some time and it’s great to see that they’re now being capitalised upon.
However, in my opinion, the real news in this story is that the acceleration will be available across the whole range of RISC OS machines. I don’t know what Spellings have in mind for future features of this project, but I’d have thought caching of windows contents could pave the way for some exciting new OS features beyond just the speed increases that have already been achieved.
Transparencies, animated transitions and general WIMP eye candy spring to mind.
As I say, I really don’t know if this is a possibility. But it wouldn’t surprise me if something like this gets integrated into the OS at some point anyway and it looks like Spellings are in the right place to achieve it.