[maemo-developers] Fremantle OpenGL wrapper?

[From: Kimmo Hämäläinen]

Hi,

On Wed, 2009-06-03 at 20:22 +0200, ext Qole wrote:
> Kimmo and Quim:
> 
> First of all: I did not start this thread as an attack on the Maemo
> team, nor was my comment, "that's disappointing," meant as an attack.
> It is a simple statement of fact; it is disappointing to me that Maemo
> 5 does not yet have the infrastructure in place to be able to run
> hardware-accelerated 3D graphics in OpenGL ES applications.

Running HW-accelerated games (using OpenGL ES2.0) is possible even today
by stopping the hildon-desktop (compositor) first.

I have a version of hildon-desktop + libmatchbox2 + libclutter that
allows switching off the compositor when your window is shown with a
special window property. This works, but when showing, e.g. the power
key menu (or system-modal dialog on top of your game), it takes about
two seconds to switch back to the compositing mode. I don't see how this
two-second delay could be reduced, and it could be that the delay will
stay about the same due to required reconfiguration in the X server and
3D drivers. However, this is already faster (and more convenient) than
stopping and restarting hildon-desktop, and it is also possible to task
away from your game to another application and switch back to it later.

> To me, this is a very important feature for any future device, and I
> was disappointed that this is not apparently a high priority within
> Maemo. 

Probably because the device is not designed as a gaming device, Nokia
has other devices that focus on gaming.

> I really want the next Maemo device to succeed, and one of the first
> things the gadget blogs and technophiles will want to see is the
> games. This means making Maemo 5 games friendly, and to me that means
> making it easy to port existing OpenGL games to Maemo 5.
> 
> I don't know the internal workings of Maemo, and perhaps you have a
> good strategy in place for games; I was thinking purely of porting
> existing Linux games that were written for OpenGL. So I began thinking
> of what needed to be in place for this porting to be done. 

I think the community developers can port 3D games for it, and they may
even run fast enough, but it's no PSP.

> I also admit I might have been influenced by the video of Quake3 on
> the Pandora. :-)
> 
> I also don't expect Maemo to port the games, I'm just concerned that
> the path will be too thorny to encourage others to do it.

When there's a will, there's a way :P

-Kimmo

> 
> Alan
> 
> 
>         2009/6/3 Kimmo Hämäläinen <kimmo.hamalainen at nokia.com>
>         
>                 I already said that I'm working on non-composited
>                 mode, didn't I?  I
>                 don't have to do this, but I'm kind person :)
>          
>         <snip>
>         
>         
>                 Well, the device is not out yet, so how far it could
>                 be?
> 
> 
> Thank you for working on it. 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 2:11 AM, Quim Gil <quim.gil at nokia.com> wrote:
>         Hi Qole,
>         
>         Hamalainen Kimmo (Nokia-D/Helsinki) wrote:
>         > On Wed, 2009-06-03 at 09:17 +0200, ext Qole wrote:
>         >> That's quite disappointing.
>         
>         
>         Well, more disappointing would be a hildon-desktop
>         inconsistent,
>         sluggish, buggy and with weird wrong interactions between GTK
>         +, Hildon,
>         Clutter, OpenGL ES, Xorg, OMAP3 kernel... and more brave
>         technologies
>         Kimmo and others are dealing with, putting them for the first
>         time in a
>         commercial product.
>         
>         What Kimmo is saying quite frankly (as he is a pure developer
>         as opposed
>         to people like me, more into words) is First Things First.
>         
>         He is also saying that there is plenty of work only the people
>         in the
>         Fremantle project can do, while there are many other things
>         others can
>         do thanks to all these technologies being open source.
>         
>         It makes sense that Nokia engineers like Kimmo concentrate
>         first on the
>         things that need to be in place in order to release a
>         successful product
>         with Maemo 5 inside.
>         
>         --
>         Quim Gil
>         open source advocate
>         Maemo Software @ Nokia
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> enthusiast, n. "One whose mind is wholly possessed and heated by what
> engages it; one who is influenced by a peculiar fervor of mind; an
> ardent and imaginative person."