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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: plans for a free, OpenGL-based equivalent to Direct2D ?
From:       Benoit Jacob <jacob.benoit.1 () gmail ! com>
Date:       2010-12-14 8:01:05
Message-ID: AANLkTi=k1GDv-XhF90tL-t=62day99ziTpDZXfkJ=xiP () mail ! gmail ! com
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2010/12/14 Thiago Macieira <thiago@kde.org>:
> On Tuesday, 14 de December de 2010 07:27:47 Benoit Jacob wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I would like to know if the KDE or Qt community has plans for a free
>> OpenGL-based equivalent to Direct2D (see explanation below)? And if
>> there is a chance that I could get you interested in that. We at
>> Mozilla are very interested in that and are considering the
>> possibility of launching such a project:
>>
>> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Gecko:2DGraphicsThoughts
>>
>> It would be interesting for us to know your opinions on the subject.
>
> Have you looked into OpenVG? That's a 2D vector HW-accelerated API.

We target every OpenGL ES 2 device. I am not aware of an OpenVG
implementation that will run (and be well hardware-accelerated)
everywhere there is a OpenGL ES 2 implemetation?

>> First of all, by "2D", I mean "advanced 2D", with text etc. So please
>> don't close this thread by saying that 2D is a special case of 3D
>> hence OpenGL is all I need ;-)
>
> Yet it is... Qt has no interest in anything that is not OpenGL ES 2.0 (or
> compatible with it).

Neither has Mozilla :-) By OpenGL I really meant both OpenGL 2.1 and
OpenGL ES 2.0. We support cell phones.

>
>> Microsoft has an answer to this problem: Direct2D. If we want to cover
>> advanced 2D needs with hardware acceleration on non-Windows platforms,
>> we need something like Direct2D, but based on OpenGL. For example, if
>> you ever want to get a world-class fully Qt-based Web browser *with*
>> GPU-accelerated rendering, you'll need something like that. Ditto for
>> compex enough 2D games (a scene graph API can only be enough for
>> simple games), for Calligra...
>
> Can you explain how OpenGL ES 2.0 cannot achieve the same results?

OpenGL ES 2.0 totally can --- for the low-level layer that talks to
the GPU. That's what we want to use.

What I'm looking for is a higher-level library, that implements 2D
primitives on top of that. Just like Direct2D builds on top of
Direct3D 10.

> What's
> missing from the OpenGL API that Direct2D provides?

All the 2D stuff, e.g. look at all what QPainter provides that would
be lots of work to do with bare OpenGL.

> What are the HW-
> accelerated primitives we should get access to in order to get better
> performance?

OpenGL ES 2.0 has enough stuff (afaics).

Benoit

>
> --
> Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
>  Senior Product Manager - Nokia, Qt Development Frameworks
>      PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
>      E067 918B B660 DBD1 105C  966C 33F5 F005 6EF4 5358
>
 
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