On Monday 09 December 2002 09:16, Ronald KA4INM Youvan wrote:
> > It will be a great thing when the Linux community finally conquers
> > games. That is the one thing that is keeping many people from dumping
> > Winders entirely. I still have it for Counter-Strike, Diablo II, and
> > Grant Theft Auto III.
>
> I am only a user, (and the only game I ever play is "rock and
> diamonds", my favorite), but from what I have read, the X system
> (X windows) was not designed for and is very poorly suited for gaming.
The origional X11 system was not optimized for blitting graphics, much less 3D
interactive first person shooters. The same is true for Windows however
(remember DOS games? remember why they were necessary?). Over time, both
environments have evolved.
> It was primarily designed as a graphic server-terminal system.
>
> The X system is not LINUX it runs over LINUX or any other OS, even
> over windows. It was designed by MIT to provide a graphic `shell
> account' service.
As a network protocol, X11 is rather heavy, but it does its origional job
quite well.
> I get better video file/VCD playback performance on a LINUX terminal
> than I do in the X system, but windows games work on API calls, which
> I don't think are a LINUX match. There is a $150 (or so) graphic system
> useable on LINIX that rocks for gaming, apparently it is built with a
> "like M$ winders API" system, I have read. LINUX graphic programs use
> a graphic server, not a text terminal, but work without any X system
> support. (virtual terminal #13, where 11 is my last text terminal and
> X system uses #12.
Traditional X11 hides video cards behind a standard (albeit aging) API that
maps to a network protocol. Extensions to this API are permitted however, and
are quite common. You can list the extensions you have loaded into your X11
server with:
$ xdpyinfo
At the moment, I'm running 33 extensions to X11 on my display here at the
office.
It is this extensibility that makes X11 so powerful. Over time, the XFree86
server has become more of a video card driver platform than merely a display
server for aging X11 traffic.
The Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) extension to X11 is a generic API
for native videocard access to 2d and 3d primitives. It is very similar to
Microsoft's DirectX in that it permits low-level access to hardware. For
higher-level 3d abstractions, OpenGL is the DirectX competitor.
Unfortunately, OpenGL does not address DirectPlay, DirectAudio, etc - the
other pieces that game developers rather enjoy having standardized in a
single environment.
There are other non-X11 graphic environments that use things like native
kernel framebuffers (extremely slow) or GGI with svgalib to talk to video
hardware, such methods are generally MUCH slower than XFree86 DRI at the
moment.
While the "X windows system" may be showing its age, it has evolved into
something far more capable than its origional designers intended.
-- - Ian C. Blenke <icblenke@nks.net>(This message bound by the following: http://www.nks.net/email_disclaimer.html)
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