1 2 Mesa / BeOS Information 3 4 5 6 * Introduction 7 8 Brian Paul added in Mesa 3.1 a driver for BeOS R4.5 operating system. 9 This driver implements a clone of the BGLView class. This class, 10 derived from BView, allows OpenGL rendering into any BeOS window. His 11 driver was updated in Mesa 4.1 and again in version 6.1 by Philippe 12 Houdoin, who's maintaining this driver since. 13 14 Any application which uses the BGLView should be able to use Mesa 15 instead of Be's OpenGL without changing any code. 16 17 Since Be's OpenGL implementation (as of R5) is basically just the 18 SGI sample implementation, it's pretty slow. You'll see that Mesa 19 is considerably faster. 20 21 22 * Source Code 23 24 The source code for the driver is in src/mesa/drivers/beos/ directory. 25 It's not 100% finished at this time but many GLUT-based demos are 26 working. No optimizations have been made at this time. 27 28 29 * Compiling 30 31 Since Mesa 6.x, it can be build under BeOS with both the R5 builtin gcc version 32 or more recent gcc versions available for BeOS, like this gcc version 2.95.3 for BeOS 33 you can find at http://www.bebits.com/app/2157. 34 Anyway, keep in mind that to take full advantage of Mesa x86 optimizations, you better 35 want to use gcc 2.95.3 or sooner versions... 36 37 To build Mesa-powered BeOS libGL.so version, open an Terminal window, 38 move to Mesa root folder and type this command: 39 40 $ make beos 41 42 Note that the "beos" argument is only needed the first time to setup build config. 43 Next times, typing "make" will be enough. 44 45 When it finishes the Mesa based libGL.so library for 46 BeOS will be in the lib/ directory, along libglut.so library. 47 Several demo/test programs should have been build too under progs/* folders. 48 If it stop when building one of the progs/* programs, you may want to ignore it 49 and force make to move on next target by adding the -k make option: 50 51 $ cd progs 52 $ make -k 53 54 To install it as Be's default libGL.so replacement, put it in your 55 /boot/home/config/lib/ directory. All your GL/GLUT apps will use 56 the Mesa based then. 57 58 By default, it build a non-debug version library. 59 The x86 (MMX, SSE and 3DNOW) optimizations are also supported for x86 target. 60 For PowerPC BeOS flavor, sorry, Mesa don't have ppc (Altivec) optimizations 61 yet. 62 63 To build a DEBUG version, type instead this : 64 65 $ DEBUG=1 make 66 67 68 * Example Programs 69 70 Look under progs/beos/ for some BGLView-based programs. 71 You should find under progs/samples and progs/redbook directories GLUT-based programs too. 72 They all should have been compiled along with the Mesa library. 73 74 75 * GLUT 76 77 A beta version of GLUT 3.7 port for BeOS, made by Jake Hamby, can be found at 78 http://anobject.com/jehamby/Code/Glut-3.7-x86.zip. 79 This is the version currently included in Mesa source code, and 80 build in lib/libglut.so. 81 82 A previous 3.5 version of this GLUT BeOS port used to be available at 83 http://home.beoscentral.com/jehamby/Glut-3.5-x86.zip. 84 85 They're special versions of GLUT for the BeOS platform. I don't 86 believe Mark Kilgard's normal GLUT distribution includes BeOS 87 support. 88 89 90 * Special Features 91 92 Mesa's implementation of the BGLView class has an extra member 93 function: CopySubBufferMESA(). It basically works like SwapBuffers() 94 but it only copies a sub region from the back buffer to the front 95 buffer. This is a useful optimization for some applications. 96 If you use this method in your code be sure that you check at runtime 97 that you're actually using Mesa (with glGetString) so you don't 98 cause a fatal error when running with Be's OpenGL. 99 100 101 * Work Left To Do 102 103 - BDirectWindow single buffering support is not implemented yet. 104 - Color index mode is not implemented yet. 105 - Reading pixels from the front buffer not implemented yet. 106 - There is also a BGLScreen class in BeOS for full-screen OpenGL rendering. 107 This should also be implemented for Mesa. 108 - Multiple renderers add-ons support, first step toward hardware acceleration 109 support. 110 111 * Other contributors to this BeOS port 112 113 Jake Hamby jhamby <at> anobject <dot> com 114 Marcin Konicki ahwayakchih <at> neoni <dot> net 115 Francois Revol revol <at> free <dot> fr 116 Nathan Whitehorn nathanw <at> uchicago <dot> edu 117 118 119 * Older BeOS Driver 120 121 Mesa 2.6 had an earlier BeOS driver. It was based on Mesa's Off-screen 122 rendering interface, not BGLView. If you're interested in the older 123 driver you should get Mesa 2.6. 124 125 126 * BeOS and Glide 127 128 Mesa 3.0 supported the 3Dfx/Glide library on Beos. Download Mesa 3.0 129 if interested. Ideally, the 3Dfx/Glide support should be updated to 130 work with the new Mesa 3.1 BGLView implementation. 131 132 The Glide library hasn't been updated for BeOS R4 and newer, to my knowledge, 133 as of February, 1999. 134 135 136 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 137
