Re: Linux and 3D graphics hardware support

["Julio Maranhao" <julio_maranhao(at)hotmail.com>]

IDL uses OpenGL software to draw 3D graphs.
The problem is that hardware accelerated OpenGL is not a standard feature in
Linux systems.

That is the reason IDL for Linux comes with Mesa3D which is a software
implementation of OpenGL.

So, the answer to your question is: there is full 3D support in IDL/Linux,
but not the "hardware" one.

However NVIDIA and SGI made some drivers for linux to substitute Mesa libs.
It worked perfect for me
(Quake 3/OpenGL worked almost as fast as windows). But IDL crashed.

So don't expect hard acceleration in Linux in an easy way. Maybe someone was
lucky than me. Let's wait
some more responses.

Cheers.

Júlio Maranhão
Instituto de Estudos Avançados - IEAv / CTA
São José dos Campos - SP - Brasil


"Carsten Dominik" <dominik@astro.uva.nl> wrote in message
qzug0ga2eeq.fsf@antares.astro.uva.nl">news:qzug0ga2eeq.fsf@antares.astro.uva.nl...
>
> Hi,
>
> my Boss is buing me a new Linux PC to run IDL on.  One of the things I
> want to do is 3D graphics, and I know that IDL can support some hardware
> acceleration of 3D graphics.
>
> Where can I find information on what video cards can be be used for
> that?
>