Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing - Software News - News

Software News : Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing

Posted by TrevorDick on 2012/2/8 22:57:20 (1774 reads) News by the same author

Wellington, 8th February 2012

Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing

AmigaOS graphics guru, Hans de Ruiter, has issued another update to his RadeonHD graphics driver for the AmigaOS. Version 0.32, which makes its official debut on the AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5 CD especially created for AmigaONE X1000 "First Contact" system, delivers full 2D support for all Radeon graphics cards from the Radeon X1300 through to
the RadeonHD 4890.

When asked about the improvements in his new driver De Ruiter said, "I'm quite pleased with the updated driver. Apart from fixing a few bugs, the biggest change is the addition of homogeneous texture coordinate support to the compositing function. This allows 2D
warping and even perspective-correct texturing". In reply, A-EON Technology's Trevor Dickinson commented, "I am pleased to help support Hans' graphics driver work and look forward to the future release of hardware accelerated 3D graphics drivers which should benefit the AmigaONE X1000 all other AmigaOS 4 users".

To illustrate the improvements in his new driver De Ruiter created "Composite3DDemo", an interactive 3D "Boing Ball" demo remake that renders everything using hardware accelerated 2D graphics without the use of 3D drivers. Originally developed as a test application for the RadeonHD driver running on the AmigaONE X1000, it demonstrates what
can be done with AmigaOS 4.1's powerful compositing feature and a little creative thinking. In other good news De Ruiter revealed that he is releasing the source-code which he hope will help others to use these features, and encourage them to see what they can do. The "Composite3DDemo" is included on the AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5 CD and can be downloaded from the web link shown below. Please also check the link to the "YouTube" video.

About Hans de Ruiter & HDRLab: Hans de Ruiter is an electrical & electronic engineer and leading AmigaOS developer and Amiga enthusiast. His website - HDRLab - details various projects, many of which are AmigaOS related. The biggest of these is the RadeonHD driver
for AmigaOS, an ambitious project that aims to deliver modern graphics capabilities for the AmigaOS platform.

Composite 3D Demo
HDRLab website
Demo info and download

A-EON Technology

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Author	Thread
PEB	Published: 2012/2/9 0:54 Updated: 2012/2/9 0:54
Not too shy to talk Joined: 11/29/2006 From: Comments: 474	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing I'm really hoping COBRA will update WarpView to make use of this 2D warping for those of us with RadeonHD cards.

klapdeur	Published: 2012/2/9 12:10 Updated: 2012/2/9 12:10
Just popping in Joined: 10/27/2011 From: Comments: 98	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing Wow great demo, lets go for the real 3d accel. but this runs smooth on my Amigaone 500 with radeonHD. if only the games used it it would be great. keep it going Hans

ChrisH	Published: 2012/2/9 23:18 Updated: 2012/2/9 23:19
Home away from home Joined: 05/19/2007 From: England Comments: 3582	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @hans Very nice on the X1000 of course, but I was more interested to see if it would run on my Sam440 (with it's built-in measly 64MB Radeon gfx)... ... and surprisingly it almost runs perfectly when you have enough free video memory (which means disabling Compositing in Prefs/GUI & reducing Workbench's screenmode to 16-bit 800x600 in Prefs/ScreenMode). Only the shadow seems slightly buggy (although on a 1024x768 screen is looks almost perfect).

Hans	Published: 2012/2/10 0:57 Updated: 2012/2/10 0:57
Home away from home Joined: 01/26/2007 From: New Zealand Comments: 2797	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @ChrisH Quote: @hans Very nice on the X1000 of course, but I was more interested to see if it would run on my Sam440 (with it's built-in measly 64MB Radeon gfx)... Thanks. Quote: ... and surprisingly it almost runs perfectly when you have enough free video memory (which means disabling Compositing in Prefs/GUI & reducing Workbench's screenmode to 16-bit 800x600 in Prefs/ScreenMode). Only the shadow seems slightly buggy (although on a 1024x768 screen is looks almost perfect). The shadow problem with old Radeon cards is known. It's a driver bug, and a bug report has been sent. The demo uses a number of large textures, which is why you're running out of VRAM so quickly. Down-sampling the textures would save a lot VRAM at the expense of detail (which is only visible if you're using 1920x1080 or higher). Given that my graphics cards have plenty of VRAM, and it is a simple demo, I didn't bother trying to scale the texture and mesh sizes to the computer's resources. I leave that as an exercise for others (the code is available). Hans Even the walls are subdivided into many triangles. The per-vertex lighting would look very flat if it were just two triangles.

samo79	Published: 2012/2/10 9:13 Updated: 2012/2/10 9:13
Home away from home Joined: 12/02/2006 From: Italy, Perugia Comments: 3786	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @Hans I can confirm the shadow issue bug, i tried your demo on my Sam Flex 800 (Radeon 9250) + OS 4.1 Update 4 In general it runs quite well at 640480 and even at 800600 while with best resolutions it start to be a bit slow (but always usable) Just a though, in your opinion an accelerated version of Cairo can help with such type of demo ? Also our current version is a bit old (latest is 1.10.2) http://cairographics.org/ Maybe for AmigaOS 4.2, me want !

Hans	Published: 2012/2/10 20:18 Updated: 2012/2/10 20:18
Home away from home Joined: 01/26/2007 From: New Zealand Comments: 2797	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @samo79 Quote: Just a though, in your opinion an accelerated version of Cairo can help with such type of demo ? Also our current version is a bit old (latest is 1.10.2) I have never used Cairo, so I couldn't say how useful it would be for a demo like this. I'm also pretty sure that Cairo is already HW accelerated with old Radeon cards. Hans

sicky	Published: 2012/2/12 21:54 Updated: 2012/2/12 21:54
Not too shy to talk Joined: 12/03/2006 From: Essex, UK Comments: 418	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing Runs perfecly smooth here on my SAM460 with HD4650 GFX card, cheers. Shame this couldn't be used in 3D games until a 'real' 3D driver is available.

salass00	Published: 2012/2/13 17:00 Updated: 2012/2/13 17:00
Just can't stay away Joined: 11/30/2006 From: Finland Comments: 1890	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @Hans This is what the demo looks like on my µA1-C with OS4.1 update 4: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26599983/composite3ddemo.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26599983/composite3ddemo_2.png Looks like it is only using part of the textures for some reason.

Hans	Published: 2012/2/14 0:41 Updated: 2012/2/14 0:41
Home away from home Joined: 01/26/2007 From: New Zealand Comments: 2797	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @salass00 Which graphics card? It looks like the driver is ignoring the third texture coordinate. Hans

salass00	Published: 2012/2/14 3:45 Updated: 2012/2/14 3:45
Just can't stay away Joined: 11/30/2006 From: Finland Comments: 1890	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @Hans Radeon 7000.

Hans	Published: 2012/2/14 7:14 Updated: 2012/2/14 7:14
Home away from home Joined: 01/26/2007 From: New Zealand Comments: 2797	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @salass00 Thanks. It looks like I have to submit another bug report. One last thing, what happens when you disable perspective correct texturing (push 'T' once)? Hans

salass00	Published: 2012/2/14 9:46 Updated: 2012/2/14 9:46
Just can't stay away Joined: 11/30/2006 From: Finland Comments: 1890	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing After pressing 'T': http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26599983/composite3ddemo_3.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26599983/composite3ddemo_4.png

Hans	Published: 2012/2/15 0:48 Updated: 2012/2/15 0:48
Home away from home Joined: 01/26/2007 From: New Zealand Comments: 2797	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @salass00 Thanks. Those screenshots confirm what I suspected, the Radeon 7000 is ignoring the third element in texture coordinates. Hans

gregthecanuck	Published: 2012/2/15 23:47 Updated: 2012/2/15 23:47
Just popping in Joined: 12/05/2006 From: Vancouver, Canada Comments: 192	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @Hans Here's an evil thought for you. Would it be possible for Wazp3D (the software implementation) to somehow leverage the compositing engine?

Hans	Published: 2012/2/16 7:56 Updated: 2012/2/16 7:56
Home away from home Joined: 01/26/2007 From: New Zealand Comments: 2797	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing @gregthecanuck That is indeed an "evil thought," but only if I'm the one who has to implement it. I would say that it might be possible, but would be a challenge to implement. An efficient software alternative to the z-buffer would have to be developed. I mentioned Warnock's algorithm as a possible starting point on my website (span-buffers are not appropriate as we don't want to be cutting triangles up into 1-pixel thick slices). Lighting would also be an issue, as per-vertex colouring isn't possible with compositing (which is why my demo limited lighting to white light). Maybe some other talented developer could think up creative solutions to the challenges of making this happen. Hans

thellier	Published: 2012/3/21 13:52 Updated: 2012/3/21 13:52
Not too shy to talk Joined: 06/03/2011 From: Comments: 274	Re: Hardware Accelerated 3D using 2D Compositing >Wazp3D to somehow leverage the compositing engine? have a look to Aminet/Wazp3D Alain