[quake3] How far can SGI MIPS, Sun SPARC, and LinuxPPC go?

[vincent at cojot.name]

On Wed, 9 Apr 2008, monk at rq3.com wrote:

Hi Monk,

> This is mostly directed to those who have access to these platforms or
> know them well enough in relation to ioq3.  I'm guessing...
>
> tjw and Mattias Nissler = LinuxPPC
> Vincent = Solaris SPARC

 	Please take note that although my primary platform is SPARC i'm 
also doing some non-reg testing on Solaris/x86 (inside a VMWare guest). 
Right now, I don't have a monitor on my SPARC so my testing is limited to 
exported displays and ioq3 server non-reg testing.

> You guys have probably seen some of the recent discussion about improving
> ioq3 in terms of graphics and other features.  What are your thoughts?
> I'm assuming those listed platforms aren't going to have performance
> issues with things like UTF support and skeletal model support.  But maybe
> some issues with, say, the semi-recent framebuffer work that added bloom
> effects?

Yes, it's true we might have issues. ioq2 was fully playable on SPARC with 
XVR-600, XVR-1000, XVR-1200 and XVR-2500 graphics but ioq3 runs in a 
playable manner only on XVR-1200 and 2500 (I have an XVR-1000 but it's a 
little slow for everyone's taste: about 40fps in 640x480 windowed).
Solaris/x86 is not an issue because NVidia supports most of their cards 
through a downloadable driver so support for x86 is about as good as it is 
for Linux/x86.

> How much does ioq3/q3 chug along currently, 10 fps, 60 fps?  Can your
> hardware handle stuff that will make the game look more pretty, or are you
> about your limit for pushing pixels?

 	I'm guessing that since the most recent OpenGL on Solaris/Sparc is 
OpenGL1.5, lots of newer things/eye candy might not be supported. For a 
(little outdated) list of OpenGL extensions on SUN go to: 
http://www.sun.com/software/graphics/opengl/extensions/index.xml

> If the ioq3 devs decide to eventually set a cutoff for features as a
> legacy release, it'll probably be you blokes who can tell everyone what's
> practical to include as features and what won't work at all.

 	I'm biased but I admit that since there are some many Q3 projects 
out there with more eye-candy, I'd rather let them have the eye-candy and 
let ioq3 remain a stable/compatible/portable/secure Q3 version. In its 
time that's what ioq2 did and I thought that ioq3 would go the same way.

 	I'm not a game coder (not even a pro coder at all) but my limited 
experience with more recent engines is that they tend to use features that 
are only available on a limited subset of platforms.

 	When I ported TGE (The engine behind the Dynamix 'Tribes2' game, 
more recent that q3) to Solaris (Sparc and x86), it proved to be quite a 
challenge (endianness problems, 0 at 0 address problems, etc...) but when I 
managed to get the port finished, It ran very slow (10fps) on the best 
graphics SUN had at that time (XVR-1200, a $USD 4500 card).

Also, it exhibited some bad graphics artifacts because use of some recent 
OpenGL routines by the engine didn't have software fallback functions when 
the OpenGL driver didn't support these routines. Since I didn't feel like 
backporting some of Mesa software implementations into the Torque engine, 
my port never left the 'Proof of concept' status (It was a personal pet 
project anyway).

 	I'm not on the ioq3 voting review board so I don't get a chance to 
influence the course of the newer features into the engine but I'd rather 
let the other Q3 projects have the 'incompatible' features and come to 
ioq3 for security fixes/portability, etc...

My 2c,

-- 
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Vincent S. Cojot, Computer Engineering. STEP project. _.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~
Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Comite Micro-Informatique. _.,-*~'`^`'~*-,.
Linux Xview/OpenLook resources page _.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'
http://step.polymtl.ca/~coyote  _.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._ coyote at NOSPAM4cojot.name

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.       - Robert Frost