There's A Direct3D 9.0 Gallium3D State Tracker

[phoronix]

Phoronix: There's A Direct3D 9.0 Gallium3D State Tracker

In a Phoronix Forums thread in regards to a 2010 Linux graphics driver wish-list, a developer has shared that he has started a Direct3D 9.0 state tracker for Windows! Yes, where it would actually be possible to accelerate Direct3D 9.0 while on Linux when using a Gallium3D hardware driver. This state tracker called "nine" is not merged to Mesa master, at least not yet, but can be found in the ~jsindholt/mesa repository. The state tracker's documentation describes this Direct3D 9.0 ST as providing: What is this? An implementation of the C++ API as seen in Direct3D 9.0c. It's meant to be an easy and reliable way for WINE to emulate D3D9 applications from Windows on free platforms (though I believe the WINE devs don't give two shits about it), and enable users to more easily port their Direct3D 9 applications. What is this not? A binary compatible, or COM compatible implementation of Direct3D...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzkwOQ

[Tinuva]

Pretty good news indeed

[Drago]

Yes, good indeed
First: How this is meant to be used. Only for WINE project?
Second: Is there any thoughts that such state tracker may be used in win guests in some virtual machine, to accelerate win 3D on say..linux host.
E.g. win DX9 st -> TSGI -> shortcut cross WM boundary to the host -> Linux Gallium HW driver -> Display.

[Louise]

Does it allow writing DX9 applications on Linux?

Will we see it on

http://www.x.org/wiki/GalliumStatus

?

[srg_13]

Yes, good indeed
First: How this is meant to be used. Only for WINE project?

It won't be used for the WINE project. I beleive that there are some technical issues, but also a big problem is that you can't get Gallium3D on most of the platforms Wine supports.

[Pfanne]

Does it allow writing DX9 applications on Linux?

Will we see it on

http://www.x.org/wiki/GalliumStatus

?

my guess is that, it will replace the part in wine that translates d3d calls into opengl calls.
this will be interesting since we lose quite a bit of performance by translating everything into opengl.
if i remember correctly bridgman said something about gallium achieving 60-70% of the fglrx performance.
and with wine3d performance often dropping to less then 50% compared to windows this might make d3d games faster with opensource drivers compared to fglrx.
that would be pretty awesome indeed

[thefirstm]

Does it allow writing DX9 applications on Linux?

Will we see it on

http://www.x.org/wiki/GalliumStatus

?

Just wondering, Why in the world would you want to write a DX9 application for Linux? Why not use OpenGL, which is much, much, much more widely supported?

[blackiwid]

It's meant to be an easy and reliable way for WINE to emulate D3D9 applications from Windows on free platforms (though I believe the WINE devs don't give two shits about it)

what does this sidekick to wine mean, are I am wrong or do they work to get d3d9 stuff running under free plattforms? What do I miss or what could he mean with it?

[Zhick]

what does this sidekick to wine mean, are I am wrong or do they work to get d3d9 stuff running under free plattforms? What do I miss or what could he mean with it?

wine-devs have stated that they're not interested in replacing their Direct3D->OpenGL translator with a native aproach using gallium, because that would only work on systems running Gallium3D drivers. The majority of their users run the nvidia blob though, so that's what they're targeting.

[droidhacker]

Wow, these guys are really having so hard of a time coming up with useful things to work on that they have to implement windoze uselessness?

How about implementing GPU-independent video decode acceleration or something else that somebody could actually make use of?