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2D Accleration
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Northbrook, IL, USA
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Now I'm sorry to Misha and the rest of the crew for posting this thread in multiple forums... But here goes. Mac OS X WILL NOT have 2D accleration. Thanks to JB72 for posting the following...
Taken from xlr8yourmac:
Expert's Comments on 2D Quartz Acceleration in OS X: - Ken Dyke, former programmer with 3dfx and now with Apple
posted some comments in the forums here about graphics card (GPU) acceleration for OS X's Quartz API. Here's a snippet:
" Just a little FYI...
The Quartz/CoreGraphics imaging model is essentially the same as PDF/PostScript, and makes heavy use of Bezier curves. There are no GPUs out there that can rasterize PostScript/PDF paths, so the CPU is at the very least stuck with the burden of rasterizing an alpha mask that represents the anti-aliased shape of the path you are trying to draw. Given such an alpha mask you might be able to use it as a texture to then render a character glyph or whatever else you're trying to draw.
QuickDraw and GDI use a very simplistic imaging model (basically just simple lines, rectangles, polygons, etc.) with no AA coverage information required. All of these are fairly straightforward to accelerate in hardware, and this has been a "solved" hardware problem for many many years. Unfortunately, this means that the "state of the art" in 2D imaging has pretty much not changed since the 80's (unless you count Display Postscript).
Also, it's probably worth mentioning that the original Macintosh didn't ship with a GPU. It took *years* for any kind of 2D accelerator to show up that was capable of doing any part of QuickDraw, and in the meantime QuickDraw had to use the CPU for *everything*. I think people have just gotten "used" to how fast the older 2D rendering APIs can run, without realizing that people have been optimizing them (and the hardware accelerators for them) for nearly ten years.
With Quartz, a huge leap in 2D image quality was raised (for better or worse), and we've once again surpased what the current generation of graphics hardware is capable of dealing with.
Over time I suspect we'll see GPUs that do more of what Quartz needs, but right now they simply don't exist.
IMHO, I'd much rather have the current PDF/PostScript based 2D rendering API than yet another tired circa-1980's style rendering API, and the speed hit doesn't bother me in the least, even on my stock G3-400 (okay, so it has 768MB of
RAM...).
-Ken "
In most ways, not very good news. I wonder there isn't *something* more that will be doable with the GeForce 3?
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.OpenStep folder, don't leave Mac OS X booting without it. 
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Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2000
Status:
Offline
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If thats true... God save the Macintosh. Cause He is the only one who'll be able to...
Steve Jobs has finally done it...
...hate to say I told you so but... thats no prob cause I don't need to 
Heh.
Apple sucks.
IF that is all accurate...
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AIM: Cipher1387
ICQ: 48111606
mail: [email protected]
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Oct 1999
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