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Graphics Software

Creating a Black Hole With OpenGL 124

Posted by Hemos from the catchy-title dept.
There's a cool article on O'Reilly Net concerning using 3D graphic software to emulate black holes. Interesting article - with a lot of information about OpenGL and what you can do.
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Creating a Black Hole With OpenGL More

Creating a Black Hole With OpenGL

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  • Well crap, I gave up trying to convert the makefile for VC++, so anyone else got the cahonies to port it to Windows so I don't have to put a monitor on my Linux boxes?

    I run my Linux systems headless...

  • Black Hole EMULATOR? (Score:4)

    by Tassach ( 137772 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @09:07AM (#768060)
    Simulate, OK. Emulate? I think not.

    This brings up an interesting idea of applying the horsepower of video cards to other purposes. A modern 3D accellerator is basically a dedicated co-processor with it's own RAM that's optimized to do specific math tasks really, really fast.

    I wonder if there are any serious scientific applications that could use this. If you are running a Beowulf cluster, you could possibly improve the performance of the entire cluster very easily. Of course, it would require custom software, but then Beowulf already needs that anyway.


    "The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

  • I remember that! I don't remember the name though. Someone did it in PalmOS, but it wasn't as good as I remember.


    _______________
    you may quote me
  • Ya there is on but it need's a 5Ghz Cpu and 4Gb Ram... ;)
  • Well, you're right in that MS had OpenGL before any other consumer-level OS, but how many consumer-level OSs are there anyway? ;)
    As I recall, MS farted around for half a year or so before putting OpenGL out for Win95; mainly because they were trying to push DirectX (The really early versions; you know, the ones that make developers laugh at the mention of their version numbers).
    As for Mesa (not MesaGL), it works very well, thank you. The artifacts you're talking about aren't so much the fault of Mesa as of the Voodoo2, with its 16bit colour depth (although I find it perfectly usable; certainly not as bad as you make it out to be).

  • Well, I don't know if this was actually going to happen.

    Many science fiction stories have hypothesized about this eventually happening.

    My personal favorite (Dan Simmons is becoming a theme for me lately) is in the Hyperion/Endymion stories. The Autonomous Intelligences (the evolution of artificial life on our computers today) decide to create a 'doorway' through space and in their early experiments they 'screw up' (well, not really, but you have to read the story to fully understand) and instead of opening the 'Farcaster' they had hoped to create, they create a black hole that migrates into the Earth's core and slowly eats away the Earth. Of course, later in the story you find out that 'someone else' actually tricked the AI's (which were actually trying to destroy the Earth) and stole the Earth through the 'black hole' so that they could preserve it and bring it back, 'when humanity was ready'.

    OK, I know it's off-topic, but it's a cool story.
  • Here [mit.edu] is a black hole simulation at MIT in JAVA even!
  • Doesn't that hurt?
    Yeah...but it's such a GOOD hurt...

  • It's incorrect (Score:3)

    by SIGFPE ( 97527 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @10:07AM (#768067) Homepage
    It uses Newtonian gravity and the inverse square law with a lame hack to simulate an event horizon. This is no black hole simulator but a cheesy my-first-opengl program (no offence to the author intended - we all wrote our first OpenGL program). It'd be fun if it were a real black hole simulator - you get some interesting orbits in the presence of a black hole that can't be simulated using F=GMm/r^2. It's even more fun to render in the presence of a black hole bending light rays - there are some example images on the web and in Scientific American from some time in the last few years.

    Why is it a story on Slashdot?

    --
  • I dunno about "serious scientific applications", but you can run cellular automota such as Conway's Life awfully fast with an OpenGL card...

    http://www.geocities.com/simesgreen/gllife/ [geocities.com]

  • First: (ontopoic) There are two very different aspects to computational work: the modeling, and the visualization. OpenGL works for the visualization aspect.

    Second (offtopic) while perhaps pretty in it's own way, cannot tell us anything other then information along the mathematical model it is based on
    Theory has progressed to the point where Physicists tell Chemists that Quantum Mechanics will model their systems if we could only do the math. Note: even with very, very, very fast computers we are calculating small to medium size molecules, not the large macromolecules. Howver, ab initio quantum modeling of chemical systems will tell us everything knowable about the system. The state of the art of technology just doesn't allow those calculations to finish in a lifetime.
  • Or in other words, the API abstracts away a great deal of actual code, which takes us full circle to the original post - OpenGL *is* doing a lot of work (more than half of it, according to the post above). The fact that it only takes 2% of your application code is why OpenGL is so cool - the people who designed and implemented it have written upwards of 90% of your game for you.
  • The word "explore" in common vernacular, as well as the majority of definitions, pertains to physical activity, experimentation, traveling, etc. While "explore" can be used for intellectual-only activity, that's not how the word is typically understood.

    So, I don't consider Hawking an "explorer." And I agree, "inventor" is not the right word either. "Theoretician", "investigator", "scientist", "researcher", "thinker", "philosopher", "luminary" are all good ones, though.

    I don't mean to diminish what Hawking has done; I just don't think "explore" is the best word to describe his accomplishments.
    -----
    D. Fischer

  • Just a thought, perhaps you're confusing that article with a SciFi book. The novel Earth , By David Brin [amazon.com] describes exactly the scenario you're talking about.

    Apologies for the Amazon link, but Fatbrain doesn't have a plot summary or review of this book yet

  • Aperature grill? What kind of dot-pitch are we talking here?
  • this sounds dangerous to me... i will have to report this to the authorities... they will want to know what is going on over there. the last thing i want is to get sucked up in a black hole right after i buy a new house. that would really www.suck.com .

  • Re:It's incorrect (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    you mean this?!

    http://www.photon.at/~werner/bh/ [photon.at]

  • Creating a Black Hole with ASCII (Score:3)

    by seanmeister ( 156224 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @11:33AM (#768076)


    Sean

  • guess why it is called *Open* GL...
  • The observation can't possibly be dated, as both websites may still be observed to be in contradiction.

    I'm only pointing out irony here. Gimme a break. I mean, it's nice to know that there are /. readers who understand an follow OpenGL issues, but this isn't one. =D

  • Of course, we must remember that openGL black holes are entirely theoretical. Though, I have witnessed the gullibility of those who believe they have seen a computer-generated black hole.

    My friend was using his computer when all light focused as a line on the center of the screen, eventually folding into a small dot, eventually disappearing.. Little did he know the monitor's power supply failed causing an event not unlike turning off a television.

    Of course us geeks know there's no such thing as emulating a black hole, right? WRONG!

    The developers of early operating systems developed the theory that there was a place electrons would be able to go such that they no longer existed in their already near-nothing (comparative to our understanding size. This theory was in fact developed to the point that it became reality!

    The /dev/null theory claims that each electron entering the theoretical "file" aren't destroyed, but in fact never exited .. It's kind of like dividing by Zero!

    Black holes, on the other hand, as I've been lead to understand, focus all of the consumed matter/energy to one geometrical point which possibly even expands at another end in another dimension. Kinda like how my toilet water spins clockwise in the Northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere of the Earth.

    Of course, this wierdness could be attributed to the fact that the people in the Southern hemisphere walk at angles pointed downward! Though, I'm sure to have physicists complain to me that up is relative, well relative to me, those people are upside-down, so please don't use that defense!

    anyways, I hope i have proved my point. if not, don't expect much .. it's not as if they cloned Einstein.


  • That's right. Don't take any guff from these fucking swine.

    These rabid Linux enthusiasts who responded to your posts are never going to be able to see the forest for the trees. The postulate "Linux good && Windows bad" dominates every thought they conceive with regards to computing, and they will never be able to expand beyond it and see that if you're happy programming under DirectX, then more power to you.

    It's sort of like the missionaries of old. They thought they were "helping" the natives of the cultures they visited, because they were too narrow-minded to conceive that anyone could be happy without living as people in their own culture lived.

  • I wonder if there are any serious scientific applications that could use this

    I don't know about scientific applications, but I've always wanted to see someone build a card to accelerate physics in 3D games the same way graphics are accelerated. A lot of cards do geometry acceleration... why not put some of the most processor intensive physics calculation on the card too?

    I'm too naive about this sort of thing to know exactly which calculations would benefit, but I bet you could make one hell of a billiards game or flight simulator with this kind of a card as your friend...

    Anybody know of someone doing this kind of thing?
  • hehehe, always good to see a truly funny message heheh it always gets me
  • I must say that these are great....
  • Emulating a blak hole requires you just download the right ROM dump.
    ----
  • Trust me. Don't do it. I'm not even kidding.

  • What nerve! (Score:3)

    by NuclearArchaeologist ( 104596 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @04:49PM (#768086)
    I'm not going to settle for anything less than gammas bursting from my imploding monitor! The nerve of some people to give away substandard software. I'll bet they even think this OpenGL, Mesa thingy is educational.

    Maw! Get me that NT CD, I want implosions now, damnit.

    cperciva, have you been giving yourself mod points?

  • I was comparing D3D and OpenGL obviously.

    Or not so obviously ;-)

  • Re:Cool, s/accelerators/accelerated 3D cards (Score:3)

    by DagSverre ( 223837 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @09:12AM (#768088) Homepage
    Basically, you create particle accelerators to prove that the nature actually acts the way our mathematical models presume it does...running simulations on a 3D card really doesn't prove anything as it will always work after our mathematical models...after all humans program it!

    We have no way of knowing for absolutely sure that black holdes works the way the 3D cards say...I once read that you could travel through dimensions/time through a black hole. I'm not saying you can, I'm saying thatyou certainly can't prove it (or the opposite) by programming in OpenGL.
  • (Totally inappropriate response, but I have to go for it. You set me up.) v

    "Your girlfriend creates a black hole when she sucks? Doesn't that hurt?"

  • While the concept of a controllable black hole gives all kinds of options (hazardous waste disposal, new option instead of cremation), the problem I would have with it is that I have an intrinsic distrust of trying to create something this potentially hazardous anywhere near Earth. I think I can safely speak for all of humanity when I say I would rather not be around if they messed up.

    On the bonus side, it would give the AD&D geeks an actual 'Sphere of Annihilation'.

    Kierthos
  • You're welcome!
  • Er ... most developers use the terms Direct3D and DirectX interchangeably. You seem to imply that Direct3D is something different to DirectX.

    But would it make it clearer if I said, Direct3D doesn't have 3D textures and OpenGL does?

    But now I'm confused ;)

  • Alright, alright! Stop being so nasty, geeze!

    I'm sorry I put your personal pictures on the web for everyone to see!

    There. Will you ever forgive me? Please?

  • A much more accurate simulation (Score:3)

    by mike260 ( 224212 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @09:14AM (#768094)
    // Clear the background to black to simulate the emptiness of space
    glClearColor( 0, 0, 0, 0 );
    glClear( GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT );

    // This accurately models the black-hole not emitting any light
    glColor3f( 0, 0, 0 );

    // Draws the boundary of the black hole
    glutSolidSphere( 1, 10, 10 );
  • Isn't that what happens when the fan on your shiny brand new BigAss(tm) brand graphics chip goes out?

    --

  • Touche my uneducated friend. :) DirectX games run perfectly on my old Pentium 166mhz with 32MB of RAM.

    And they fly on my current system (Athlon, 256MB of RAM).

    OpenGL on the P166? Well... if you like slideshows. ;)

    "Open standard" doesn't necessarily mean "better".

  • I thought Daikatana used Glide.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • However, I'll take the ease-of-use of OpenGL over D3D anyday. Carmack does too, among a few developers. I wonder why? ;-)

    Nobody really chooses OpenGL over D3D for 'ease-of-use' anymore. This might have been true during the days of DirectX 3. Ever since DX5 (and especially 6 & 7), D3D is as easy to use as OpenGL.

    Of course, I'm not really advocating D3D use here. I'm a graphics programmer myself and choose OpenGL, but for portability reasons.

    If the DX APIs were cross platform, I'd use them.

    Its really nice to have integrated sound/3D and 2D framebuffer APIs...As is now, I tend to use SDL (which more or less mimics a lot of DirectX functionality, but has a cross-platform core and supports OpenGL)

  • OMG, you know... I had a DOS version of this game, and it runs on CGA, with a few more options here and there.
    ---
    dd if=/dev/random of=~/.ssh/authorized_keys bs=1 count=1024
  • Of course you mean:

    glColor3f( 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 );

    and not

    glColor3f( 0, 0, 0 );

    After all the 'f' does stand for float... (he he he ..just being a nit picker - it's still a humerous post)
  • In order to make a black hole emulator, it would hvae to suck profusely.

    (Yes, that's a horrible joke.)
    ----
  • It would be an awesome power to have, and the responsibility would be even more so. I think we're quite far away from actually creating one however, and hopefully when we do have the technology and knowhow to actually create one, we will also have the sense to keep it far away from earth, or not create one at all.
  • Wacky adventures?

    Don't you mean INCREDIBLY boring adventures?

    About the only GOOD holodeck episodes are those involving Regs Barclay - he's amusing with all his psychological problems :).

    "Those people on the holodeck are my friends! I'm not crazy! Really!"
  • I could care less about karma or whoring a +1. If you would like me to take your comments more seriously, post as something other than an Anonymous Coward.
  • "Any one how reads openGL.org knows that there are about a zillion particle demos out there"

    You are absolutly right, however for those of us who don't...

    Personally, I found this article cool for two reasons:

    I never knew how easy it was to code stuff like this

    To paraphrase Homer Simpson: Mmmmm Sparkles!

    Capt. Ron

  • ...and I'm assuming you meant:

    glColor3f(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);

    and not

    glColor3f(0.0, 0.0, 0.0);

    After all, the 'f' does stand for float, NOT double...

    Holy anal retentiveness Batman!
  • Your observation is a little bit dated, things have changes. Brian has a good relationship with SGI and has AFAIK was given the conformance tests to run a long time ago under a special agreement to ensure Mesa is high quality.

    Also the license for OpenGL has changed recently, the SI is now Open Source and you can pretty much use the OpenGL trademark if it runs of a free operating system and passes the appropriate tests. The conformance tests are also more freely available as announced recently.

    The big issue for OpenGL is quality, you can't call any old thing OpenGL. It requires testing, and everyone who has ever shipped OpenGL has been required under license to pass those tests. Basing a driver on Mesa is not sufficient, you must test the driver implementation to be allowed to call it OpenGL. So saying a particular implementation on a specific set of hardware is OpenGL has a very specific meaning. If this wasn't the case OpenGL would be of much less value as a standard.

  • Actually, the real value is not so much in the stories themselves. Almost invariably, when someone posts a stupid story, somebody who knows what they're talking about comes up and corrects them. It's neat actually.

    In fact, your post made me realize that my graphics knowledge from 5-6 years ago is horribly out of date, and that I need to read up on it a lot before I say anything about it again. :-)

  • Time to bring out some of my fun sayings about cars.

    Cars are like women, the more money you have the faster they are the car does not complain at night.

    Me talking to a mechanic about 4 years ago when I was just getting into cars,

    Me: So.. how fast can you make it?
    Mechanic: Well.. how much money do you have?

    Me:Seriously?? :-P

    hehe, those basically apply to computers to kind of proves computers are a guy thing ;)

    I cant tell you the countless dollars ive spent on my car.

    It starts out with some simple thing like I want a supercharger charger installed, the mechanic is like well to really get full use from it you need a new x and a new y and a new z really wouldn thurt

    So the dollars signs roll and roll and finally I have enough to have this work done :-P

    Kind of reminds me when I upgraded my Video card, really I needed a new processor and more ram to get any use out of the darn thing :-P

    But.. after about several thousand dollars and a little luck I can run with just about anything you see on the road, save the occasional Turbo 911.. which escapes me by about 3/10 of a second on the qm :-p

    Anyways you see my point, you have the money it will go faster

    Jeremy
  • Great, now all we need are pocket fusion-generators and a better display technology and every datacenter can have its own universe!
  • I don't mean to be all negative, it's a nice demo an all, but there are more OpenGL particle-systems demos out there than there are particles in this one.
  • This is great news.

    We can start replacing those expensive particle acclerators with simulations done on accelerated 3D graphics cards.

    No longer will the people on Long Island have to worry about Brookhaven creating universe destroying black holes, instead, we'll jsut run simulations on computers.
  • nice.

    do you apply the i-dont-own-it-so-i-cant-complain-about-it-philosop hy to everything in life?

    Slashdot is not your average geek site that someone updates now and then on her/his spare time. it is a commercial site whit a staff of full time employees. that makes it their job the get good storys on to the site, and it is their job to know what they are talking about.

    And really Im not complaining about the site, the site is great, I just think they should do some more home work before posting things like this.

    I don't know but in the future it might be a good idea to set up reference gropes, to ask for advice since Slashdot storys some times in all fairness tend to be difficult to get right.
  • Is there a DirectX version? I'd prefer to work in that API.
  • I was fiddling with my computer once and forgot to do something, and blew up my Maxigamer Phoenix card. Does that count? :o)

  • > Also a DX engine is all but guarretted to run on all windows systems
    I do agree DX is good, but you don't do much porting do you? ;-)

    > This being importent becaues of the fact that 90% of gamers are windows users

    And this number comes from where?

    You're forgetting Mac gamers and Linux gamers. Of course the "bread and butter" comes from Windows, but by writing platform dependent code, you're not leveraging any of the advantages of portable code.

    > So all newer features offered on Nvidia board will be made available to DX developer first
    All the new features have been available under OpenGL as exentions, unless I'm missing something? Nvidia can't go offering new features until the next revision of DX ships. With OpenGL they can add new extensions, update their driver, and boom, everyone is in business.

    > XBOX uses d3d.
    There are OpenGL bindings too last I heard. Carmack is on the board of advisors for X-Box, so I'm pretty sure he'd make it a priority for OpenGL support.

    Cheers

  • This is lame (Score:5)

    by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @08:40AM (#768117) Homepage
    Come on, this is just a classical gravitational model piped into an OpenGL model. There are no visual distortion caused by the black hole, and no relativistic physics anywhere.

    If you're going to call it a black hole simulation, do it right. Otherwise, call it a solar system simulation.
  • Microsoft put OpenGL on systems in 1996, well before 3d accelerators became popular, and way before Linux was even heard outside of suspendered bearded road-apple sessions. Sure, it was a software emulation driver, but at least it was something. I've seen the MesaGL drivers for the Voodoo 2 on Linux, and Quake 2 looks like crap! There's color abberations all over the place, inconsistent performance, etc. Just imagine what it would be like on the Linux equivalent of 3DSMAX!

    I'll have to give Microsoft credit for standardizing OpenGL on Windows. Because it sure isn't anywhere near organized on Linux!

  • Let's see, I think even my watch can run OpenGL/MesaGL code. Come on, if you want to use DickX, you have to use Microsoft Windows. There's no standard to it other than Microsoft's agenda. OpenGL ran fine on Win32, but no, MS couldn't have someone else succeeding on their platform. It's the same with Netscape. MS wants to dominate everything that runs on MS and will go to all ends to kill competition. OpenGL/MesaGL runs on more platforms than I can spit at - it's as close to a Standard as you'll come in 3D development. DirectX is just another Microsoft trap. Once you've developed in that, you'll be trapped in Microsoft and porting to another platform is sheer hell. IE - Lokisoft expended much effort porting Heavy Gear from DickX to OpenGL. Now it just needs to be tweaked a little to run on any of a number of platforms, including Microsoft.

    But then, you know all this and are just stoking the flames, right?

    -- I think, therefore I...Uhm, what was I saying?
  • It's kinda like driving a Ferrari in a school zone when the highway is right over there...

    Not really. I don't know if it's due to a lack of X window optimization or what, but OpenGL demos I create in Linux seem to run far slower than the same ones I create in Windows 2000. And I'm not using some exotic video card (Voodoo 3).

    Isn't C++ a little bit of an overkill just for a measly text program?

    Not if I'm working with a lot of objects. Granted, I could use structs, but I like to use new technology when I can help it. For a quick text program, shelling out some lines in gcc is adequate.

    if in the future you ever want to introduce portability into your applications, using DirectX is like shooting yourself in the foot...

    Not really. A lot of the commands are functionally the same, and it doesn't take much to run a "replace" in the text editor of your choice. OpenGL may have slightly more portability, but you pay for it in performance. Besides, if you're porting an application there will always be portability issues. You can't just port an OpenGL title from one platform to another and not expect to do a considerable amount of optimisation (as Carmack saw with Quake 3).

  • Chris Halsall is a specialist at automated information gathering and presentation systems.

    ...with way too much time on his hands.

    Ok, but I give the guy serious credit..this is really cool, fun stuff with OpenGL is always good to see.

  • Black Holes on the desktop... (Score:5)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @08:44AM (#768122) Homepage Journal
    I already have a black hole simulator on my desktop. It's called a computer, defined as a black hole in the desktop which continually sucks money out of my wallet, at the speed of light, and is never seen again. I assume done there is a mass of pennies so dense that very few practical value rays fail to escape. Such is a hobby...

    The logical path for this is to: Laptop, palm and then some pocket computer which could directly interface to the wallet and shorten the path the money has to move.
  • Hey, in the article it says it might be bossible to make a black hole by making a hydrogen bomb using all the water on earth... LET'S DO IT!!!

  • It's sort of like the missionaries of old. They thought they were "helping" the natives of the cultures they visited, because they were too narrow-minded to conceive that anyone could be happy without living as people in their own culture lived.

    It's not that they can't be happier in their own culture, but that they can be happier living life differently. Sometimes it's just that people are better off living life differently. It's the same thing with Linux Advocacy. The most advocates (not trolls) think that Windows users would be happier better off in the long run if they weren't using Windows. This may or may not be true, but it is not discounting that Windows is getting the job done, and the users may actually be happy with the current system.
    treke

  • Greg Egan [netspace.net.au] has a Java applet simulating what happens to light around a black hole [netspace.net.au] on his homepage. It's meant as a bit of a companion to his short story The Planck Dive [netspace.net.au] , which is available in his short story collection Luminous, the Feb98 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, and no doubt a few other places as well.

    I'm trying not to rant too much about someone's work that I enjoy, but if i can make one recommendation.. everyone should go read Egan's Diaspora.

  • More fun like that at the OpenGL Challenge [dhs.org].
    Most entries are GLUT or near enough to compile on Linux, Mac etc. Lots of cool ideas.
  • If you like Hawking, and are a proponent of digital music, you owe it to yourself to check out the 3 MP3's that are currently available at MC Hawking [mchawking.com]:

    While there are dozens of other sites on the web devoted
    to Stephen Hawking's scientific achievements, I am unaware of a single
    site (aside from this one) devoted to his career as a lyrical terrorist.

  • Nvidia are in charge of OpenGL on X-Box. Even without the portability, I'd still choose OpenGL it works alot better (faster, depending on the code but usually faster) and it is alot easier to code for. OpenGL is like a sports car, Direct 3D is like a bomb. In a few years, ms may force the market into using D3D but OGL is better (IMHO).
  • Correct. We assume that it will work based on mathematical models, but we cannot program the computer to do anything but follow those same mathematical models. Now if the universe (and black holes in particular) actual follow those models, that's great. But a pure computer model will not be able to tell us that. All it will be able to tell us is that the model we programmed worked.

    For things like aerodynamics, where we are conversant with the formulae and models involved, computer simulations work, and they work very well. Similarly, based on our knowledge of materials, friction, etc. we can model pretty much any machine in a good CAD program (I recommened Pro-Engineer). But the computer modeling of a black hole, while perhaps pretty in it's own way, cannot tell us anything other then information along the mathematical model it is based on.

    Kierthos
  • Using classical physics to simulate a black hole is useless, as all interesting effects around black holes are described using general theory of relativity. The correct way to do this would be using linear approximation of general relativity and using relativistic ray-tracer. I remember having seen that kind of simulations somewhere and looked nothing like this uncool 18th physics simulation combined with OpenGL effects.

    nothing is relative
  • >the alternative to openGL SMASH
    What's that ? I can't find any reference...

  • why this story? (Score:5)

    by [verse]Eskil ( 118352 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @09:20AM (#768132)
    Why do Slashdot keep posting stuff like this on computer graphics? Any one how reads openGL.org knows that there are about a zillion particle demos out there.

    Some time ago there was a story about AGP 8X and who ever wrote the story asked why we would need it since we already got firewire.... Don't even know were to start complaining about that one.

    And its not like there hasn't been any graphics storys to cover. The advancements in hardware accelerated programmable shades has fundamentally changed the way people think of graphics hardware, softimageXSI for Linux, Linux on onyx3, the alternative to openGL SMASH, rendering whit natural light, new 3D displays....the list goes on and on.

    I think that slashdot is one of the greatest sites on the net but every time i read some thing regarding my area of expertise that is wrong I start to question the credibility of slashdot on areas i don't know much about.

    Please, if you what to cover graphics please do so, but get some one who works whit graphics to do it. A "ask slashdot" on how to improve the site may also be a good idea.

    Sorry about the rant, i just could not get my fingers of the keyboard.
  • If you are running mesaGL in linux and you are in a window, it will not be hardware accelerated, probably. Unless they recently fixed that. There is some way to get it to run in full screen mode, which would be hardware accellerated. I know because I have seen a friend of mine do it, but he won't tell me how.

  • You can prove anything on the HoloDecks computer simulations. Then you just tell the computer to do it for real and it works.

    You can also go on all kinds of wacky adventures when the writers run out of ideas

  • A www.goatse.cx link is Informative??? Who the hell is moderating this? What are they smoking? And can I have some?

    ----
    Dave
    MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
  • Per the article I wrote the code necessary to do this. I stepped away to get a Dew, and the next thing I know my 9 month old daughter got sucked into my monitor. I thought they meant simulator, but evidently it really is an emulator. I had to throw the circuit breakers because I couldn't get close enough to shut off the damn computer.

    I wonder if I can sue O'Reilly for this. Hell, if that stupid woman got over a million bucks from McDonalds for spilling hot coffee on herself, I should be able to get something, right?

    Hmmm, I wonder if this is where Jimmy Hoffa disappeared to? Does anyone know if the American mafia has been experimenting with black hole emulation?

  • Re:Here is an early demo (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I just have to say thank you, Enoch Root. By getting a goatse.cx link modded up as informative, you have destroyed my last scraps of faith in humanity. I can't decide whether to go on a multi-state murder and robbery spree, or just shoot myself.
  • I guess you'll never know... :)
  • > Is there a DirectX version?

    Why? Doesn't the OpenGL version work?

    Lets end this now before it erupts into a lame flamefest about "OpenGL roxs.. Direct3D blows" ... remember, BOTH API's are functionally equivalent.

    > I'd prefer to work in that API.

    Which one? DirectX or D3D ? Yeah, DirectX is ok.

    However, I'll take the ease-of-use of OpenGL over D3D anyday. Carmack does too, among a few developers. I wonder why? ;-)

    A nice clean, orthogonal, and portable rendering API, what more do you want?

    Cheers
  • Having done some development with HL mods, I agree with your statement that a very small percentage of the source code consists of 3D-API related things (probably even less than 2-5%). However, while the percentage of the source code is small, the percentage of the processor load is very high. The geometry transform and lighting (handled by the API, in systems without coprocessors for that) make up about half the CPU load, all of it doing simple and redundant geometry transformations.


    ------------------
  • Actually, I'm more of a Devil's Advocate. I like to go into areas of interest with an open mind. I do the same in Microsoft forums.

    I just don't think there should be "one standard". Open source Linux/FreeBSD has its uses and advocates, but it's not perfect for everything. I like to get people to react - and while reacting, to think.

  • I heard it really sucks

  • Instant Blackhole Solution: (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just turn off your monitor.
  • I still consider my SparcIPX a nice fast compuer 8)

    Games? Who's got time for games when there's code to write? ;)
  • You mean Star Control? :) Actually, the original game was Space War on the PDP-11 (I think, I know it was old and had a vector screen). Star Control was just my favorite implementation.
  • But I solely writing 3D apps on the Windows side. I'm serious. I rarely use Linux (except for writing quick C++ text programs).
  • Do it! Use Java3D [sun.com], it even gets hardware-accelerated on some platforms...
  • My computer simulates a black hole well enough by sucking all my money in to it, thank you very much.
    That or my girlfriend. Do you know how expensive movies are nowadays?

    ---
  • It sorely tempts me to sit down and finally code a a java version of some old, old game I once played where players launched missiles among gravitational bodies of varying size and density. Do it in 3D and toss in some black holes and the occasional supernova and it just might be worth the time. ;)

  • Emulating black holes... (Score:3)

    by neutron42 ( 91434 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @08:52AM (#768155)
    ...I didn't think OpenGL sucked _that_ much.
  • This is just another example of Linux playing catch-up with Microsoft. Microsoft already sucks.

    *rimshot*

    -lb

  • An amusing note regarding Mesa... (Score:3)

    by phlake ( 107104 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @08:54AM (#768158) Homepage
    An amusing note regarding Mesa and the use of the license trademark "OpenGL": Mesa does not claim to be an implementation of OpenGL (and it can't, not without Brian Paul paying much money to claim this). The Mesa website specifically requests that Mesa 3D NOT be referred to as "Mesa OpenGL". Great. That's cool. They provide an excellent "workalike". Mesa is extremely useful.

    The humor comes from noting that opengl.org [opengl.org], the official OpenGL website, refers to the Mesa 3D library as "Mesa OpenGL". Which, according to their own rules, they're not supposed to do...

  • Microsoft Reply... (Score:3)

    by Electric Angst ( 138229 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @08:56AM (#768159)
    Upon hearing this news at Redmond, a Microsoft PR person had this to say...

    "It's good to hear that technology had gone so far forward, but we should remind you that Mircrosoft is still at the head of innovation. So OpenGL can simulate a black hole, DirectX has sucked that hard for quite some time."

    (Obligitory, I know.)
    --

  • What about Mandelbrot? (Score:3)

    by FascDot Killed My Pr ( 24021 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @09:26AM (#768160)
    I would argue that Hawking IS an explorer--more so than a non-theoretician. If you believe (as I do) that the laws of physics (and especially of mathematics) are REAL in the platonic, idealistic sense then what Hawking does is exploration. He's certainly not an inventor...
    --
    Linux MAPI Server!
    http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/

  • OpenGL is a red herring here (Score:3)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Tuesday September 19, 2000 @09:35AM (#768165)
    3D APIs get talked about as if they're doing all the work. OpenGL and Direct3D are just that--APIs--and there's nothing magical about them. It's not like OpenGL is doing the "creating" here. It's just being used for the back-end polygon rendering. That's it. The rest of the code has nothing to do with OpenGL.

    One other thing I'd like to add while I'm here is that in a typical 3D game, only about 2-5% of the code involves 3D API calls. Two to five percent. There's a consistent myth that OpenGL rendering is the bulk of most 3D games and such, which is certainly not even close to true.
  • Direct3D is part of DirectX so I fail to see your distinction.

    Anyway, the two APIs are not functionally equivalent, unless they've added 3D textures to DirectX while I wasn't looking.

  • This isn't a black hole emulation done using OpenGL, it's a black hole emulation done using a standard Newtonian physics engine and then rendered using OpenGL.

    Shame, really, because there is potential to use OpenGL's image processing hardware to actually calculate large 2D fluid dynamics problems, and doing that would definitely count as news. You'd blow a Cray out of the water with a Voodoo3.

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