[GEM-dev] branches: SIMD & vertex-array going MAIN!

[james tittle]

On Dec 14, 2004, at 10:27 AM, Johannes M Zmoelnig wrote:

> chris clepper wrote:
>
>> chars anyway).  Also, an array width of 3 for normals is not valid 
>> according to the RedBook, so that is going to require truncation.
> so what is then the valid array width for normals ?

...I think here he meant 3 is valid, but 4 is not...just the same as 
Index and colors have a certain size

> and i am not sure at all, whether we gain something (but memory, which 
> in turns decreases cpu-load) by using uchar instead of float for 
> colors.
> wouldn't most gfx-cards convert them back to floats ?

...sure, everything on the gpu is float (at least color/vertex-wise)...

> while pixes are the bridge to pdp, i guess vertex-arrays might be the 
> bridge to GridFlow.

...wha?  GridFlow doesn't know anything about 3d atm...sure, I can see 
use of gridflow's matrix manipulations:  it could be really good for 
something like the shapeSynth (and that was my original plan, to 
implement it in pd/GEM and then again in pd/GEM/Gridflow, just as a 
comparison/exercise)

...just to throw something else into the ring, I've been imagining a 
series of "[vp_*]"'s that would use vertex programs to manipulate data 
that is already on the card (in the somewhat the same manner as the 
[vertex_sub/add/whatever] stuff):  then we don't have a choice of what 
format!  But, we'd be doing all that computation on the card, and the 
cpu can do something else :-)

jamie