QE with N30? What's possible?

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
<a href="http://www.opengl.org/developers/code/features/siggraph2002_bof/sg2002bof_apple.pdf"; target="_blank">http://www.opengl.org/developers/code/features/siggraph2002_bof/sg2002bof_apple.pdf</a>;



<a href="http://www.macrumors.com"; target="_blank">http://www.macrumors.com</a>;



Maybe this should go in software...or 'X' forums...



...either way...go to the links...and see what you make of Apple's Powerpoint presentation made at...Siggraph on the upcoming powers of Quartz Extreme.



Graphically illustrates how QE works.



I was amazed to find that QE is just texture mapped polygons... :eek:



ie the ten interface is just polygons with textures on?!?!? DID I UNDERSTAND CORRECTLY?



<img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />



Any how. Thought you guys may find it interesting.



Are we less than a year away from having a full blown 3d interface or 2d interface with 3D elements and radical interface elements via a Radeon or Nvidia next gen card...a 'G5' cpu...and...QExtreme?



Speculate.



Lemon Bon Bon <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
«13

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 47
    blizaineblizaine Posts: 239member
    I found that interesting too.



    It seems to me that the fact the whole interface is being converted to texture and poly's in real-time, opens the door to many other "enhancements" down the road, as more GPU/CPU power becomes available.



  • Reply 2 of 47
    lemon bon bonlemon bon bon Posts: 2,383member
    Given the next gen of graphic cards...this really gives Apple chance to blow the doors off Xp!!!



    :eek:



    The power...



    <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />



    The...a 3d rotating 'aqua torus revolving donut' dock?



    Helterskelter rides in 3D through your folders...



    3D cube featuring multiple desktops...3d icons...no..I mean...propper ones...



    ...inferno flames in your trash.



    First person shooter for deleting rogue folders...



    A massive scaling desktop that you can zoom in and out of...



    Gurgle...



    Any ideas where QE and a Radeon 9700 or N30 can lead us?



    Lemon Bon Bon



    What about serious 3D apps and digital video?



    Will future QE be extended to help graphics cards act as co-processors to help with rendering shaders/rendering as Amorph himself has suggested?



    [ 07-31-2002: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>
  • Reply 3 of 47
    programmerprogrammer Posts: 3,457member
    I'm afraid I don't understand what you thought QE would do...? Their WWDC presentation seemed pretty clear to me, and this confirms it.



    I've been looking forward to the version of OGL that is coming in Jaguar, and am very glad to see they are on schedule. They're also allowing ATI & nVidia to expose their pixel shader level controls, which is a relief -- I was worried when there was no "standardized" shader technology at that level and Apple had previously prevented non-standard extensions.



    Now lets hope they give us some improved hardware to run this wild software on!





    Edit: no extensions are necessary to use the hardware for offline rendering, and it has nothing to do with Quartz (or QE). OpenGL has this capability as it is, the results just need to be fetched back from VRAM.



    The power of the last generation of GPUs hasn't been realized yet (at least not to the user), and the new ones are a heck of a leap beyond that. There is a tremendous amount of potential here and Jaguar's graphics architecture with OpenGL 1.4 as a foundation will let us leverage it.



    [ 07-31-2002: Message edited by: Programmer ]</p>
  • Reply 4 of 47
    lemon bon bonlemon bon bon Posts: 2,383member
    I wasn't clear that QE treats the interface as 3d graphics?



    Polygons? With textures on?



    That...that's...



    I thought it (don't laugh) 'just sped things up'. Just a compositing aid for the interface...for composited 2D elements. I guess I misunderstood



    I didn't realise it was this clever.



    If Apple push the envelope...can't they offload much of the OS visualisation onto the graphic card?



    That could lead to some incredible things, no?



    Am I missing something?



    Lemon Bon Bon



    "The power of the last generation of GPUs hasn't been realized yet (at least not to the user), and the new ones are a heck of a leap beyond that. There is a tremendous amount of potential here and Jaguar's graphics architecture with OpenGL 1.4 as a foundation will let us leverage it."



    So..the interface...and 3d work...and digital content...(with this OS/graphic card integration) could see some stunning and radical advances?



    [ 07-31-2002: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>
  • Reply 5 of 47
    programmerprogrammer Posts: 3,457member
    [quote]Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon:

    <strong>I wasn't clear that QE treats the interface as 3d graphics?



    Polygons? With textures on?



    That...that's...



    I thought it (don't laugh) 'just sped things up'. Just a compositing aid for the interface...for composited 2D elements. I guess I misunderstood



    I didn't realise it was this clever.



    If Apple push the envelope...can't they offload much of the OS visualisation onto the graphic card?



    That could lead to some incredible things, no?



    Am I missing something?

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    Well back in May they said they were going to use the GPU's 3D capabilities to drive the 2D interface because it includes lots of powerful alpha support. The 3D engine uses triangles (polygons), ergo the QE would use polygons to draw the 2D content. When 3D hardware puts 2D art onto polygons, that art is called textures. The whole point is to offload all of the compositing functions onto the GPU.



    Yes, some very cool things will be possible. On the R300/NV30 for effectively zero additional cost it will be possible to do wild animation, blending, colourizing, etc etc etc. MacHack will take on a whole new dimension (pun intended). No doubt there will be lots of people complaining about the distractions. It will also be very fast.



    There is all sorts of cool functionality in this hardware that hasn't really been used yet -- especially in a GUI. Consider depth-of-field... bringing some windows in and out of focus. What about casting shadows from windows -- real ones, not just drop shadows. Windows can be rotated, skewed, distorted, warpped at zero cost. Magnification is cheap. I have this inkling of an idea for how to use 3D textures in a GUI. Items that need your attention can glow. Ah, I could go on but I think you get the point.
  • Reply 6 of 47
    xaqtlyxaqtly Posts: 450member
    Dammit Programmer, now I'm slobbering all over myself. I guess the question is... will Jobs realize what's potentially possible and make it happen? Or will he ignore those capbilities entirely?



    oh man... depth of field... I can't describe how cool it would be to see that as a basic desktop windowing function.
  • Reply 7 of 47
    rhumgodrhumgod Posts: 1,289member
    [quote]Originally posted by Xaqtly:

    <strong>I guess the question is... will Jobs realize what's potentially possible and make it happen? Or will he ignore those capbilities entirely?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Considering it was he that brought the technology with him from NeXT and he is the CEO, I am guessing he won't ignore anything. Exciting to be an Apple fanatic is exactly right. I can hear the PCs and monitors exploding as PC users switch to real innovation, not that marketing BS the blows in Redmond have been spewing the past decade or so.
  • Reply 8 of 47
    xypexype Posts: 672member
    [quote]Originally posted by Lemon Bon Bon:

    <strong>I was amazed to find that QE is just texture mapped polygons... :eek:



    ie the ten interface is just polygons with textures on?!?!? DID I UNDERSTAND CORRECTLY?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Well, duh! 3D cards usually work with 3D polygons and since a 2D interface actually is made of "planes one of top of another" it actually makes sense. Basically most graphic cards don't have a lot of transparency and depth sorting capabilities built in - whereas 3D cards do. Now if a window is made of a strip of rectangles and you want a geenie (spelling?) effect you basically only transform the polygons to that geenie effect and the graphics card does all the image scaling and disorting by itself.



    And thinking about it, you then realise that with the windows one could do all sorts of stuff, from spinning them by 90° to have portrail instead of landscape to scaling, warping, twisting and whatnot. And even, for Quark 4 users, you could have small 3D aliens come into the picture and beam the window away - MacOS X for kids!

    :cool:



    edit: duh, I just saw Programmer wrote the same thing.



    [ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: xype ]</p>
  • Reply 9 of 47
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    Imagine running around the Finder, Quake-like, turning corners and blasting files with the shotgun to delete them...
  • Reply 10 of 47
    xypexype Posts: 672member
    [quote]Originally posted by BRussell:

    <strong>Imagine running around the Finder, Quake-like, turning corners and blasting files with the shotgun to delete them...</strong><hr></blockquote>



    If I remember correctly there even was a Doom File Manager for Linux released some years ago..
  • Reply 11 of 47
    phobosphobos Posts: 29member
    For all of you guys do a search on macnn osx discussion forum and you will find some very interesting information about QE. I thought that it was pretty clear to all of you that it would handle the windows as polygons.

    A concern that I addressed earlier (when QE was first introduced) that hasn't been answered is this.What's QE going to do with a second monitor? Is it going to speed things up on the second monitor or only on the main monitor? I bet that we will see speed improvements only on one monitor and not in second.Memory requirements are gonna be huge so it's gonna be a problem.It's gonna be weird to see different speeds on the same machine with 2 monitors but it's understandable.

    Or think about 2048X1536 and plus resolutions.The GPU memory requirements with the double buffering and all are gonna be HUUUUUUGE. 128MB of GPU memory maybe is little for these kind of things.

    There are a lot of things that remain unanswered.I guess that we justhave to wait and see



    [ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: phobos ]</p>
  • Reply 12 of 47
    xypexype Posts: 672member
    [quote]Originally posted by phobos:

    <strong>A concern that I addressed earlier (when QE was first introduced) that hasn't been addressed is this. What's QE going to do with a second monitor?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Add another OpenGL context window for it?
  • Reply 13 of 47
    phobosphobos Posts: 29member
    The problem is the memory requirements.And that's why I think apple is going to supposrt it for one monitor only.Think of 2 monitors with big resolutions.The 64MB of GPU memory which is pretty standard on todays graphic cards is gonna be eat up in no time
  • Reply 14 of 47
    programmerprogrammer Posts: 3,457member
    [quote]Originally posted by phobos:

    <strong>For all of you guys do a search on macnn osx discussion forum and you will find some very interesting information about QE. I thought that it was pretty clear to all of you that it would handle the windows as polygons.

    A concern that I addressed earlier (when QE was first introduced) that hasn't been answered is this.What's QE going to do with a second monitor? Is it going to speed things up on the second monitor or only on the main monitor? I bet that we will see speed improvements only on one monitor and not in second.Memory requirements are gonna be huge so it's gonna be a problem.It's gonna be weird to see different speeds on the same machine with 2 monitors but it's understandable.

    Or think about 2048X1536 and plus resolutions.The GPU memory requirements with the double buffering and all are gonna be HUUUUUUGE. 128MB of GPU memory maybe is little for these kind of things.

    There are a lot of things that remain unanswered.I guess that we justhave to wait and see



    [ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: phobos ]</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Apple's OpenGL implementation can handle multiple displays reasonably well, and I expect that QE will do so as well. Yes, if you have two displays with very mis-matched video cards you might notice some severe differences. Since there is only 1 AGP slot the only option is really a dual headed video card -- fortunately these are becoming common.
  • Reply 15 of 47
    phobosphobos Posts: 29member
    What about the powerbooks that have one vid card to drive 2 monitors and only 32MB of ram?
  • Reply 16 of 47
    xypexype Posts: 672member
    [quote]Originally posted by phobos:

    <strong>The problem is the memory requirements.And that's why I think apple is going to supposrt it for one monitor only.Think of 2 monitors with big resolutions.The 64MB of GPU memory which is pretty standard on todays graphic cards is gonna be eat up in no time</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Well, I do think that most of Aqua can be really implemented on just a few little textures, since it's really repetitive stuff. Alpha can be "added" for the whole rectangle/window without the need to alter textures to have different alpha "settings" as well. For two 1600x1200 displays the display buffer is less than 16 MB and the rest could be well enough for the textures the UI needs. And there is texture compression which might help as well, if space runs out.



    [quote]Originally posted by phobos:

    <strong>What about the powerbooks that have one vid card to drive 2 monitors and only 32MB of ram?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Surely you can go down the line until you have a powermac 7500 that really can handle it, but on a powerbook the main display will be accelerated and if someone want to run 2 accelerated screens he ought to get a "workstation" class computer - notebooks really dont fall into such a category. But then, even two displays with 32 mb ram might be possible - since you don't do work on both at once Apple might implement some "clever flipping technology" that simply "reloads" the stuff you need to draw whenever the mouse moves to another screen.



    [ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: xype ]</p>
  • Reply 17 of 47
    "Dammit Programmer, now I'm slobbering all over myself."



    I'll second that.



    "I guess the question is... will Jobs realize what's potentially possible and make it happen? Or will he ignore those capbilities entirely?"



    Considering the current policy on 'skinning' and modified User Interfaces...alarm bells may be ringing on that one... Apple can be 'conservative' with their 'GUI' once it's 'look' is established.



    However, if Apple can come up with a 'Genie' effect...maybe they've got some cool stuff for the GUI lined up? Apple, being 'children of the revolution' may surprise us...



    (Imagine your Gui screen desktop being just one side on a cube that you can rotate for multiple desktops...hmmmm....)



    ((Screensavers...dey gonna get very weird...))



    If they don't...then I'm sure 3rd party developers will go crazy when they get their teeth into this stuff.



    It'll make all those x86 skins seem very old hat indeed



    Okay. I definitely 'get' what QE can do now.



    (I just thought it was a 2D/comp' acceleration of some interface functions/elements. Yes. I knew it was accelerated by Open GL...but I thought the implementation was just a minor thing...parlour tricks...but...it's not...it's...er...'my interface' on 'my Geforce'...let's just say the penny didn't really drop until just now...and...this puts Apple way in front. Erm. It's how Apple now makes it count before M$ copy them. If those 'x' programmer's haven't been getting any sleep up till Jaguar...then they're going to have to keep up this pace in the next two years to really 'give it to' the 'Redmond' copy cat...)



    Let's hope they do something really breathtaking with it!







    Lemon Bon Bon



    Y'know. Apple haven't 'got there' on the hardware specs front yet...but on software? Everything from QE, Jag', Isync, Rendezvous...these are radical and revolutionary.



    Fast fast cpus...when they come...will be the icing on the cake... (I can't wait to 'come home' to a 'next gen' Mac Tower...)
  • Reply 18 of 47
    phobosphobos Posts: 29member
    ----

    By xype:

    "Well, I do think that most of Aqua can be really implemented on just a few little textures, since it's really repetitive stuff. Alpha can be "added" for the whole rectangle/window without the need to alter textures to have different alpha "settings" as well. For two 1600x1200 displays the display buffer is less than 16 MB and the rest could be well enough for the textures the UI needs. And there is texture compression which might help as well, if space runs out. "

    -----

    That's what I thought also but when I first saw that 32Megs of GPU are required then I thought that apple has some really bad programmers. (If you ask me now I don't really know what to answer)

    At one point I thought that 8megs for a 1152X768 would be plenty.A decent background can be at that resolution a size of 200KB and less.And we are talking about the background wich occupies the whole screen.Now when you open folders that have same icons the appropriate graphics that have to be used are already there and can be recycled. So I could guess that the textures for a sigle folder window would be just some 100Kb's. (500 would be an overkill).Add to that some compression and you will have the textures taking very small amount of memory even after double buffering.I don't know but my experience with the 3d genre tell me that you can be very conservative with textures and have great results.Look at the 3d games on the consoles.The memory they have is at most 32MB. The usual is 16.And the work they do with the textures is great.Really small textures and very good compression algorithms that are decompressed on the fly.I know it's different and that the CPU of the consoles can do all the decompression because it doesn't have to do anything else.Instead computers may have loaded 3-4 programs that take up cpu time but the resources of the computer (CPU, graphic cards) are much much better than consoles.

    O.k I don't know but I think that the requirements for the memory on the graphic cards memory should be more modest. 32MB for a standard resolution is quite demanding.I'm not saying this cause I want to use my 8MB Ati rage (which doesn't have the capabilities) but because I don't understand how QE works and want it to be absolutely great.

    Oh and one more question.If you play quake on a window (that takes a lot of texture memory) what's gonna happen on the rest of the desktop?

    Sorry for the long post



    [ 08-01-2002: Message edited by: phobos ]</p>
  • Reply 19 of 47
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    so what happens when all these great new features...and all the power and all the greatness that seems to be -coming- to macs....and macintosh slowly gains more and more marketshare until they control almost all of the market and windows is driven back to a mere 25% next to the giant Apple corporate giant!

    what happens then!



    I certainly hope that jagwire is the pimp shite and that Ogl 1.4 and QE and nv30 will all find themselves on my desktop in a few months...then I'll be able to play Warcraft 3 in peace!

    now we just need 5.1 sound support hardware.



    from all the signs/ acquisitions/rumours/developments..etc. it looks like Apple has a very bright future....but who knows...we could remain the miniscule niche forever....but if history repeats then Apple will be top dog again eventually.
  • Reply 20 of 47
    Steve left out all power features of OSX.2 in his macworld demo. As a film editor one feature that has me potentially drooling is Quartz extrme. What exactly is quartz extreme? Yes, I know it's the quartz composoting layer written completely in openGL so that your graphic's card does that work instead of the CPU. But the only demo I have seen is someone doing super zooms on a playing dvd with no lag or stutter. Cool. And now after looking at the apple pdf it confirms all the vague details I already know. I want to know if this has the potential revolutionize FCP. Currently if I have more than two video layers (with transperancies) I have to render every time I make the slightest change. RTeffects are good but very limited. From all the noise of OSX.2 the idea that there would be limitless layers in FCP always rendered in real time by your 3D card has gone unnoticed (appart from some people on AI). It could turn your 6 month old mac into having processing power greater than $10000 video card, and all this by software(with 3D card of course). But no where can I get a firm confirmation of this amazing possibility, only vague statements from appleinsider and the like. My question on brief: Will quartz Extreme be able to off load all (most) FCP composoting, effects to your 3D card?

    It would be a revolution that nobody has noticed. <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
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