Software development with matrox hardware

[drslump]

Hi all,

I'm programming a game as a hobby project, and since the only gfx cards I've got, since I understanded what's inside a computer, have been Matrox ones.
Right now I'm running a Parhelia in my main computer and a G400 on the DVD-player/Net Server. But I'll go rigth to the point before I start doing too many spelling mistakes

I was wondering if it'll be possible to create a forum channel, here in MatroxUsers, focused on software development for matrox hardware.
While you can get all the specs you might want, and more, for cards like nVidea or Ati, even complete sources demonstrating the hardware features. For matrox products this is a hard task. I couldn't find to much info in so wonderful features like DualHead or Surround Gamming, GigaColor, etc, etc

It will be great aswell to make some hobbist games run really good on matrox card, making use of it's special capavilities. So we don't have to see so often games which run with a lower gfx quality for don't have a nVidea or Ati card!

I guess that among the huge amount of murcers will be at least some pro/amateurs software developers who can really give some good answers.

and thats all I had to say, please accept my appologize for my attempt of murder to the english language. I promise I'll go and buy an expensive english dictionary

so let me know what you think about!

ciao,
Dr.Slump

[TdB]

for specific hardware-infomation you would probably need to talk the hardware companies developer-relation team, this goes fo nvidia, ati and probably everybody else too.
but they are often very good at sharing basic information, like this: http://developer.matrox.com/
they have a surroundgamming sdk for example: http://developer.matrox.com/dwnlhome...EN=7894972&q=6
Other hardware companies have similiar sites which also contains techdemos with source-code and gpu-specs etc. you just have to look for them.

A forum like that might be a good idea, but I don´t think that many developers would need to discuss specific hardware issues with eachother THAT much, thats what the dev-rel teams are here for.

a programming forum is a good idea, but now we have standards for graphicscards (direct3d and opengl), so optimizing for specific hardware should be avoided IMO. You don´t want to optimize for the parhelia only to find out that your program runs like shit on parhelia2. Optimizing for the hardware is the driver developers job. optimizing for a gpu-specific feature on the other hand, can be a good idea, in some rare cases.

[drslump]

Hi TDB,

I know that I can go to the matrox developer relations to collect some info. And I know about the techdemos and the SurroundGamming SDK. And I must say that I found the nVidea one more elaborated, but Matrox's is quite good anyway.

My problem is that if I check in google for OpenGL Vertex Arrays I find lots of info regarding the NV and ATI extensions and how to optimize them, which of course I can use with the Matrox ICD but I'll like to see a place where I can check if a specific extension works good on Matrox card, o will be better to use another method.

About the optimization for specific hardware, I accept that we should use standard graphics APIs but if you take OpenGL and you want to do a game with lots of eye-candy effects you'll need to use lots of extensions to the API. And after you have to offer a fallback for the hardware which is not up for challenge.
The idea is to don't optimize for specified hardware but for hardware features.

ciao,
drslump

[TdB]

well, I don´t really know much about opengl, the whole extension mess kinda scared me away.
AFAIK one have to code different for each gpu, as it is right now, if you want to anything else than the most basic stuff. take for example doom3, id software has to code a lightrender for each gpu(AFAIK). IMO the extension idea is both opengl biggest weakness and its biggest strenght. I personally like the idea of coding towards a reference api, knowing that it will look the same on all cards, without worrying about which card has what feature and how it is implemented on that specific gpu.
But im just rambling now, I don´t know anything about opengl.

I skimmed this: http://developer.matrox.com/content/...rtex_array.txt
and it seems like you are right, they don´t mention anything how to optimize for the parhelia, they only provide the specs.
which should be enough in an ideal world.
If I were you I would just do it by the book, and hope the best.
If that doesn´t work then email the dev-rel team, im sure they know how to optimize for the parhelia.

But this is typical matrox, keeping everything a secret is not always a good Idea. Sometimes I think their idea of a good gpu,
is a gpu, a developer doesn´t have to be aware of.

you probably has to sign up for a developer-account with matrox, or an NDA or something like that, to get all the gory details.