Re: [AD] Fullscreen problems on Linux

[Thomas Fjellstrom <tfjellstrom@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed 09 Jul 2014 09:45:47 AM Trent Gamblin wrote:
> A full screen blit is not negligible on a netbook or similarly low
> powered computer. It's a huge difference. The point is, whether you
> personally would use it or not mode setting is something that should be
> supported for people who want it. We won't get it though because open
> source devs are morons as usual.

Personally I think we need both mode setting, and emulation. Of course if the 
WM breaks mode setting on us, there's not much we can do about that. It'll 
have to go in a FAQ, possibly in the docs, and on the wiki.

"Hey, your WM is broken!" And compiz is truly broken. A lot of things were 
broken when I was writing the full screen and mode listing code, so much so 
that I gave up trying to fix it all.

But yeah, if we can detect that mode setting is broken in ALLEGRO_FULLSCREEN, 
it might make sense to emulate in that case. And allow the user to select the 
emulated case as well.

> Trent
> 
> On 2014-07-09 9:30 AM, Elias Pschernig wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Beoran <beoran@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Elias, I beg to disagree on that point.
> >> 
> >> Real mode setting is essential for games and perhaps surprisingly so,
> >> for security applications.
> >> Not everyone uses a low quality LCD panel that only works well at it's
> >> native resolution as their
> >> display! What if I want to show my images on a real TV, or on a high
> >> quality display that supports
> >> mode setting well?
> > 
> > Which theoretical displays are you talking of? Everything I know,
> > especially TVs (be it LCD, LED, plasma), has a native resolution and
> > running something in another resolution looks bad.
> > 
> >> Also, for games, especially old games, retro games, or games that have
> >> to run well on
> >> older computers or low powered ones, the ability to mode set is
> >> essential for higher performance
> >> and pixel perfect quality. So we can give our players what they want.
> >> But no one in the Wayland team thinks much of games or industrial
> >> control safety apps...
> > 
> > I don't think performance matters. The game itself would still use the
> > lower resolution so there is no difference. The only change is the one
> > final scaled image in al_flip_display - any GPU in existance should be
> > able to perform that without noticable overhead.
> > 
> > Also, the quality will be better. If you use a mode-changing
> > fullscreen, then the monitor itself will have to do the scaling. But
> > it has no GPU so will do a very crude and low quality job. That's
> > certainly true for any LCD monitor I've ever had. Using the GPU to do
> > the scaling on the other hand you can get good quality scaling. Also,
> > I suggested an extra integer-only scaling mode, which would make sure
> > there's no possible scaling artefacts at all. Something mode-changing
> > fullscreen would not allow.
> > 
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -- Open source business process management suite built on Java and Eclipse
> Turn processes into business applications with Bonita BPM Community Edition
> Quickly connect people, data, and systems into organized workflows Winner
> of BOSSIE, CODIE, OW2 and Gartner awards
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/Bonitasoft

-- 
Thomas Fjellstrom
tfjellstrom@xxxxxxxxxx