[Info-vax] OpenVMS graphics - once more

[Simon Clubley]

On 2015-08-24, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> On 15-08-24 13:51, Simon Clubley wrote:
>
>> Playing a high resolution video or other rich multimedia content could
>> be a problem on VMS, but your basic normal 2D website browsing should
>> not be.
>
> Naive question here: If you put a top the line 3D graphics card on an
> 8086 running VMS, wouldn't enabling fancy apps simply consist of VMS
> giving the hooks for those apps to submit the data to the fancy graphics
> card for it to render the stuff ?
>

You need either the card's manufacturer to write you a driver for VMS
or for the manufacturer to open up the _full_ programming specifications
for the card.

Good luck with that if you try asking NVIDIA. :-)

In fairness however, AMD did make some positive moves in this area some
years ago; however I don't know what the current status is.

> aka: VMS' role is just to enable the bridge between app and graphics
> cards ? Or does VMS need to do actual processing before it hands the
> fancy grapghics reequest to the fancy graphics card  ?
>

VMS needs to know what that fancy graphics request looks like before it
can use it...

> If the issue is only of providing the bridge to allow the card to render
> 3d vctor data into stunning images, then it should be less dificult to
> do than embedding the actual rendering software into VMS, right ?
>

You need to know how to talk to that bridge. See above. :-)

And yes, you want to avoid software rendering if possible - it's _very_
slow in comparison.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world