Especally on Linux OpenGL gets more and more used as a drop-in replacement for rendering 2d applications in favor over the quite slow-x11 based rendering pipelines.
Sun has kust released java-1.5 with a quite good java2d-opengl pipeline and cairographics (the next-generation graphics library pushed by freedesktop.org) also uses opengl through the glitz backend.
Looking glass looks like the next Desktop Enviroment and is fully OpenGL based.
But both have the problem that they MUST use pbuffers for rendering into textures.
This is both, slow and very memory intensiv because pbuffers store many informations not needed at all for simple RTT.
I know RTT has been arround since some time but it seems ARB is quite afraid to speak about this topic, maybe HW manufactuerers are afraif of the implementations
Please review this extension as fast as possible its really needed!
However nvidia decided not to release new drivery for my GF4mx-class card so, hmm, well
Our unified drivers work on everything from the latest GeForce back to the venerable RivaTNT2.
And how exactly do you think we should use FBO with 71.89?
But the 76.64 driver is already released on Linux, and according to the readme it supports all cards down to GeForce 3 and even some GeForce 2 class cards, including the GeForce 4 MX series…