Experimental Virtual Graphics Port Support For Linux 74
With his first accepted submission, billakay writes "A recently open-sourced experimental Linux infrastructure created by Bell Labs researchers allows 3D rendering to be performed on a GPU and displayed on other devices, including DisplayLink dongles. The system accomplishes this by essentially creating 'Virtual CRTCs', or virtual display output controllers, and allowing arbitrary devices to appear as extra ports on a graphics card."
The code and instructions are at GitHub. This may also be the beginning of good news for people with MUX-less dual-GPU laptops that are currently unsupported.
Video Streams? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like we're going to be able to start passing around video in the way PulseAudio lets you connect various devices together, and make it easier to handle miniature external/secondary displays. Though the biggest benefit seems to be of an easy way to pass rendered 3D content directly to a web stream or over some remote desktop connection.
Does anyone know if this would this provide a performance boost over something like VNC for similar things? Or how about the possibility to pass rendered output as a fake video capture card input to a virtual machine? I think I get what this does, but I'm kind of wondering how exactly it's better than current solutions to these problems.
Re:Pff, nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed -- not new, at all.
Similar tricks were used a dozen or so years ago by Mesa 3D to get standalone 3dfx Voodoo cards to output accelerated OpenGL in a window on the X desktop. The 3D stuff rendered on a dedicated 3D card, and its output framebuffer was eventually displayed by a second, 2D-oriented card that actually had the monitor connected.