Re: [Gumstix-users] Introducing myself and OpenGL/Direct3D question

[Alexandre P. N. <al...@om...>]

Fabio Miguez wrote:
> Hello guys,  My name is Fabio Miguez, and I have just learned about gumstix 2 days ago.
>
> I am very excited, and am pretty sure I will have a bunch of questions.
>
> Since I am on my phone right now I was unable to do a proper search on the archives for similar topics, so please forgive me if this has already been addressed.
>
> I am interested in purchasing a gumstix board and an LCD screen to test its feasibility in a project I have dreamt of for a while,  I would like to make a compact attitude indicator for an airplane, using an off-the-shelf INS/Gyro/GPS combination sensor.  Given its nature, this app would require some moderately intense graphics drawing capability.
>
> I looked to mini-ITXs in the past, but gumstix are so small and such a good idea that I owe it a try at least.
>
> What I need to know is as follows:
>
> 1 - Can a gumstix SBC draw graphics on an LCD display using either OpenGL/OpenGL ES if Linux, or Direct3D if Windows CE?
> 2 - What is exactly the video chip/graphics adapter in the Verdex gumstix SBC?
>   
Both series of connex/basix (based on pxa 255 processor) and verdex 
(based on pxa 27x) only have a native lcd controller. No graphics 
acceleration. So the answer to your first question is yes, if you take 
software rendering as an approach, and no otherwise.

Depending on the involved graphics complexity, and the lcd display size, 
it may be possible to have some performance even on software rendering, 
by tuning things quite a bit. But don't expect texture quality as you 
would have with a hardware renderer.

There are no provisions on gumstix boards to connecting a graphics 
accelerator, but it's not an impossible task. One of these days someone 
posted about a custom design which interfaced to an arm processor, and 
provided graphics acceleration, but I'm not sure to which extents.

- Alexandre