Re: [Mesa3d-dev] higher bit depth support

[Keith W. <ke...@va...>]

luc-eric rousseau wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> for research, I would like to modify Mesa to support 16 bit per channel
> texture, as well as a higher precision render buffers, either 16 bit or
> single-precision floating point.
> 
> The goal here is to use Mesa to render (non-interactivly) in software high
> precision 3D images made with 16 bit texture source, without loss of
> quality.  The current precision of the vertex coordinates is fine, it's the
> precision of the shading and the alpha blending that matters.  The rendered
> images are not meant for PC monitors (which are only 8 bit per channel max).
> 
> My question is: how much trouble would it be?  Of course, I've already
> looked at the source, but I would like to get an idea of how much of the
> code I would have to change, and if there are roadblocks I would hit.  I
> should also point out that i'm lazy :^)
> 

It will certainly be trouble, but a lot of people are interested in seeing it
happen.  I'm going to be doing some reorganization work in the 3.5 branch over
the next couple of weeks, and one thing I'll be doing is isolating the
software rasterizer in its own directory.  After that has been done it should
be a little clearer which code needs to be touched to acheive this goal.

Keith