Which effects work on an Intel card? (Intel Fragment Program Support)

[SmSpillaz]

Because a lot of people have been asking about why they can't get Blur, Reflection or Water to work properly on their Intel graphics cards, I'd just like to fill everyone in on what is going on so that we don't get too many posts about this.

Essentially, after the fragment interface was added, it seemed to have broken support for fragment environment variables on Intel chipsets in indirect mode, which is needed for cool fragment_program effects like water distortion / blur / reflection. The workaround to make this stuff work is to use XGL. Below is a list of what works and what doesn't.

Intel with AiGLX
What works:
Color filter
Negative
Color Opacity (fakeargb)
Water, without the distortion effect (ie. the ripples are an overlay, not distorting the pixels underneath)
Direct OpenGL Rendering, but rendered to the framebuffer, causing flickering. There is a fix coming out for this soon - see this (http://hoegsberg.blogspot.com/2007/08/redirected-direct-rendering.html)
Accelerated, but not properly redirected XVideo; change outputs from Xv to X11/XShm/XImage.Intel with Xgl
What works:
Color filter
Negative
Color Opacity (fakeargb)
Water, with the distortion effect (ie. the ripples distort the pixels they touch)*
Blur, only some parts:*
Gaussian won't work because of the lack of FrameBuffer_Objects
4xBilinear works for focus blur, but not for alpha blur (partial blur, but weird distortion on older X Servers, incredibly slow due to a problem with Mesa kicking compiz into software rendering)*
Mipmap seems to crash compiz
Reflections work fine*
OpenGL is redirected, but not accelerated
Xvideo is redirected, but not acceleratedJust a note: because these are driver and DRI problems, we can't fix them (they need to be fixed by the developers of those components, which are separate from Compiz). Hopefully, this will be done in the next revision of the Intel driver.

Hope that helped.

-SmSpillaz

See also: http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/Hardware/Intel

For those of you who are using the Master Branch of Compiz Fusion, there is a workaround in the workarounds plugin, called 'AIGLX Fragment Parameter Fix'. Checking this will essentially bring the 'fixes' marked with a star in XGL over to AIGLX. Note that it isn't present in the Compiz-0.6.2 branch.

[vadi]

So... it's better to switch to xgl from aigxl?

[SmSpillaz]

It really depends on what you want to use.

If you *must* have your Accelerated video and OpenGL, go with AIGLX.

If you don't mind losing those two things but gaining some more effects then go with Xgl.

[neil78b]

What benefits does the accelerated video and OpenGL offer?

I just wanna atleast be able to get reflection and watch video(while moving cube if I wanted to) with no problems, what should I use on my intel card laptop setup to handle those options?

My ati/xgl laptop works fine with everything except blur and water effects.

Thanks

[SmSpillaz]

Use Xgl in that case and change the video output of your video player from XV to XImage / XShm

[d_garbage]

Hi SmSpillaz,
do you think this thread could have it's title ammended to include the new [FAQ] tag, instead of the [info] at the begining. Would help people search and stuff.
Cheers,
d:¬)-'

Moderator's Note: This has been done. Thanks for pointing this out. :) - Fyda

[shortybookit]

I Have The Intel (r) 82865g Does It Work With Compiz?

If So How Do I Get It Working

Currently I Have It Uninstalled Because I Could Not Figure It Out

Any Help Would Be Great If This Card Actually Does Work With Compiz

In Ubuntu 7.04

[SmSpillaz]

Hi

What problems are you experiencing?

- SmSpillaz

[Götz]

When will all those effects (Water with the distortion, blur, etc) work with AiGLX?

Is this a bug in the intel drivers or in AiGLX o in the X server?

[SmSpillaz]

Yeah, its a bug in the broken glFragment4f parameter I believe, but there is now a workaround on the workarounds plugin to fix it :)

[Götz]

I haven't understud :) Where is the bug?

[adamk]

The bug is with probably a combination of the X server and the drivers. fragment program support does not work properly with AIGLX. However, as SmSpillaz mentions, there's been an addition to the "workarounds" plugin that works around this bug. I don't believe it's available in 0.6.0, but it is definitely available in master git.

[AdeBe]

Where we can expect new, better :) revision of intel drivers?
Will they be included in 2.6.24 kernel?

[adamk]

Where we can expect new, better :) revision of intel drivers?
Will they be included in 2.6.24 kernel?

That's a question for the driver developers, not the compiz folks :-)

Adam

[SmSpillaz]

Just an update on this. It's actually a limitation on the X Server and not the drivers. (ATI users are experiencing it too.) Most of the suggestions here will work for them

[streamkid]

I have a problem with water effect (with(/out) the workaround plugin). When it comes to rain, everything becomes gray. After a while, when all of the water goes away, it's ok again. What am I doing wrong? It should work according to the first post.

I am using gentoo with an intel x3100 gma.
x11-base/xorg-server 1.4-r2
x11-drivers/xf86-video-i810 2.2.0
properly (? according to the wiki) configured X.org

Thanks in advance :-)

[SmSpillaz]

I have a problem with water effect (with(/out) the workaround plugin). When it comes to rain, everything becomes gray. After a while, when all of the water goes away, it's ok again. What am I doing wrong? It should work according to the first post.

I am using gentoo with an intel x3100 gma.


The Intel x3100 isn't really supported at the moment due to a major revsion in architecture. There is no guaruntee that it is fully supported with the current intel drivers. It would help if you can get a screenshot.


x11-base/xorg-server 1.4-r2
x11-drivers/xf86-video-i810 2.2.0
properly (? according to the wiki) configured X.org


Ah yes, it's definitely not supported with the i810 driver. Try using xf86-driver-intel :)

[SmSpillaz]

Where we can expect new, better :) revision of intel drivers?
Will they be included in 2.6.24 kernel?

Intel DRM drivers are fine and don't need any more work. Those are the kind that are included with the Kernel (AFAIK).

What you are looking for is the X.org video drievers. The problem is not actually in the drivers, but really Yet Another Limitation or Annoying Bug in AiGLX that the X.org guys haven't really figured out yet. New drivers certainly give somewhat better performance and nice new features (Read: Live Modesetting, Redirected Direct Rendering and EXA :))

Anyways, if you compile X by hand, you can have a look at gitweb.freedesktop.org

[streamkid]

It would help if you can get a screenshot.
Here you go: http://tinyurl.com/24kvos. The black part bottom right is because I run dualhead and screen have different resolution, so X.org doesn't know what to display there. (No prob with this).

Ah yes, it's definitely not supported with the i810 driver. Try using xf86-driver-intel :)
Could you enlighten me please? On gentoo, xf86-driver-intel isn't a package, and on Google, I couldn't find anything relevant.
Edit: Do you mean http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org?

[Götz]

I think that in Gentoo the correct driver that you need is the i810 at version 2.1 or 2.2

And I seems that you are using it right now


I am using gentoo with an intel x3100 gma.
x11-base/xorg-server 1.4-r2
x11-drivers/xf86-video-i810 2.2.0


http://packages.gentoo.org/package/x11-drivers/xf86-video-i810

[streamkid]

I am using 2.1, because 2.2 isn't working properly for me (I tested to see if the effects work though).
Thanks for your answer.
Any idea what else I shall try to make it work?
Merry Christmas to all!! :-)

[shafin]

Will compiling X by hand solve the problem?

[streamkid]

You mean outside of portage? (Where it's compiled)
I haven't tried yet..

[erikderzweite]

Small update on X3100 with 2.1.1 driver and compiz:
Rain effect still doesn't work, negative results in completely black window (way TOO MUCH negative here :) ). Windows reflections and blur don't work too. Cube is sometimes a litttle sluggish (especially when turning to/from side with many windows). Fire is painted alright, but needs some event in order to show up itself on desktop (e.g. Right click).