Blur on alpha

[lagorgy]

is blur on alpha working? focus blur does work great, but alpha blurring doesnt seem to be working, doesnt blur behing terminal, awn or transparent windows...

[mikedee]

Have you tried blurdemo?

It should blur under the window when alpha_blur is set (I have it working with new Gaussian blur :))

A the moment you will need to use blurset to actually make a window blur underneath it.

I cannot get that to work though :(

If you cant get things to work, can you let me know your driver and card etc... It will help with any debugging.

[lagorgy]

where can i find blurset? i downloaded the one posted by david on the list, but dont know how to make it work...

[mikedee]

Type this

git clone http://git.compiz.org/blurset
cd blurset
make
./blurset

Then click on the window that you want to blur underneath.

[lagorgy]

im getting this:


orgy@orgy-laptop:~$ git clone http://git.compiz.org/blurset
/usr/bin/git-clone: 321: curl: not found
Cannot get remote repository information.
Perhaps git-update-server-info needs to be run there?

[mikedee]

Looks like you need to install curl, probably because this repo is using http not git protocol

apt-get install curl :)

[lagorgy]

Looks like you need to install curl, probably because this repo is using http not git protocol

apt-get install curl :)

hehe, thx for all the help, got it working :D

here´s a screenshot using gaussian blur, works great.

Using: Nvidia 6600 GO 128
Intel Centrino 2 GHZ.
Ubuntu edgy.
1 gb ram.

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/1746/screenshot1es8.th.png (http://img509.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot1es8.png)
[img=http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/1746/screenshot1es8.th.png] (http://img509.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot1es8.png)

[FunkyM]

I have to say the new blur plugin is awesome:
http://media.sukimashita.com/temp/screenshot-blurdemo.png

Especially good is the performance and interoperability with the remaining plugin chain. You even see blur in the switcher or while rotating the cube... it's really a big difference to the times of blurfx ;)

[delphinen]

this looks awesome, I cant wait for it to be included in the next release :o

[MacSlow]

The new blur is really nice. Especially funky looking with gradients of varying colors and opacity. Have a look here...

http://macslow.thepimp.net/shots/dockNblur.png
http://macslow.thepimp.net/shots/farsiNblur.png

Best regards...

MacSlow

[Sorcerer]

Is there any way to use blur with an i915 card?

[Amaranth]

I believe you need Xorg 7.2

[delfick]

hmmm, any chance of beryl version ?? :D please :D

also, would this blur work with Nvidia Anti-aliasing.... (at the moment i need to force non-FBO blur otherwise anti-aliasing doesn't work :( )....or will i still have to do that for this blur ??

[iznogood]

ok this is a great plugin

however it is rather annoying that we have to set manually the alpha blur for each application or depend on each application to do so.

I recently read a post on the mailing list about adding options about which windows-applications should be enabled on alpha blur.

I propose to implement this outside blur, inside state plugin or trailfocus (when opacity is specified for non-focused windows). This must not be very hard

If people agree on that we can post it on the mailing list so that we can same david or someone else the trouble of reimplementing it on blur plugin

If we agree then i can start working on it

I am waiting for suggestions :wink:

[RYX]

As far as I understood, what David plans is to allow external toolkits to blur individual regions of windows by setting special window-properties - so to put it even further than what you think of. But I am not sure if I understood it right ...

hmmm, any chance of beryl version ?? :D please :D
Do I see a chance to get you back to compiz ?? :D :D ...

:)

[lagorgy]

Do I see a chance to get you back to compiz ?? :D :D ...

:)

+1

[mikedee]

I propose to implement this outside blur, inside state plugin or trailfocus (when opacity is specified for non-focused windows). This must not be very hard

I had the same thought myself, its the same as what state already does so it will be a simple job.

I think that David will be looking at better ways of matching windows within compiz so once that is done there should be a very configurable blur. The way we have it now is good because it will lead to less bugs and greater customization in the future :)

[iznogood]

ok i tried on trailfocus and it works, but i get a strange behaviour.
On gnome-terminal i get alpha-blur on the transparent area but this is not happening on any other window even if i change opacity

I thought that any transparent or semi-transparent area will get alpha blur but this is not happening. I used blurset and got the same result

Can anyone comment on that please ??

[MacSlow]

Is there any way to use blur with an i915 card?

That is hard to answer in a definite way. But certainly not possible with current stock Xorg 7.1 (and associated drivers) shipping with common distributions.

I'm in the middle of compiling/installing a super shiny xserver 1.3 (part of Xorg 7.3 iirc), mesa 6.5.2 and other nice Xorg things. With this a whole bunch of new and improved acceleration pieces will land on my i915-enabled laptop. If this will end up with more GLX-extensions supported when running compiz on the i915 I cannot say yet.

Best regards...

MacSlow

[baze]

I'm in the middle of compiling/installing a super shiny xserver 1.3 (part of Xorg 7.3 iirc)
xorg-server 1.3 is part of xorg 7.2. the xserver for xorg 7.3 will be 1.4.

[mikedee]

On gnome-terminal i get alpha-blur on the transparent area but this is not happening on any other window even if i change opacity

I get exactly the same results, except compiz crashes if I enable anything other than 4xBilinear. If I run it under the debugger it works.

[delfick]

As far as I understood, what David plans is to allow external toolkits to blur individual regions of windows by setting special window-properties - so to put it even further than what you think of. But I am not sure if I understood it right ...

so....that's a yes to beryl version and anti-aliasing with blur at same time ?? :D :D

Do I see a chance to get you back to compiz ?? :D :D ...

lol :D

seeing, as i never tried compiz-vanilla before, grammatically it'd be, switching to compiz :D

i think i'll try both and switch every few days :D :D :P

[iznogood]

On gnome-terminal i get alpha-blur on the transparent area but this is not happening on any other window even if i change opacity

I get exactly the same results, except compiz crashes if I enable anything other than 4xBilinear. If I run it under the debugger it works.

Maybe we should report this on the mailing list ??

[MacSlow]

I'm in the middle of compiling/installing a super shiny xserver 1.3 (part of Xorg 7.3 iirc)
xorg-server 1.3 is part of xorg 7.2. the xserver for xorg 7.3 will be 1.4.

Gee... you're right. I constantly mix that stuff up.

Best regards...

MacSlow

[FunkyM]

hmmm, any chance of beryl version ?? :D please :D

Unless beryl's core "backports" the new modular fragment system this is a clear "no" as a ported blur plugin would not directly be possible without it.

Asides, looking forward to hear about the success on i915 aswell (using i945GM here).

Additions to state plugin etc. could be cool aswell, however I think what most people would be already completly satisfied with some sort of "alpha_blur_auto" option which automatically blurs all transparent areas without requirement to set the WM hint from the client app. As the behavior was like this during the early stages of the blur plugin, this might be something for upstream aswell.

However, I am not sure if the current way was choosen in order to encourage applications to make exclusive use of it.

[delfick]

hmmm, any chance of beryl version ?? :D please :D

Unless beryl's core "backports" the new modular fragment system this is a clear "no" as a ported blur plugin would not directly be possible without it.

damn.....o well...

i tried compiz today....and well........for me, beryl is better (for now anyways) :D

o well, i can always dream :D :P

[gideondk]

Asides, looking forward to hear about the success on i915 aswell (using i945GM here).


As far as I know, the newest "intel" drivers support the needed extensions, so it could work...

MacSlow is already the "brave knight" to compile everything from scratch to test it... And if I have time this afternoon I will try to stand at his side! ;)

[delfick]

hmm, i just noticed your blur works with anti-aliasing and doesn't look crap :D (though a stronger blur would be nice :D)

how is that possible??

with compiz http://delfick.storage.googlepages.com/compiz-blur.jpg

with beryl (with non-fbo blur so anti-aliasing still works and a transparent terminal over part of it with "blur windows" option checked in blurfx) http://delfick.storage.googlepages.com/berylblur.jpg

with beryl and 21x21 gaussian blur http://delfick.storage.googlepages.com/berylgoodblur.jpg

one question, is it possible to use an emerald theme in compiz (or even a cwd version of it (if cwd even exists anymore, i can't see it...)), i want to see how well it works with those, because i currently have problems with them and blurfx ( http://delfick.storage.googlepages.com/emeraldtheme.png as you can see, blurfx thinks the corner is square)

[RYX]

I think there is no working version of cwd anymore but you can use gtk-window-deorator with any metacity-theme and set the theme-opacity to your likings (gconf-editor, keys in /apps/gwd/). Then you should have blurred window-decoration ... (but I guess that's not what you wanted, right?)

:)

[MacSlow]

Update on Xorg 7.2/xserver 1.3: You don't gain anything in terms of XRender/EXA-acceleration on i915 or regarding GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap support for indirect rendering.

Best regards...

MacSlow

[delfick]

I think there is no working version of cwd anymore

damn, that's a shame :P

(but I guess that's not what you wanted, right?)

no, not really :D

[mikedee]

http://delfick.storage.googlepages.com/emeraldtheme.png as you can see, blurfx thinks the corner is square

As far as I know one of the requirements of this blur was that decorators did not suffer from the square corner issue. As far as I can tell this problem will not happen with the compiz version of blur (although I haven't proved that yet).

[mikedee]

i tried compiz today....and well........for me, beryl is better (for now anyways) :D

What exactly is it that you cannot possibly live without? (I recon its transparent cube ;))

I think it would help to make a list of the extra tweaks that they have added to beryl. I know there are a lot of things that could be done by a beginner who wants to learn compiz. We just need to identify everything.

[delfick]

http://delfick.storage.googlepages.com/emeraldtheme.png as you can see, blurfx thinks the corner is square

As far as I know one of the requirements of this blur was that decorators did not suffer from the square corner issue. As far as I can tell this problem will not happen with the compiz version of blur (although I haven't proved that yet).

awsome :D !

What exactly is it that you cannot possibly live without? (I reckon its transparent cube ;))

I think it would help to make a list of the extra tweaks that they have added to beryl.

well for starters a settings manager and emerald like window decorator..... :D

window decorator because i can't live without very wide, transparent, blurred window borders :D

settings manager because it's too much of a hassle using gconf and compiz-settings is well, to put it nicely, lacking :D (and i hate SUSE style apps, they annoy me :P)

transparent cube reaches the list too :D

other than that i'm not entirely sure because i can't be bothered going through gconf to find everything..... :D

[mikedee]

well for starters a settings manager and emerald like window decorator..... :D

Well, personally I wouldnt want BSM. I think gconf-editor is almost as usable ;) Have you tried gnome-compiz-manager (from gandalfin in the compiz-gnome package). It was very nice last time I looked.

Emerald would, or should work on compiz with a bit of tweaking, the compiz decorators work on beryl, but strangely the reverse is not true. Heliodor is exactly the same as gwd except that it does not support configurable shadows.

Emerald is as far as I can tell unsupported and very buggy (massive memory requirements). It was forked from gwd too early and I do not think it uses libdecoration. I haven't seen any work or bug fixes on it for ages.

I think it would actually be easier to split gwd into metacity-wd and gtk-wd and then re-add the emerald theming stuff. As far as I can tell, most of the magic is in the engines which could be separated again.

BTW - Whilst I remember, there was recently a change to compiz which draws the decorator window over the window. This means that decorations can now appear over some of the window, allowing for much cooler window decorations (just dont go mad with that :)).

[Amaranth]

emerald is (sort of) being worked on and being ported to libdecoration bit by bit. However, the square corner bug delfick gets is apparently a bug in emerald's design that would be, well, annoying to fix.

[Lazesharp]

Does gwd just run metacity themes or can it do more?

If it can do more, is there any documentation on creating themes for it?

Compositing Window Managers are all well and nice, but in many ways if we're stuck using existing 24-bit colour themes from metacity and compiz the end result will never look as polished as the competition.

Back more on-topic: this new fragment shader based blur looks enticing, but what's it's performance like? I haven't used compiz (yet), but beryl's blur, while very pretty, performs poorly and is not entirely stable, so I'm skeptical about a blur plugin being usable.

[RAOF]

g-w-d just does metacity themes. If you want oddly shaped window decorations (or transparency other that a straight vertical gradient), you'll need to write another decorator (which is supposed to be pretty easy, with libdecoration). I'd perhaps like to write a Cairo-based SVG decorator, but there's a lot of other things to do :)

Blur doesn't seem to affect performance here at all, but my lappy is pretty powerful (C2D, 7600 GO), so it's not much of a test.

[RYX]

Back more on-topic: this new fragment shader based blur looks enticing, but what's it's performance like? I haven't used compiz (yet), but beryl's blur, while very pretty, performs poorly and is not entirely stable, so I'm skeptical about a blur plugin being usable.
The blur-plugin is amazing - it is entirely hardware-accelerated. I had a blurred terminal and two blurred sticknote-screenlets open and dragging around the terminal-window didn't raise my cpu above 3-5% ... dimensions better than the beryl-blur (which mainly is cpu-calculated).

@RAOF: Looks like we share very similar plans - I'd definetly join you in developing a new decorator. But I'd also take mikedee's proposal into account, having an emerald-compatible gwd would be a big plus for compiz. Maybe we can try to implement emerald's engine-loader into gwd somewhen in the near future.

[maniac]

Back more on-topic: this new fragment shader based blur looks enticing, but what's it's performance like? I haven't used compiz (yet), but beryl's blur, while very pretty, performs poorly and is not entirely stable, so I'm skeptical about a blur plugin being usable.
The blur-plugin is amazing - it is entirely hardware-accelerated. I had a blurred terminal and two blurred sticknote-screenlets open and dragging around the terminal-window didn't raise my cpu above 3-5% ... dimensions better than the beryl-blur (which mainly is cpu-calculated).

This is not true. blurfx is as hardware accelerated as Compiz' blur is. blurfx is harder on the texture fill rate of your GFX card, so users running out of GFX card memory bandwidth will notice that ;)


@RAOF: Looks like we share very similar plans - I'd definetly join you in developing a new decorator. But I'd also take mikedee's proposal into account, having an emerald-compatible gwd would be a big plus for compiz. Maybe we can try to implement emerald's engine-loader into gwd somewhen in the near future.
Sounds good :)

[RYX]

Back more on-topic: this new fragment shader based blur looks enticing, but what's it's performance like? I haven't used compiz (yet), but beryl's blur, while very pretty, performs poorly and is not entirely stable, so I'm skeptical about a blur plugin being usable.
The blur-plugin is amazing - it is entirely hardware-accelerated. I had a blurred terminal and two blurred sticknote-screenlets open and dragging around the terminal-window didn't raise my cpu above 3-5% ... dimensions better than the beryl-blur (which mainly is cpu-calculated).

This is not true. blurfx is as hardware accelerated as Compiz' blur is. blurfx is harder on the texture fill rate of your GFX card, so users running out of GFX card memory bandwidth will notice that ;)
OK - thanks for the info. I used the old blur-plugin some months ago when I had beryl installed for a while ... and it was _very_ cpu-hungry. If there is a new one, I have no real comparison. :)

[Lazesharp]

With my 8800 GTS Beryl's blurfx causes animations to be *slightly* choppy (but enough to be noticed). Incidentally, as far as I can tell it is EXACTLY as choppy as it was with my 6800 Ultra and the CPU usage never rises much off of 1% according to the process monitor.

Put simply, I haven't managed to track down the cause of this choppiness, it certainly won't be the fillrate and it doesn't appear to be CPU limited. Has anyone experienced this choppiness with the new compiz fragment shader-based blur?

[lagorgy]

i updated today through git, and now the blur plugin DOES blur behind low opacity windows. The thing is blur is related to opacity, the more transparent a window is the less blur you get, which is kind of logical, since you lower the opacity so you can see through a window...

[mikedee]

i updated today through git, and now the blur plugin DOES blur behind low opacity windows.

I have it too now :)

Very nice fast gaussian blur, no slowdown or choppiness when moving windows.

I expect that the level that it becomes transparent and non blurry is governed by the threshold value.

[FunkyM]

This is not true. blurfx is as hardware accelerated as Compiz' blur is. blurfx is harder on the texture fill rate of your GFX card, so users running out of GFX card memory bandwidth will notice that ;)

True, however the annoying point showed up once you tried to use two or more alpha blurred terminals with blurfx above eachother which even got an NVIDIA card to crawl (at least for me).

I tried compiz-git's blur today on my i945GM with XGL with no good result.
The blur actually looks perfectly correct, however compiz performance dropped to 2 fps.

The white windows bug in Xorg 7.2 prevents me to try it with AIGLX atm...

Works wonderful and is really fast on NVIDIA binary drivers, though ;)

[ioannis]

:?: Does the blur plugin have any GLX extension requirements? (it seems that some filter types do)

I have an NV28 with the nvidia binary drivers and I don't see any blur effect. I use the latest compiz and blurset/demo from git.

the blurdemo window is transparent but doesn't blur what's behind it.

in fact setting "alhpa_blur" causes compiz to fail with the following message:

with gaussian filter
compiz: blur: failed to create framebuffer object

with Mipmap:
compiz: blur: GL_EXT_framebuffer_object extension is required for mipmap filter

while with 4XBilinear it fails without a message

and setting "focus_blur" fails without any error message for all filter types.

[mikedee]

in fact setting "alhpa_blur" causes compiz to fail with the following message:

with gaussian filter
compiz: blur: failed to create framebuffer object

with Mipmap:
compiz: blur: GL_EXT_framebuffer_object extension is required for mipmap filter

I used to get errors like these with 9742 drivers, but I downgraded to 9631 and I havent had the problem since and everything is running fine. Bilinear should work on low end cards.

[ioannis]

I used to get errors like these with 9742 drivers, but I downgraded to 9631 and I havent had the problem since and everything is running fine. Bilinear should work on low end cards.

I use 9631. That's what I thought as well for the bilinear filter, but it fails.

thanks

[ioannis]

does the order in which the blur plugin loads matter?

I have it above decoration and I think I tried some other positions as well.

[ioannis]

same thing happens on my radeon 9000pro (rv250) using the opensource drivers from Xorg7.1 (Fedora 6)

[RYX]

Do you have compiz 0.3.7 from git installed?

[mikedee]

I have it above decoration and I think I tried some other positions as well.

I have it between switcher and move, although I dont think its too important.

[ioannis]

yes, I have the latest git.

after debugging I found this

Breakpoint 1, blurDrawWindowTexture (w=0x9588e68, texture=0x95890f8,
attrib=0xbfe2fee0, mask=2) at blur.c:1858
1858 (*s->programEnvParameter4f) (GL_FRAGMENT_PROGRAM_ARB, param,

where:
(gdb) p s->programEnvParameter4f
$3 = (GLProgramParameter4fProc) 0

I'm not familiar with the code, though. I don't know what sets this function pointer. Anyone with better knowledge ?


thanks

[ioannis]

I've sort of traced back the problem. I know why the function pointer is set to zero, but nothing more than that.

in line screen.c:1800 , the code checks for the existence of the "GL_ARB_fragment_program" extension. If it finds it, it initialises among other things the "programEnvParameter4f" function pointer in line 1810.

s->programEnvParameter4f = (GLProgramParameter4fProc)
getProcAddress (s, "glProgramEnvParameter4fARB");

also, there is a flag to indicate that the extension was found "s->fragmentProgram". In my case the above extensions is not available (in both of my setups), the flag is set to 0 and the function pointer remains zero. I guess one should check the flag before using the function pointer.

The question is, does that mean that blur is not possible in my case?

thanks

[ioannis]

just for the record, the above crash is fixed now in git.
from the git log: "Only enable blur if GL_ARB_fragment_program is present"

and to answer my own question, neither NV28 nor RV250 support the GL_ARB_fragment_program extension, which is a prerequisite for blur plugin.

in other words, the blur plugin requires >=NV30 (GFFX 5800) or >=R(V)300 (Radeon 9500)

PS: GeForce4 TI 4200 (NV25/NV28) is listed here (http://www.delphi3d.net/hardware/extsupport.php?extension=GL_ARB_fragment_program) for supporting the extension, but it also says "emulated"

[mannheim]

Maybe I'm the unlucky one, but I'm finding compiz's blur is really slowing things down for me, in a way that beryl's blur doesn't.

I'm using an nvidia 6200-based card with xorg 7.1 and the 9746 nvidia driver. If I use compiz's gaussian blur and set to gtk-window-decorator to "blur all", using a metacity theme, then things get choppy. For example, if I open up a couple of big firefox windows and then drag around a terminal window in front ...

Could this be specific to my moderately low-end card?

[RYX]

For me (fx5200) the gaussian blur was also way slower and I think it really is because of the low-end card. The 4xBilinear blur is, in opposition to that, extremely fast - but causes very strange errors yet (it partially zoomed in addition to the blur). Hopefully that gets fixed in the stable version (but I bet it will).

[ioannis]

I'm using an nvidia 6200-based card with xorg 7.1 and the 9746 nvidia driver. If I use compiz's gaussian blur and set to gtk-window-decorator to "blur all", using a metacity theme, then things get choppy. For example, if I open up a couple of big firefox windows and then drag around a terminal window in front ...

Could this be specific to my moderately low-end card?

hmm. I was thinking to buy one of those myself to "get in the game". My other option is a radeon 9550, though that one has less features and both fgrlx and the open-source drivers are not that great.

Is beryl using ARB_fragment_program as well? Could this be a driver issue? From a hardware specs point of view, the 6200 should have enough juice to handle any of the desktop effects you could through at it.

are you using "--indirect-rendering" option? are you using "--loose-binding" as well?

[onestone]

I have heavily optimized the gaussian filter based on my knowledge I have from developing of blurfx. A blur strength setting (0.0 = strong linear blur / 1.0 = soft gaussian blur) will give users the ability to create a stronger blur with smaller blur radius sizes. The optimized shader code reduces the amount of texture accesses that are needed to achieve the same amount of blur (100 -> 125 FPS) and the optimized use of temporary variables reduses the shader length (fixes load shader errors for big filter radius sizes).
I've also added a option to set the saturation of the blur.

David should commit my patch during the next few days.

EDIT: I have also code ready that replaces the framebuffer object code that is needed for the gaussian blur with glCopyTexImage operations, but we are not sure that there is hardware around that does not support framebuffer objects but has accelerated glCopyTexImage.

[iznogood]

I have heavily optimized the gaussian filter based on my knowledge I have from developing of blurfx. A blur strength setting (0.0 = strong linear blur / 1.0 = soft gaussian blur) will give users the ability to create a stronger blur with smaller blur radius sizes. The optimized shader code reduces the amount of texture accesses that are needed to achieve the same amount of blur (100 -> 125 FPS) and the optimized use of temporary variables reduses the shader length (fixes load shader errors for big filter radius sizes).
I've also added a option to set the saturation of the blur.

David should commit my patch during the next few days.

EDIT: I have also code ready that replaces the framebuffer object code that is needed for the gaussian blur with glCopyTexImage operations, but we are not sure that there is hardware around that does not support framebuffer objects but has accelerated glCopyTexImage.

thanks man nice to see you around :lol:

[MacSlow]

While it is slightly off-topic I still want to provide you with the following info... water works with Xorg 7.2 (Xserver 1.3) on the i915 (git upstream, master branch of the xf86-video-intel driver). It did not work for me before using Xorg 7.2. While it works, if does stress the CPU a bit. But hey... the i915 is no GeForce 7900GT.

blur does - not surprisingly - not work.

EXA/XRender acceleration (read: hw-accelerated cairo-rendering if you use the xlib-backend of cairo) is not in place yet for the master branch of the git repository of xf86-video-intel. It still uses the old XAA acceleration paths... dog-slow and heavy on the CPU.

I tried the exa-branch of said driver and actually had reported EXA-acceleration in Xorg.0.log (for Copy, SolidFill, Render, Composite), but it left much (performance) to be desired. Further investigation in xorg's mailing-list clearly pointed out, that the EXA-work in intel's driver isn't done yet and will still take a few months to be cool and shiny. Also further architectural work in the xserver, nicknamed "exa-damagetrack", will fall into place over the coming weeks/months.

I'll probably chat a bit about this in a side-note during my talk (http://www.fosdem.org/2007/schedule/events/gnome_bling) at FOSDEM (http://www.fosdem.org/2007) this weekend.

Best regards...

MacSlow

[FunkyM]

While it is slightly off-topic I still want to provide you with the following info... water works with Xorg 7.2 (Xserver 1.3) on the i915 (git upstream, master branch of the xf86-video-intel driver). It did not work for me before using Xorg 7.2. While it works, if does stress the CPU a bit. But hey... the i915 is no GeForce 7900GT.

blur does - not surprisingly - not work.

EXA/XRender acceleration (read: hw-accelerated cairo-rendering if you use the xlib-backend of cairo) is not in place yet for the master branch of the git repository of xf86-video-intel. It still uses the old XAA acceleration paths... dog-slow and heavy on the CPU.

I tried the exa-branch of said driver and actually had reported EXA-acceleration in Xorg.0.log (for Copy, SolidFill, Render, Composite), but it left much (performance) to be desired. Further investigation in xorg's mailing-list clearly pointed out, that the EXA-work in intel's driver isn't done yet and will still take a few months to be cool and shiny. Also further architectural work in the xserver, nicknamed "exa-damagetrack", will fall into place over the coming weeks/months.

I'll probably chat a bit about this in a side-note during my talk (http://www.fosdem.org/2007/schedule/events/gnome_bling) at FOSDEM (http://www.fosdem.org/2007) this weekend.

Best regards...

MacSlow

Thanks for the info! Did you try the modesetting branch or the regular intel driver? I think the modesetting one seems a bit more "bleeding edge" regarding EXA support and general features.

[Sorcerer]

How is the 3d performance (what does glxgears print)? It has been horrible with AIGLX in Dapper and with Xorg 7.1 Edgy (<700 fps in glxgears) and even Enemy Territory is unplayable. I know glxgears is not a benchmark tool but in Breezy and in Dapper with default Xorg it was >1000 and even ut2004 was playable.

[mannheim]

I'm using an nvidia 6200-based card

hmm. I was thinking to buy one of those myself to "get in the game". My other option is a radeon 9550, though that one has less features and both fgrlx and the open-source drivers are not that great.

Is beryl using ARB_fragment_program as well? Could this be a driver issue? From a hardware specs point of view, the 6200 should have enough juice to handle any of the desktop effects you could through at it.

are you using "--indirect-rendering" option? are you using "--loose-binding" as well?

The 6200 card is otherwise just great, and most of compiz is generally smooth and snappy. eva's version is also fanless, which is plus for me. The slowness of the blur when other windows are behind is the only thing that seems different, and slow. The 4xBilinear blur is certainly faster than the Gaussian, but still behaves choppily for me.

I'm not giving either "--indirect-rendering" or "--loose-binding" on the compiz command line: my command line is

__GL_YIELD="NOTHING" compiz --replace gconf

Without the __GL_YIELD thing, compiz becomes very unresponsive when the CPU is busy (which I was told is a driver issue).

[delfick]

quoted from this thread http://forum.beryl-project.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=3538&start=20

i understand bad or the new blur in compiz is more than a blur plugin? i understand that is like an extention that any programer can call from his program and do a widget or the entire application transparent.

If that is the case we are very close of a gtk-engine with composite support.

..... would that be possible??

[RYX]

Yes ... :)

(But I think it doesn't bring us any closer to the composite gtk-engine than we already are ... imho it's best to get some gtk-devs to work on that transparent-engine thing - all problems are related to gtk/gdk/X, not to the lack of composite-support from within the engine ...)

:)

[MacSlow]

Yes ... :)

(But I think it doesn't bring us any closer to the composite gtk-engine than we already are ... imho it's best to get some gtk-devs to work on that transparent-engine thing - all problems are related to gtk/gdk/X, not to the lack of composite-support from within the engine ...)

:)

Thanks to my FOSDEM trip and some core gtk+-devs attending my talk, I'll got clear hints that this is worked on. Stuff will be sorted out, rest assured.

Best regards...

MacSlow

[delfick]

got clear hints that this is worked on. Stuff will be sorted out, rest assured.

awsome :D

[MacSlow]

... Did you try the modesetting branch or the regular intel driver? I think the modesetting one seems a bit more "bleeding edge" regarding EXA support and general features.

Indeed. I tried it during FOSDEM. X.org crashed on startup i915 laptop then. There are still things missing (not yet moved around and merged between branches in X.org's git). I sat next to Michel Dänzer and Keith Packard for a super immediate update on why/how/when :)

It's a total breeze when you have those folks around and can just walk up to them and ask for help and hints. X.org is going to rock so hard it will hurt... the competition :twisted:

Best regards...

MacSlow

[molnarcs]

Just want to add my 2 cents to "requirements" to switch from beryl - which I'm eager to do, for I have more respect for what you do.

1) I feel that KDE integration lags somewhat behind when it comes to the decorator. I mean this kind of integration:

ftp://hatvani.unideb.hu/personal/screenshots/examples/beryl_kcontrol.png

2) a good settings panel. I couldn't use gconf - I'm simply not used to it, and I tried really hard, but failed miserably. There is no port yet for compiz-settings (I use freebsd) - but I tried it anyway, and it worked (without icons unfortunately). One setting I could not find was to configure mouse scroll near screen edges. I use mouse wheel to rotate cube near screen edges - really useful. Generally, key/mouse bindings configuration can be improved.

3) Transparent cube - though this is not really important for me, it just looks nice.

1 and 2 are most important for me. I can come up with others if you are curious, I just don't have compiz installed right now (but can try it again to see why I uninstalled it last time :)

[lagorgy]

Hi,

how do i set the blur plugin to use the window match thing? do i still have to use blurset?

[mikedee]

Just set this value to something like type=normal you can put any types of match you like. type=normal will just match all normal windows and should be ok for most people

/apps/compiz/plugins/blur/screen0/options/alpha_blur_match

[lagorgy]

Just set this value to something like type=normal you can put any types of match you like. type=normal will just match all normal windows and should be ok for most people

/apps/compiz/plugins/blur/screen0/options/alpha_blur_match

:D nice, thx, it´s working great

[fldc]

Just set this value to something like type=normal you can put any types of match you like. type=normal will just match all normal windows and should be ok for most people

/apps/compiz/plugins/blur/screen0/options/alpha_blur_match

Why do this make things so much slower compared to using blurset on my konsole window? Nothing else seem to be using blur.

[mikedee]

Just set this value to something like type=normal you can put any types of match you like. type=normal will just match all normal windows and should be ok for most people

/apps/compiz/plugins/blur/screen0/options/alpha_blur_match

Why do this make things so much slower compared to using blurset on my konsole window? Nothing else seem to be using blur.

There must be a problem somewhere, I think window matching can help though. If you only want to blur under your konsole then change type=normal to class=Konsole

We are just putting together better window matching so hopefully that will help in the future.