>
>
>
>1) I've written graphics applications for DOS4GW & Windows (and some
>other out of date operating systems) but never linux. I know that
>even doing something as simple as setting up the resolution and
>plotting a single pixel on the screen can be a difficult thing to
>figure out when you are just getting familiar with doing graphics in
>a new environment. Would anyone happen to have a silly little plot a
>pixel program that runs in linux? (or know where I can find some
>code that would help?)
>
i'd start with glut. use the glut-functions to open your window and for
input handling,
raytrace your image into a memory region, and display that as a texture.
there should be some demo-code for such simple programs somewhere, though
i don't have them. its a little bit weird to use oepngl/glut for
displaying a raytraced
image, but glut has some nice set of very convenient functions.

the next step would be to use x-shared-memory images. you just raytrace
into the shared memory
of the x-server, and display the final image. however, opening windows
aso is
not really nice with x11. there should be some example code in almost
every x11-intro-book,
but again, i cant point you to one directly. if you don't find it
anywhere else, i might dig it out
from somewhere.
anyway, with x11 - _never_ try to set a single pixel (if you want to
finish in finite time),
always render to a buffer (image or texture) and put the whole thing on
the screen after its done.

>
>2) If I were to consider purchasing a new machine for this (gotta
>keep the cost low though), does it make sense to purchase one with
>multiple processors? I've written a parallel ray tracer using an SGI
>Origin so I know firsthand that you can get linear speedup with a
>properly load balanced scene. I also found that implementing task
>stealing continues this linear trend even with higher numbers of
>processors (32). The reason I'm still asking this question is, if
>the real bottleneck seems to be related to the memory fetches, and
>I'm planning on using the SSE, would multiple processors still give
>me a linear speedup on a shared memory architecture (the PC)?
>
well, for pcs, theres basically the quesion on dual vs single, your
unlikely to get more CPUSs....
and for our system, we get exactly the expected speedup. a dual-pc is
exactly twice as fast a single pc....
you have to take care of your datastructures though, in order not to
overload your caches.

>
>3) Does the Intel compiler have a good IDE? (Is the Windows version
>better/worse than linux for this?)
>
the linux ide is a command-line (not better nor worse than gcc) ;-)

>
>4) Is there a good profiler I can use with this? (Again, is the
>Windows version better/worse?)
>
there is vtune, which is supposed to be very good. there are many other
linux-tools, too,
though most are not very easy to use.
again, ides are virtually not available for linux. e.g. the ide for
vtune only runs on windows

>
>5) In general, for cross platform graphics development, what IS the
>best OS to develop in?
>
depends on personal belief. once you got used to linux, you don't want
any cross-platform
development any more, anyway ;-)
many people work under windows, though, because of the ide issues, and
because its easier to get
professional programs...

Ciao

Ingo

wald@...
http://www.openrt.de