test-driving realtime-blur
From the “because we can”-department… comes this set of screencasts. The ogg-theora clip doesn’t fully show the nice blur in all it’s glory due to the compression. Try the avi-h.264 if you can for a more crisp view.
(click to play back, ogg/theora, ~970 KBytes)
(click to play back, avi/h.264, ~2.5 MBytes)
What you see is Ubuntu EdgyEft (therefore gnome 2.16), the new 1.0-9625 driver from nvidia (finally with native support for GLX_texture_from_pixmap) and the compiz-fork beryl. While the fragment-program based gaussian blur (using a 21×21 kernel btw) from the blurfx-plugin is not a productivity enhancer in any way (more a shameless mimicking of Vista’s areo-glass) it is a clear indicator that OpenSource is once more able to beat the proprietary solutions at their “own game”.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:02 am
It is ironic that you are using the word OpenSource while mentioning the proprietary nvidia drivers. If it doesn’t work with on a fully open system, then it is hurting Open Source.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:08 am
Yeah, but have you ever seen Ubuntu AIGLX for AMD64 packages? I got the new nVidia beta driver and wanted to check how AIGLX works, but … no packages
September 29th, 2006 at 11:04 am
While all these effects might indeed not be productivity enhancing, I do believe blur is necessary for transparency not being productivity reducing, so: Yay for blur!
September 29th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
The avi plays badly on VLC on windows…
September 29th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
Is it me, or is 1.0-9625 not available for download yet?
September 29th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
I tought it was motion blur but only after watching the clip I realized that you referred to the window background… Nice effect btw.
September 29th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
nice effect - but in a window without decoration the region 10px from the border looks bad due to the big kernel. Maybe using a \
September 29th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Where did you get those NVIDIA drivers???? I’m head over heels and trying to get them!
September 29th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
I think the blur in the console is a must have, good job.
September 29th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
@ Götz Wasck: With your attitude I really wonder why you didn’t complain about me also offering the non-free-format avi/h.264? I assume you are also of the opinion, that Fluendo is hurting OpenSource by developing a DVD-player software for linux, that will not be able to be totally free for known reasons (similar things could be said about flash, acroread, wifi firmware etc.). Until OpenSource is able to provide high-quality OpenGL 2.0/2.1 running on decent hardware, I’m glad to be able to have native solutions available that do so, even if they are proprietary. Imo these "proprietary compromises" are needed for OpenSource to succeed along the path to fully free systems. With the term OpenSource in my very blog-entry I was refering to compiz, beryl and all the plugins being written by the community. This is pretty obvious I think. Since I lack any gfx-hardware from intel I’m not able to test it on a fully FOSSy type of machine.
@ Craig: I’ve not seen an AMD64-version of nvidia 1.0-9625 driver yet.
@ Nelson: Hm, I’ve no clue why. It plays perfectly well on Linux with totem and vlc.
@ uwog: http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_linux_display_x86_1.0-9625.html
@ Danniele: The motion-blur works too. But it’s one of those pure show-off effects, which really is just for show-off. You cannot leave it on and keep using the UI in a reasonable way.
@ pascal: I do not have the problems you describe. There’s nothing in the clips which hints to something like you talk about. Where do you see the issue?
@ Rudd-O: see above
@ Ramsees: Oh, just to keep things clear and straight. I didn’t write anything of the involved blur-plugin code there.
September 29th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
That is sexy and a half.
September 29th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
> non-free-format avi/h.264?
This is a political matter, binary blobs are a technical matter. You can use free software to encode these formats.
-Richard
PS.: your captcha is almost unreadable, and after clicking the "new ID" button, the entry is lost.
September 30th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
I like the effect, but in some way is inconsistent.
This is one thing apple folks do very well, take the docker forct example, it’s allways icons over the background. They are some dock copies that fake transparency, so when you discover there is no real transparency the "it’s real" effect goes away.
Same with desktop flipping, you take the screen cube and just rotate it.("it’s real", I can do this with real things), compare with desktop flipping without this in witch only the person that give the command (imagine he is giving a presentation) knows what has happened.
Same with the clock, you use blur, but when you select something else, blur is gone, real effect fades at this moment.
Just an opinion.
P.D I cant read your captcha too.
Jose
October 1st, 2006 at 7:21 am
@craig: the nvidia driver don’t use aiglx…you just need xorg 7.1 and the driver, it has his own texture_from_pixmap implementation
@jose hevia: The blur don’t gone when you select something else, macslow is just using transparency while moving instead of make the window always transparent, so after the move is done they are still opaque and obviously there is no more blur, you can also make a window fully transparent and have your blur everytime…that’s a real transparency, a real blur, and a real cube…not some another faked stuff (like the cube while login on OSX or the transparency in xchat, gnome panels, some docks, etc..)
October 1st, 2006 at 11:57 am
I’m not sure motion blur is pure eye-candy. Things like scrolling text on the screen still need some guts to be handled continnuously. Sure things have improved over the time since those days we have algorithms wich implements smooth scolling wich helps out, but even if our boxes are able to spill out high frame rates the result still leaves to desire. I contrast we have cinematic motion blur gives you a relax-on-your-seat feeling with only 24 fps. Maybe this would be very cpu intensive but i’d be curious to see it in action to see what it looks like.
- Just my 2cents
P.s.: Burn that captcha!
October 1st, 2006 at 1:16 pm
How you get beryl to not disable blur when moving windows?
October 1st, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Hey, I’m on Edgy running beryl + nvidia beta drivers installed like it says here:
http://wiki.beryl-project.org/index.php/Install/Ubuntu/Edgy/nVIDIA
When I run cairo-clock I get a blank white squared window and this message flooding the terminal:
beryl: pixmap 0xa006e8 can’t be bound to texture
beryl: Couldn’t bind redirected window 0×360000d to texture
What’s up with that ? Any ideas ?
October 1st, 2006 at 4:06 pm
@macslow’s @craig reply: There is x86_64 versions of the driver, AFAIK they were released at the same time. http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_rel70betadriver.html I think Craig had the drivers anyway, just not the Xorg packages. I’m using the driver just now, but when I try to use it in non-Xgl mode I get the same problem as Nil Gradisnik
October 1st, 2006 at 7:31 pm
@reggaemanu: Yes it’s real stuff, what I wanted to say is that I prefer a not so strong change between blur and no blur. Only that having to retype everything from start because the captcha has removed it makes the second (or third,man is the only animal that…) type feel harder.
October 1st, 2006 at 11:02 pm
Götz Wasck: It is, or at least will very soon, be possible to do these using a fully open-source stack thanks to Intel\’s recently open-sourced drivers and GL work for their latest video hardware like X3000. There\’s no reason to wait until we actually get our hands on that hardware to begin working on these cool effects. Doing this on NVIDIA hardware is merely using the tools we have at the time. How do you think the original GNU code lke gcc and such were originally written? Before GNU had a Free compiler or a Free kernel, they were forced to develop them with the assistance of non-Free ones. Did that effort hurt Free or Open Source software? No, it did not.
October 3rd, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Nil Gradisnik: Set the width & height of cairo-clock to 255 (or any number not a power of 2) and see if that works. I had the same problem and solved it this way.
October 4th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Please help me!
What do I have to do to make cairo-dock stay on top of other windows?
October 6th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
@macslow: May I send you some simple code I have done from my "because I can depatment"? Maybe you find the idea useful for new things, maybe not .(Takes the SOHO sun image, makes transparent what is not the sun, and displays it with cairo, only a proof of concept)
October 6th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
@Sigmaris
Ha ha, no way… this works, thanks
October 7th, 2006 at 8:39 am
@piotr: Stick with gnome-dock and ask Karl Lattimer. cairo-dock was never meant to be used as an end-user program.
@jose hevia: Sure, go ahead.