askins++at++hrlban1.aircrew.asu.edu
Wed, 14 Sep 94 16:23:42 MST
I would like to be able to perform (in real-time of course) various 2-D
transformations on the resulting rendered scene of a simulation. For
example, there are certain spatial deformations (emulating optical
distortions) that I would like to "view a simulation through". I won't go into
the various distortions I am interested in, but suffice it to say I don't believe
they could be performed with any kind of windowing/perspective set-up, but
could easily be done if the simulation imagery could somwhow be rendered
directly to part of texture memory, rather than the screen buffer, and then
applied to a mesh of 2-D polygons laid out with the correct distortions.
I've obviously thought of copying the contents of the back-buffer into texture
memory each frame, but I don't think this could be done at a rate even close
to real-time. (If I'm wrong please tell me!)
Is there any way the graphics pipe could be made to render directly to the
texture memory, rather than screen buffer (at the same speed)?
Also, I've thought about the possibility of a hardware solution. I know that
the Sirius video option allows video to be loaded directly into texture
memory, and as I have a 2-pipe system, I was wondering if there is
something similar to the Sirius that would allow me to load the screen buffer
of one graphics pipe into the texture memory of the other pipe. {I think that 2
Sirius boards (one on each pipe, with the output of one hooked to the input of
the other) would do this, but I think I would be limited to transferring a window
of NTSC resolution. I would need to transfer at least a 1024x1024 window.}
Are there any other boards on the market that would allow a transfer like
this? As I said, I would need to transfer a 1024x1024 window from the
screen buffer of one pipe to the texture memory of the other pipe, at 30-60
Hz. (Or possibly, transfer the screen buffer back into part of the texture
memory of the same pipe.)
I am working with a 2-pipe, Onyx RE2 with 16M texture memory, 8 R4400's,
and 256M memory.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Tim Askins
Univ of Dayton Research Institute
++at++ Armstrong Laboratory
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