Rendering speedup with openGL

[Nasenbaer]

(This is allready on our Roadmap in the wiki, but I add it here, to make it more visible.)

A rendering speedup with OpenGL should be implemented. This will higher the fps enormously and (as soon as "max fps" is implemented) will spare CPU work.

A good way to show the difference is the Siedler 2.5 RTTR project (http://siedler15.ra-doersch.de/), who implemented OpenGL and have a really high fps if OpenGL is switched on - and a low if switched off.

[Nasenbaer (nasenbaer)]

perhaps a place to start for the brave one who implements this feature:
http://www.libsdl.org/cgi/docwiki.cgi/Using_OpenGL_With_SDL

[dwarik (dwarik)]

i'll be working on this

[SirVer (sirver)]

I Investigated OpenGL for widelands before. When using it, we loose our
cuddly 2D look and get smeary, blocky, triangely 3D Surfaces. I vote for
having this feature, but the _optics must not change_. Widelands should not
be another 3D game.

[dwarik (dwarik)]

1) i have no intention for widelands to become a 3d game
2) i don't want to actual render 3d objects
3) my understanding is that some of the smearyness will go away when (properly) implementing double buffering
4) all i want to do is exactly what we do now (render the same images in the same places etc), only use the hardware acceleration that opengl might provide
5) i'll make this feature optional, our current 2d stuff will stay as is and fully functional
6) Sirver: got any of your investigative work still hanging around somewhere? would be at least usefull to see what exactly i shouldn't make widelands look like :-)

[Timowi (timo-wingender)]

I already have a branch with OpenGL rendering working. (At least on some machines). I'm currently working on seperating the software rendering and openGL code.

[SirVer (sirver)]

Released in build16-rc1