Irrlicht Engine

Hi, I come from gp32x forums. About 2 months ago somebody (I think he was Hybrid) said that he was going to port Irrlicht to Pandora (a open source Linux based handheld with OpenGL ES 2.0 hardware accelerate support that will be launched in 2 or 3 months). After that, we haven't had news about that port.

The seller was going to sell units for developers before the "official release", so they can start to port their stuff to that new handheld, so I would like to know if that person has one of those "developers units" and has started to make that port. I want to make a game for Pandora and if Irrlicht were ported, that would be the 3D Engine I use.

I have another question about this engine: is it possible to have two windows with a different viewport in each window? if it is possible: can I show one window on PC Monitor and the other window on TV-out?

Thanks.
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PD: Before writing this post I've done a forum search for "opengl es 2" and for "Pandora" and I haven't found any relevant result. Sorry if this has been discussed before.

Several people took on the ogl-es 1.x port, which does work now pretty well on the iPhone. The ogl-es2 port still suffers from bad shaders. I didn't find the time to really do much of the shader stuff, yet. Currently it only uses some "temporary shader replacements", i.e. not properly working ones which only do some basic shading. However, up to this it's working quite ok. At least with the ogl-es emulation. I didn't get any mail or post about the possibility to get a dev-unit, so I guess it's just too few that have been made. But I'll try to get one of the first end-user units and will show the results of what is working at that time.

It is normal that the ogl-es 1.x port had higher priority than the ogl-es 2.x port: the iPhone is very popular and (unlike the Pandora) it's being sold at this moment. I'm glad the ogl-es 2.x port hadn't been forgotten. As I haven't had any news about it, I thought it might had been canceled.

Several weeks ago, Craigx wrote a post in his forum asking everybody interested in a "developer unit" to send him a private message or e-mail (I am also waiting for one of the first "end-user units"). It doesn't matter that the ogl-es 2.x port just works ok (but not perfect) at this moment, I only wanted to be sure Irrlicht will be ported to Pandora before starting to program my game.

About the other question... is it possible (in PC) to have two windows with different viewports (probably in different screens)? In the Pandora version of my game, I would like to show 3D graphics in TV and using the Pandora touch-screen as a minimap. This is not "a must", but it would be an awesome feature.

This basically depends on how you can access the two screens. It's probably only possible with two "windows", while Irrlicht usually assumes that everything is on one window (e.g. for a large desktop spanning multiple displays), which works with all drivers.
You do have the option to do it otherwise with d3d driver ATM, by giving the render context in the endScene call. You basically pass a render context, and the final render goes into that frame. With OpenGL is currently not possible, because the context change has to be made in advance, before *any* rendering takes place. Hence, the parameter must be moved to beginScene and the OpenGL implementation must be made. Then, you simply create two contexts, one one each display. When drawing your scene you do a beginScene for one window, and another one for the second. Works in theory at least

Hi we would be interested in helping develop open gl es 2.0 for irrlicht. We are using the beagle board right now though, not the pandora console.

That said do you know where the open gl es 1.0 port for irrlicht is. I know its on the svn but I can find it. Is it included in the standard irrlicht package?

Right now we are developing on Linux Hasty, the port should work on that right?

Check SVN path branches/ogl-es

Hello,

I've checked out the opengl-es branch of irrlicht, built it with the iphone sdk and still see nothing when the app is run. Even simplest example does not display anything. What I did wrong? I tried it only with simulator - will the real device help?

Right now you need to set up a device on your own and pass that via the WindowID pointer. At least when using the iPhone SDK. The other OpenGL-ES implementations can be used just as plain Irrlicht, and the iPhone way will be updated anytime soon by FuzzySpoon.

thanks. I'll try this tomorrow

hm, I've tried but it still didn't help. I create new UIWindow, pass it to the medified createDevice() and it seems fine. The IrrIphoneView is attached to this window, but when I call makeKeyAndVisible on window it crashes. I'm not sure if all the internals are created by IrrLicht. Should I create anything more?

I guess I will have to wait until official release...

I also suggest you to wait for the official release rather than doing efforts for it. Or try to find the person who already made it so he can give you the complete guide with pictures or the ready made to you.

probably will have to optimizations for arm processors, such as using NEON for the math, and compiling with the right arm compiler. Might not have to though..

Just wondering whether anyone ever suceeded porting even a "Hello World" to Pandora?

Yes, there have been some screenshots from sydney on the Pandora, via Irrlicht. Since we will also get ogl-es 2.0 it should become even better inthe near future. I did not set up the toolchain, yet, though.