GZigZag and OpenGL

[Tuomas Lukka <lukka@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Being somewhat disappointed with the graphical performance of Java,
I decided to try OpenGL acceleration to make GZigZag somewhat smoother.
I've currently made one test program which plots over 5000 characters
on the screen and I'm getting a very respectable frame rate on quite old
3D cards I have (Matrox G400 and ATI Rage Mobility). The test simply
does some billowing which looks VERY smooth.

So I think OpenGL is what we need. 

We can do smooth gradients, smooth scaling of text, rotated text,
alpha blending and many other graphical things while maintaining a usable
frame rate.

I really should have realized before that 2D graphics accelerators are only
tuned for current systems and 3D is where the real action is for us (except
of course that we won't be using the 3D features of the 3D cards for realistic
3D but something entirely different).

The one problem is that someone needs to port the code to windows
(which shouldn't be too much of a problem as OpenGL support is there, too)
and that someone will not be me. Any volunteers?

Tuukka, Vesa, Tero, Janne: could you order one Radeon (7500 or 8500) for
Jyväskylä for trying out a really fast modern card?

	Tuomas