Geminus screen acceleration software released
Neil Spellings
software for IYONIX pc is now available for purchase and download. The
price for all the acceleration features is £40+vat (£47)
Since the beta release last month, we've tuned the caching algorithm and
added a new acceleration feature - DMA transfers for "Tinct" plotted
sprites (as used by Netsurf and Firefox) plus fixed the reported bugs.
The impressive list of "real world" things that Geminus now accelerates
are:
-Drawing window background textures.
-Drawing window furniture.('Toolsprites')
-Sprite plotting, especially large sprites such as backdrops and camera
images. Geminus uses DMA hardware to plot the sprite 3-5 times faster
than the OS sprite plotting routines can manage.
-Sprites are remembered in off-screen video memory, so that they can be
plotted again much more quickly. This helps large Filer windows and
applications that use a lot of sprites such as !Paint.
-Rendering of web pages in NetSurf and Firefox via Tinct (uses the DMA
acceleration for large images/pages, and faster sprite plotting for
rotated/swapped modes)
-Redrawing of window as other windows are moved around. Window contents
are remembered (cached) in the extra video memory on the graphics
card(s) so that they can be redrawn much more quickly when another
window is moved across them.
This makes complex applications such as ArtWorks, Oregano2, PDF,
NetSurf and others much smoother in use.
-Selecting rows and columns in !Paint.
(rectangle inversions are performed using the hardware and are hundreds
of times faster than doing them in software with RISC OS 5)
-Drawing horizontal and vertical lines (eg. window borders).
Geminus (screen acceleration) needs no additional hardware or graphics
cards - we use the features of the IYONIX hardware and existing NVidia
graphics card supplied with every IYONIX. If you are lucky enough to own
Geminus (multi-monitor) with two graphics cards, the screen
acceleration and caching code makes full use of all available cards.
Geminus (screen rotation) users will also notice a significant
performace boost offered by the caching and acceleration features in
rotated screen modes.
Existing Geminus users may upgrade to the latest code (v1.10) for their
respective versions for free which has had improvements in memory usage
(saving 16Mb)
If you have already downloaded the beta release, we have upgraded this
to the full demo version which you may just re-download from the "my
software" page. We've also made sure that everyone has at least one
download credit available if you had previously run out. As with all our
software, the demo version is fully featured but time limited allowing
you to fully try out the software before purchasing.
If you already own one of the other Geminus features, you may add the
screen acceleration from the same "my software" page - just click on the
"add features" link next to the copy you wish to upgrade.
New users can purchase any combination of features - multi-screen
driver, screen rotation and acceleration; according to your needs.
The release notes and online documentation have also been updated.
The URL is http://buyit.spellings.net
[Notes to Editors
Geminus is a suite of graphical extensions to RISC OS 5. At present,
three of the five planned features are available. Future releases will
add software RGB swapping - removing the requirement for modified
graphics cards and needed for DVI output, and low colour screen modes
(currently provided by Aemulor Pro, but will be moved into Geminus)]
Regards,
Neil
--
Web design, hosting and domain registration
http://www.spellings.net/
Hardware store
http://buyit.spellings.net
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