The Mesa S3TC External Library Hits Version 1.0.0

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Mesa S3TC External Library Hits Version 1.0.0

For those that use libtxc_dxtn, the external S3TC library to Mesa to provide S3 Texture Compression support, version 1.0.0 is now available...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTE1OA

[DanL]

Will You Use It?

Hell yes. I'm not that much of a gamer, but I will start linking this into my mesa builds because I hate software patents. I will patiently wait for men in uncomfortable shoes to show up at my door because of this trivial infraction.

[crazycheese]

I don't understand the "risk".
If you purchase gfx hardware, that is capable of using it in the first place, it is already payed for it, no?

For developers there is a risk of course - do not compress into s3tc, it is patent garbage.

[ethana2]

I look forward to seeing this in Medibuntu repositories

[smitty3268]

I don't understand the "risk".
If you purchase gfx hardware, that is capable of using it in the first place, it is already payed for it, no?

For developers there is a risk of course - do not compress into s3tc, it is patent garbage.

You don't need the lib if all you're doing is passing the texture to the hardware. The whole point of it is that some of the stuff is done in software on the CPU.

[AHSauge]

Will You Use It?

Of course! Why wouldn't I do that? Unlike some other countries, software patents are not possible in Norway. Aka. for me there is no risk what so ever using this software library.

[oibaf]

Thanks Marek

There is a bit of confusion, however, on its availability. 1.0.0 is here:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~mareko/libtxc_dxtn/

Another updated tree (but still not 1.0.0 versioned) is here:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~cbrill/libtxc_dxtn/

Someone will use the first, some other one the latter and they could diverge in the future. Ideally these tree should be removed and the lib put at:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/
rather than in some user specific directory.

Then the following pages should be merged and updated.
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/S3TC
http://people.freedesktop.org/~cbrill/libtxc_dxtn/

[jakubo]

can anyone please specify some uses of this library?
are there windows games running in wine using it? are there many of them? what will be the effects/symptoms if missing this library?

[Chewi]

Unreal Tournament (Linux version) uses it. Can't remember any other native games off the top of my head.

I think some games will use it under Wine. A few games like Black & White still need an extra patch that the Wine devs are not willing to merge. This patch only came about very recently. I've been waiting for it for years.

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14939

[whitecat]

what will be the effects/symptoms if missing this library?

You don't have textures. Very funny !

Thanks for the S3TC works, this lib is important for many people in order to play games with Mesa drivers.