From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,LOTS_OF_MONEY autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,548a224fd381d8f4 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news1.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!flph200.ffdc.sbc.com!prodigy.net!flph199.ffdc.sbc.com!prodigy.com!flpi107.ffdc.sbc.com!nlpi070.nbdc.sbc.com.POSTED!b5cf28ff!not-for-mail From: Dimonax Subject: Re: Programming graphic systems Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: <49f03485$0$2849$ba620e4c@news.skynet.be> User-Agent: Pan/0.133 (House of Butterflies) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 75.48.217.250 X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: nlpi070.nbdc.sbc.com 1240600972 ST000 75.48.217.250 (Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:22:52 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:22:52 EDT Organization: at&t http://my.att.net/ X-UserInfo1: SCSYQNON^JWKBPLZCZKB_\DAYR_@PAHICPQNNBPLAH[\BTUCCNSKQFCY@TXDX_WHSVB]ZEJLSNY\^J[CUVSA_QLFC^RQHUPH[P[NRWCCMLSNPOD_ESALHUK@TDFUZHBLJ\XGKL^NXA\EVHSP[D_C^B_^JCX^W]CHBAX]POG@SSAZQ\LE[DCNMUPG_VSC@VJM Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:22:52 GMT Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:5541 Date: 2009-04-24T19:22:52+00:00 List-Id: On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:27:59 +0200, Olivier Scalbert wrote: > Hello, > > When playing with my GPS, I was thinking of the beautiful graphic > systems used in safety critical environment (medical, aircraft, ATC, > ...). I assume lots of them must be written in Ada. I was asking myself > how are they programmed mainly at the graphic level. Does the > application part use a graphic toolkit provided by the graphic board > manufacturer or do you have to program all the graphic primitives > yourself in Ada (as Bresenham line algorithm, ...) and written to the > raster memory (which must be very cool!) ? > > Thanks for your info, > > Olivier Actually if you know how to write callbacks to a C API with Ada, then getting started isn't all that complicated. There are a few people even in this newsgroup that have written small graphics engines on the OpenGL API. However if you plan to utilize tasking and such for your programs, you'll need access to the technical documentation of your video hardware, since OpenGL isn't multithreaded and DirectX is pretty much a black box when it comes to serious graphics programming. You might find a graphics card vendor who's drivers also include non-standard support for tasks and threads, but it's unlikely. Of course I'm referring to the common hardware your likely to find at your local computer shop. The requirements for the big multimillion dollar flight sims are going to be completely different. I played with this a few years ago using a Matrox G400 video card and the documentation which, at the time, was freely available. It can be done, and done well, but it takes a lot of patience to get it running. Also if your running on Linux, you'll find the half-in kernelspace half- in userspace architecture infuriating(one reason I decided to write my own driver.) The best card to learn the ins and outs of this type of programming, with any language(not just Ada) is one where the tech docs are open. Lately ATI has been pretty fortcoming with thier tech docs, so I'd start with them. Freejack