As mentioned earlier, HP VMX and the Starbase on X11 (SOX11)
drivers are similar in that both provide Starbase functionality
in the X11 client-server model. This section will briefly compare
and contrast the two drivers.
Functionality |
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The most significant difference between HP VMX and SOX11 is
that PowerShade is supported on HP VMX, but is not
supported on SOX11. This results in a much richer set of Starbase
functionality for HP VMX, including lighting, shading, and hidden
surface removal. These features are not supported
on SOX11.
Performance |
|
Performance differences also exist between HP VMX and SOX11.
These differences stem from the differences in implementation of
the two drivers. HP VMX renders to a VM frame buffer and then displays
the contents of that buffer to an X11 window. SOX11, on the other
hand, implements each of the supported Starbase output commands
directly through Xlib. SOX11 does not use a VM frame buffer.
In general, simple, sparse images may be faster with SOX11
since less work is involved in implementing a few primitives via
Xlib than displaying an entire VM frame buffer. Wireframe performance,
for example, may be better in some cases on SOX11 than with HP VMX.
SOX11 performance is significantly less than HP VMX for many
other operations, and as discussed above, SOX11 supports fewer Starbase
features than HP VMX.
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