Re: [Update REQ 5126]: Geomview on SGI R3000's

["Stuart Levy" <slevy>]

> ... however, there is a problem when I run Geomview on our
> SG Iris Indigo R3000's. The Camera window display is incorrect - objects
> aren't shaded properly and it's as if the visual display type is
> incorrect.

Hi -- sorry to be so slow responding to your note.  Does your R3000 Indigo
have the 8-bit Entry graphics (hinv reports "Graphics board: LG1")?
If so, other people have reported similar problems, but we're at a loss to
help as nothing similar happens here, even on our own R3000 Indigo with Entry
graphics running 4.0.5F.

We did hear from one such person that the problem disappeared when they
upgraded to Irix 5.2.  This may well be an unappealing option, though.

One thing might be interesting to try: type "vs" with the cursor in the
camera window.  This switches the display to single-buffered mode,
so it should be using an 8-bit, not a 4-bit visual.
On our 8-bit machine this reduces the dithering artifacts dramatically,
though presumably you're seeing some deeper problem.  Type "vs" again
to switch back to double-buffered mode.

Another possibly interesting thing: what does "xwininfo" say about the
visual type assigned to the camera window?  Use xwininfo -tree and click on
the Camera window, then xwininfo -id and the window-id of the camera's child;
this is the actual graphics window.  On our Entry-graphics machine,
the child window is a 4-bit or 8-bit PseudoColor (not TrueColor!) window
in double- and single-buffered mode respectively.

Yet another bizarre possibility: since GL seems to use pseudocolor
windows for RGB-mode GL programs in Entry graphics, the loaded colormap
should make a difference.  Our X server is running with options:
    /usr/bin/X11/Xsgi -gamma 1.700000 -bs -c -pseudomap 4sight 

Do you see that by running "ps -ef | grep Xsgi"?  The server options seem to
be determined in /usr/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers.

    Stuart