sQLux v1.0 (The Xmas Turkey)

[ones' complement]

Pi4 x11 excellent

Doubleplusgood !

(pulseaudio is taking 100% CPU leaving no time for sQLux to execute)

...also push a change that improves the situation on Pi0/Pi1 by completely disabling audio in SOUND = 0 in sqlux.ini

Linux audio, ugh.

[XorA]

The good news though is if someone can work out how to enable hardware GL on Pi3/Pi0v2 then they would also make very nice platforms for QL emulation!

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi

There seems to of been some talk about Open GL Hardware Acceleration on the Raspberry Pi Forum:

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=223592

Do not know if this helps.

[XorA]

Hi

There seems to of been some talk about Open GL Hardware Acceleration on the Raspberry Pi Forum:

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=223592

Do not know if this helps.

Unfortunately 4 years out of date, it seems the switch to Bullseye broke all the old info and anything older than Pi4 is just abandoned by Pi Foundation!

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi

There seems to of been some talk about Open GL Hardware Acceleration on the Raspberry Pi Forum:

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=223592

Do not know if this helps.

Unfortunately 4 years out of date, it seems the switch to Bullseye broke all the old info and anything older than Pi4 is just abandoned by Pi Foundation!

Sorry I did not look at the date.

I will do some reearch as I have 2 RPI 3Bs that seem a little slow on Bullseye, maybe the OpenGL acceleration would speed things up

[Exile]

The good news though is if someone can work out how to enable hardware GL on Pi3/Pi0v2 then they would also make very nice platforms for QL emulation!

I think the problem for the earlier Pis may be related to this:
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopi ... r#p1935911

On my Pi3b I used

Code: Select all

sudo raspi-config

to re-enable glamor (A8) and GL Driver (a2), under the advanced options sub-menu. After a reboot glxinfo reported that hardware acceleration was enabled, and glxgears ran at the right speed. I've not had time to explore the downsides of re-enabling glamor so far.
The same fix should work for a pi Zero 2.

[XorA]

The good news though is if someone can work out how to enable hardware GL on Pi3/Pi0v2 then they would also make very nice platforms for QL emulation!

I think the problem for the earlier Pis may be related to this:
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopi ... r#p1935911

On my Pi3b I used

Code: Select all

sudo raspi-config

to re-enable glamor (A8) and GL Driver (a2), under the advanced options sub-menu. After a reboot glxinfo reported that hardware acceleration was enabled, and glxgears ran at the right speed. I've not had time to explore the downsides of re-enabling glamor so far.
The same fix should work for a pi Zero 2.

Thanks, I enabled on Pi0 2 and it made the console and x11 versions of sQLux run at approx the same speed under gfx load!

[XorA]

A followup, if you follow @Exiles instructions to enable glamour on even older Pi versions such as Pi0 it will also bring the GFX output in x11 to the same speed as on the console! (disable audio on Pi0 though to prevent pulse taking 100% cpu).

With @Exiles help and patient testing we think we have been through all iterations of the code to find the fastest. Obviously being multi threaded it operates on multicore CPUs much better than single core. But I don't think its any slower than older versions on single core.

Back to the improvements

[XorA]

To prevent having to disable the excellent audio support on PiZero then the best way seems to be to just use apt to remove pulseaudio. Then sQLux will use ALSA without the insane CPU load of pulse.

Code: Select all

sudo apt remove pulseaudio

[XorA]

New features and coming thick and fast from @Exile.

This one is shader support that makes the uQlx output look much more like an old CRT screen (minus the smoke and nicotine haze of the 80s).

If anyone else writes any fun shaders they can also be added.

See the documentation for how to build/run as its not yet included in the standard build.