bjz/gfx-rs

A lightweight graphics device manager for Rust

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@bjz I believe cameras, shadows, and culling can be left to a higher level engine outside of the renderthread, but I'll need to think this through...

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

sure thing

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@bjz We need to define the scope of each layer. For example, device layer just abstracts over API and potentially does some caching to reduce number of calls to that API

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

yep, agreed

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

Render layer scope may be to translate high-level concepts (meshes, target sets, programs, render states, environments) into sets of device commands, potentially sorting the draw calls on the way.

@bjz if we want to make render layer aware of the cameras and culling, this would require us to lock on a particular spatial structure, which is the last thing we need for gfx-rs. I believe the spatial stuff is high-level, and should live (and be married to) physics and skinning.

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

cool

could there be multiple render layers?

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@bjz do you mean gfx-rs to provide an even higher level of abstraction with the spatial system of sorts (or at least templated by it)? I see no reason why it shouldn't be possible, and I'd definitely like it. It is a bit far from where we are though...

@bjz I got a question. It should be forbidden for the device module to use anything from render, right? I'm trying to figure out where the mesh structure (and such) should be defined.

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

do you mean in reference to my previous comment, or in relation to my question about cameras etc?

hmm

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

My second (last) question is unrelated to the discussion. It's just something I'm working on right now.

brendanzab @bjz is thinking

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Is the mesh structure going to be user facing?

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

I think mesh handle is what user is going to see, not the structure.

It is still a question whether we should expose everything to the user on demand. Would anyone want to know the number of vertices, for example, of the mesh? I think we should do our best to completely abstract that.

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Yeah, travis is being weird with my latest makefile :( https://travis-ci.org/bjz/gfx-rs/builds/28138624#L392-L401

it is working for you locally right?

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

My local command appears to be different from Travis one:

rustc -L deps/gl-rs/lib -L deps/glfw-rs/lib --out-dir=lib --cfg=gl --cfg=glfw -O src/gfx/lib.rs

@bjz Should I remove the source branch (cleanups for the matter) after accepting your PR?

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

sure

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

So what was the problem with Makefile? You got the fix?

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

@kvark it is different because the lib dir variable is constructed before the submodules have been inited

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@bjz Do Rust coding guidelines forbid ":" alignment in struct definitions? Like that:

struct Foo {
    let x         : int,
    let y_long    : int,
}

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

yeah, normal rust code seems to just have foo: bar

we will be getting rustfmt at some stage, when pcwalton gets around to finishing it

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

That would be greatness

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

yayy

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@bjz thanks! I'm glad you got that sorted out

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@bjz about usage of Future for calls. Can we really do that? I mean, the future must be holding the stream somehow, so we will not be allowed to do anything while it's alive.

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@bjz are you still around? have a look at #17

alright, see you tomorrow then

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

@kvark still reading your patch :)

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@bjz I'm not sure what to do with the Attribute::name field. Making at a String would make it impossible to have a static ATTRIB_EMPTY, which helps a big deal of initializing the Mesh. It'd be nice to have a fixed-capacity string that is not owned.

@bjz there is also a problem of how the user is going to specify all these attributes at once. Currently the fact that we have a single attribute with 2 components and stride of 8 is hard-coded.

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

yeah I was wondering about that hard coded bit

you could have an Option<String>

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@bjz Actually, String is only optional in a sense that all other fields are. I.e. with a fixed MAX_ATTRIBUTES vector there are those that are supposed to be empty, and that's not very idiomatic... I'm leaning towards Vec<Attribute> or even Vec<AttributeHandle>, where real attributes are placed sequentially in memory. I'll keep thinking about it...

bbl

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@bjz Ok, #18 is the last one before I stop and think about simplifying the layer structure. There is too much craft, and I have to add even more when implementing missing functions.

Chip Collier

@photex

heyo @kvark @bjz I think it's safe to say that @kvark is in a better position to talk about any of this than I am at this point.

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@photex how are you feeling now? I'm not opposed to give a talk, but will need to catch up on the architecture, and also find what to talk about (i.e. how exactly Rust helps us to do the magic)

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

Actually, I'm not sure if this talk was even meant to be about architecture:

how we're structuring Voyager and hoping to use the most of Rust to accomplish our goals.

We can always change the title though.

Chip Collier

@photex

@kvark yeah I hadn't actually intended to get very technical

so flowcharts maybe, and mostly explain our goals and essentially tell everyone that I'd love to hear their ideas

but, really wanted to get a simple thing running

a procedural landscape :)

and then I got really sick for like two weeks :worried:

Dzmitry Malyshau

@kvark

@photex that sucks... worst time to get sick (don't you see, Nature? we've got some stuff to do instead of fighting you!).
According to your critera, we don't have the feature set to actually make this talk... A procedural landscape would definitely be nice, but we are not there yet. We'll need to figure out how shader parameters are handled, at least. Not to mention that your landscape generator is closed source...

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