We studied many new things from our open beta-test. Most our initial test team members (closed beta-test program) owns mid- or high-end video hardware (because it speed-ups today graphic processing tools such as Photosop or CaptureOne). For this hardware OpenGL works very good.
Unfortunately for us, majority of real users (not professional digital photographers who invest much in computer hardware) uses low-end or CPU-builtin GPUs. Drivers for these hardware are not optimized for OpenGL usage, because no one plays OpenGL games (or uses OpenGL CAD applications) on such hardware. So, yes, DirectX should be default option for FRV.
Unfortunately again, FRV requires up-to-date DX9 software (June-2010 DX9 is enough), but ever Windows 7 do not have DX9 so new (until 'recommended windows updates' are installed, this is non-default option for Win7, so most users do not install 'recommended' updates, only 'critical' ones are installed /and there are many non-updated Win7 installations too/).
So, we need to force DX9 upgrade on first FRV install. This is not good again, because Microsoft DXWebSetup (DX9 updater) requires internet connection *and* tries to install Bing toolbar until careful user removes checkbox (and, sure, there is no way to run DXWebSetup with this checkbox off by default).
We're working on it. We hope, we'll be able to deliver dual-mode version (DX9-OpenGL in single program binary) when GUI Toolkit we use (Qt) comes to 5.4 version (5.4-alpha was released this week, so 2-3 months and it becomes stable). We're working on not annoying user by DX9 reinstall when it not required. But all these little things requires extra development effort.
On the other side, OpenGL 2.1 (8 years old technology) *should* work on most today graphics software (the only exclusion is very old Intel 'chipset' GPUs). Unfortunately, it is not for many low-end graphics card. We know it now, after 4 months of open beta-test.
We studied much new things
We studied many new things from our open beta-test. Most our initial test team members (closed beta-test program) owns mid- or high-end video hardware (because it speed-ups today graphic processing tools such as Photosop or CaptureOne). For this hardware OpenGL works very good.
Unfortunately for us, majority of real users (not professional digital photographers who invest much in computer hardware) uses low-end or CPU-builtin GPUs. Drivers for these hardware are not optimized for OpenGL usage, because no one plays OpenGL games (or uses OpenGL CAD applications) on such hardware. So, yes, DirectX should be default option for FRV.
Unfortunately again, FRV requires up-to-date DX9 software (June-2010 DX9 is enough), but ever Windows 7 do not have DX9 so new (until 'recommended windows updates' are installed, this is non-default option for Win7, so most users do not install 'recommended' updates, only 'critical' ones are installed /and there are many non-updated Win7 installations too/).
So, we need to force DX9 upgrade on first FRV install. This is not good again, because Microsoft DXWebSetup (DX9 updater) requires internet connection *and* tries to install Bing toolbar until careful user removes checkbox (and, sure, there is no way to run DXWebSetup with this checkbox off by default).
We're working on it. We hope, we'll be able to deliver dual-mode version (DX9-OpenGL in single program binary) when GUI Toolkit we use (Qt) comes to 5.4 version (5.4-alpha was released this week, so 2-3 months and it becomes stable). We're working on not annoying user by DX9 reinstall when it not required. But all these little things requires extra development effort.
On the other side, OpenGL 2.1 (8 years old technology) *should* work on most today graphics software (the only exclusion is very old Intel 'chipset' GPUs). Unfortunately, it is not for many low-end graphics card. We know it now, after 4 months of open beta-test.
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Alex Tutubalin/FastRawViewer team