2416, alpha blended icons, drop shadows, color depth

[Gambler FEX online 0]

what is is with this stuff?? If I boot with 16 bit color I can see the drop shadows but there is no alpha blending on the icons. If I then change to 32 bit I get back the alphablending on the icons. Now, if I restart again and it boots with 32 bit colors the icons are alphablended but the drop shadows are gone!

 

And also, the fading animation is noticably jerkier/slower. It seems there is some alphablending accelleration problems with my geforce 2?

 

geforce2

7.17 or 6.49 drivers

[jdulmage 0]

doubt it, your running a beta here by the way, incase you didn't realize that one

[EddiE314 0]

oh i'm hell on people that ***** about a beta.

[miku 0]

What is ALPHA BLENDING.

 

CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN TO THE NON BETA PEOPLE HERE..

 

ARC

[Hit 0]

In simple terms it's what allows you to see "transparent" things such as windows (linux telnet windows come to mind) or icons. In Quake3, for example, this is used to show a glass or water surface.

 

In more technical terms, it's the application of one graphics texture onto another, with the exception that the second texture you apply has an "alpha" value associated with it. This means then when the graphics hardware is "adding" the textures together, not all of the second texture's pixels cover up the first. Hence you get a nice transparency effect.

 

Windows2000 has had this capability for almost any graphics object. Although not many programs are written to take advantage of this currently, you can be sure you will see more in the future.

 

[This message has been edited by Hit (edited 02 February 2001).]

[Gambler FEX online 0]

YEs, good explination Hit, though a little complex for a novice person (like me). Anyway what it is used for here is making the edges of icons anti-aliased, by merging the edges with the background. Here is an example:

 

 

 

I just made it now with PaintshopPro. But the problem is with my graphics card I belive. The card (a geforce 2) also has problems with stardocks windowsFX, which adds shadows to windows. WindowFX dont work with geforce2, so...

 

Hardware accellerated alphablending dont work with a geforce2 in 32bit it seems, if I boot to 32bit color the fading menus are slow. if I turn back to 16bit they are still slow, but if I BOOT to 16 bit color the fadings are fast, AND with shadows.

 

If I then (while still in whistler) change to 32bit color mode, the icons gets alphablended and the menu fadings are still smooth.

 

I belive it is in the drivers of my geforce2, since other people its fine with (one from my ICQ contacts) and it works with old drivers (5.30 reference).

 

[This message has been edited by Gambler FEX online (edited 09 February 2001).]