Stone knives re-chipped, bear-skins re-tanned

[fivemack]

Well, after asking on Usenet for a matrix library with redeeming features, I've at least got something working; the first eigenmode appears, resplendent and polychrome, rendered at forty frames a second.

It still takes several seconds to compute the shape of the eigenmode, mostly because I'm not using proper sparse-matrix algorithms; but I have a book of those freshly arrived from Amazon, and a couple of the matrix libraries with fewer redeeming features do seem to contain partial implementations.

I think there might be up to two orders of magnitude improvement available in the linear algebra; the display can't be much faster on this laptop, but with a bit of thought about getting triangles to share edges it should be possible to get a ten-fold improvement on the better video card on my desktop at home. Something to do around Christmas ...

It's not obvious how, or indeed if, I should distribute this; at the moment it's a 1.5MB executable that needs DirectX 9, so not even my housemates can run it, does anyone know how to build with the DX9 SDK a program that runs under DX8?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Is there any reason why your housemates installing DX9, and then that using the HAL/HEL features wouldn't work?
Some googling then wandering through MSDN suggests using QueryInterface from IUnknown to choose a specific version of an interface to use. This will presumably allow you to choose the DX8 version.
HTH HAND
baldy

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Or indeed why just 'getting them to install DX9' wouldn't work? I'm presuming that however whizzy your program is it isn't using pixel shaders or whatever other wizardry actually requires hardware/driver support in DX9...

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

This is almost worth recording for posterity: "Someone finds useful information on Usenet".