Graphical display menu using regular AM themes

[tipoto]

I have installed Attract-Mode 2.0 on my Odroid XU4, but because it's an arm system, all the new Hyperspin features don't work properly on it (themes are completely broken, swf files can't be read...).

Would it be complicated, now that the structure has been implemented in AM, to add the option to create a graphical Display Menu using regular Attract-Mode themes?

[omegaman]

For windows, release candidate #1 was broken, so release #2 fixed it. Far as I know, it shouldn't matter if it's arm based. Odroid runs Linux too, right?   

[tipoto]

Yes, I use a Jessie based image, but arm hardwares use OpenGLES instructions instead of OpenGL, which are different, some instructions can be translated to GLES but not all of them, it's why not everything is possible (I guess you know that better than me actually ).

Something I never mentioned yet on the forum (since I'm not really working on this part yet in my project), but most of the fancy themes don't work properly on my XU4 (and I had the same type of problem on my RPI2), especially with the latest animation functions. Sometimes, just loading a module in a layout, makes it extremely laggy. I basically have to create my own layouts with my own system of animation to be able to have a cool animated layout. I managed to use the wheel system that was in the robospin layout (an old version of it), but that's pretty much it.
Another example, on the Game Station HD theme, the main snapvideo artwork doesn't play the video (I think the thumbnails on the right play fine though), but other themes recently updated have this problem too with the videos. I have to investigate to isolate the problem, but like I said I'm not working on this part for the moment, I just did one advanced layout to make sure it was possible to do something elaborate, but then I stopped working on that.
Here is the test layout I've done (created on my RPI2, but works perfectly on my Odroid too), you can go directly to 0:50 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNVuFV9mfZA

But once I will be more focus on that, I will maybe open issue tickets about these problems, hopefully it can be fix.
However I think it could be a good idea anyway to be able to use regular AM layouts to populate the display menu.

 

[omegaman]

I understand what you are saying and I might be off point here - but the animation module should still work if your using openGLES. I can run animated layouts on my RPI2 and nitro_widget is using a vertical layout that uses the animate module on his RPI1.

I am curios though if the openGLES driver for Odroid accesses the GPU for drawing in the same way it does for the raspberry. You would think it would be the same. But, who knows, that is above my pay grade.

I was looking through some OPENGL forums on the major differences between OPENGL vs OPENGLES and came across this and thought I would share it to provoke some more discussions on the topic:

When you use a normal opengl, you can use glBegin and glEnd to enclose the geometry primitives you need to draw, but when using Opengl ES,                                                                             you will have to use vertex buffers. I guess this is for performance concerns.

Currently, there are two Opengl ES versions, the 1.1 version can only support the fixed rendering pipeline, while the 2.0 version supports glsl shader. However it has no fixed rendering pipeline. In other word, you will have to write your own shader for everything.
                                                                     
Hopefully, some veteran Linux users can weigh-in as well. I'm actually interested in this topic because I want to try the Odroid-C2 that is going on sale in march for myself.

[tipoto]

I will test again the layouts tonight and give a feedback. I'm curious to see if anybody manage to load any hyperspin themes on a RPI1 or 2, the better I got was to load the themes but the screen was almost completely black, with just the "press start button" displayed and I couldn't use the graphical display menu, I had to turn it off.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I remember that when I installed AM, the module folder was empty and I had to download the files manually, maybe I picked a wrong version of them... I have to double-check this.

Also when I installed AM 2.0, there was no Loader folder and when I created the directory structure for Hyperspin, I had to name the main menu "Menu" instead of "Main Menu", which means there are a bunch of difference between the Windows version and the "ARM" Linux version, I don't know how it is with the regular Linux version.