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Rudolf updated his blog with news that the next version, Alpha 2 is almost ready for release, which will happen together with the 2D driver version 0.53.

During these latest developments, Rudolf has managed to speed up things quite a bit:
  • "First I moved the wait-for-engine-idle required 'action' to the correct 'spot' in time (to just before showing the rendered frame onscreen). For more info about this, read the previous newsitem for driver-aspects"
  • "Secondly, I removed a 'fault' from the 3D driver forcing the cache flush on starting DMA: I forgot to update the 3D driver to the already updated 2D driver method (ah: stupid of me to forget!). This fix proved to me beyond any doubt that reading a register on the graphicscard is definately done faster than reading a RAM location on the card."
  • "The third update is a optimisation really: instead of always loading the engine with the 'current' 3D 'state', only load it when it's required. This third thing alone is responsible for a 10 to 15% speedup. While this was in place in the UtahGLX driver originally, I had disabled this because it has some consequences I didn't yet grasp in the beginning: If any acceleration command is executed in the 2D driver the 3D state needs to be reloaded. On top of this, the same applies when multiple 3D accelerants are active simultanously (naturally). All in all, some synchronisation is needed between them all for this (this is the last thing I am working on before the alpha2 release, although the driver won't be ready to run in multiple instances for now.)"
As usual, Rudolf keeps doing great work on this, and you and I know it that he'll keep improving it as development moves forward. So click the link above and read the full update, complete with benchmarks table.

Update: WOW! That's all I can say about the info that Rudolf just posted here at ICO, in the comments section... read and be amazed:

"1. Preliminary testing got my teapot up to 650-700fps now!"
"2. I just 'saw' Q2 rendering at 230fps(!!!) in 1024x768x32!"

Update 2: False alarm it seems :) But still, Rudolf is able to run Q2 at 108fps (115 max), which is still a very good number. Keep it up Rudolf.

Update 3: The final results are in, and they are:

1 - Teapot 550-600fps (stable)
2 - Quake2: 112 fps (stable)

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Over at Xentronix's site, they made the announcement that, with ZETA R1 gone Gold, they themselves are approaching that status and Refraction is getting closer and closer to being released.

So with that in mind, they are now just "leaning up the last pieces of code and are working hard to write the documentation and some tutorials on how to use our photo imaging software." The release of Refraction should happen in the upcoming weeks, but details for now are scarce.

They posted a request:
In order to tune the documentation and tutorials to the need of our current and future customers, we would appreciate as much feedback on this as possible. We are also in need of royalty free photo material for use in our documentation and tutorials.
On a related note, their forums are now back up, ready for use.

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The Japanese usergroup has published video recordings taken at the Linux world, Tokyo earlier this month, done by Paulo Motoyama, of the BUG-Br (though he lives in Japan). The recordings are unedited and you sadly have to look at some linux products before getting to the part about yellowTAB and ZETA.

The video file is 120 MB big, so please share it over BeShare to save JPBE's bandwidth. A special thanks goes to the following members of the Japanese usergroup for making this possible: KiM, sawada, momoziro, Koki.

Update: Thanks to Krobi from Power-Dreams for providing us with an alternative link to download the video, this time without the Linux stuff in it. Click here, scroll a bit down to the first item and click "Jetzt Downloaden". Thanks Krobi.

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yellowTAB has just announced a deal with the chain of shops K&M, so that ZETA will be available in all 24 branches throughout Germany. A very good deal, making ZETA even more visible to the general public.

And they also announced that ZETA should start to be distributed to the shops in a week or so. Great news. And of course, as we mentioned here before, don't forget to check out their map with the location of retailers in Germany where you can purchase your copy.

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Il Tuo Sistema has published what probably is the biggest collection of BeOS, ZETA and Haiku wallpapers.



Some of them should be well known for most of us, having used BeOS and now ZETA, but there will definitely be some wallpapers that you haven't seen before.

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HaikuFox 0.3.0 is now available. I've incremented this to the "0.3.0" tag because it represents a major review and rework of many of the internal theme elements. Most noteably, the subtle purple tint to the theme's grey color elements are gone. This was a great match for BeOS R4.5, but has always looked out of place on R5 and later versions of the OS. This version incorporates the "house" icon as selected here at ICO - thank you for your input! Many other changes, too. Check out the change log and update your Firefox theme here.

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The second edition of PartyZIP@ is almost here, only 3 weeks away. As last year, BeOS and ZETA will be represented, but this time there'll be a treat, Axel D?rfler will be present to give a presentation on Haiku. But better than me to tell you all about it is Bencer, so I won't keep you waiting and post his letter to the community:
The second edition of PartyZIP@ is almost here, it will be celebrated in Monz?n (Huesca, Spain) from July 8th to July 10th. At the event there will be conferences and workshops about very different topics in the fields of technology and free software.

The infrastructure will allow a network for 120 machines, an Internet connection of 20 Mb/s and WiFi covers the grounds. Also, there will be game tournaments and contests inside of the LAN party with prizes for the best players. The BeOS/Haiku world will also be present in the event with a talk from the german developer Axel D?rfler about the project where he will present and explore its internals.

If you are comming from abroad, please feel free to contact bencer at bencer at cauterized dot net for more information.
So head over to the site and browse around. Don't forget to check the presentations page to check out the details on Axel's. Oh, and there'll be a swimming pool!

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It's proving to be a fruitfull end of week for yellowTAB, and only one day after announcing R1 achieving Gold status, they present us with a new application which comes with R1: Video Editor.





This app has been developed in-house, and takes full advantage of the ZETA media kit, along with of course, the usability, speed and stability that we all know so well. In it, you can mix your videos, add sound, titles, effects and transitions, all easily done only with a couple of clicks. It's an application that was sorely missed in ZETA and it's quite welcomed.

To read the full announcement and a small tutorial, head over to yellowTAB.

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It's official! The time everyone and their dogs have been waiting for is here: ZETA R1 is now Gold.

yellowTAB has just announced on their site that the final internal version is the golden master and will be sent of to the production company to start the pressing. Here's a small sample from the press release:
Since CeBIT in March, we have made over than 2,300 changes to ZETA throughout the system including important improvements to the kernel and drivers further improving hardware support (SiS chipsets, WLAN) but also to include a completely new printing system. ZETA users no longer have to rely on legacy or compatibility modes when printing with modern printers but will be using up to date and fully featured drivers.
So head over there, read all about it and know that you can start pre-ordering your own copy.

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Ubermeister Rudolf Cornelissen has once again updated his 3D Blog and this time he brings us some more juicy benchmarks of Quake2 running on different hardware combinations.

He's using driver version 0.49 (still in the repository only) which of course uses DMA, which speeds things up. Good news for the NV18 (GF4 MX flavours), these cards are now up to speed again, no more need to hide from your neighbours in shame. So head over there and read it all, it's big and as always, it's interesting.