Requested OpenGL enhancement in viewing/zooming into images

[Zooya]

Dear IrfanView Developer(s)!

I have been using IrfanView as my default picture viewer for years. I noticed that scrolling and zooming
into images during viewing (at most when View -> Display Options -> Resample is turned on) is pointlessly
very very slow, because it does the resampling softwarely, only by the CPU (I get 80-100% CPU this time), I guess.

Applications like PicGL and ShadeView do the zooming/scrolling by taking advantage of the video card 3D rendering capabilities
and the result talks for itself, it's fluent as hell, even with a 6-year-old video card.
But I wouldn't like to switch any of these applications, because on the one hand I love IView,
on the other hand they can do less things, they have less options (for example at batch conversion),
so I'm suggesting an implementation of a new feature which would enable IrfanView using OpenGL when
viewing, scrolling, zooming and doing some realtime manipulations with pictures and of course a
choice in the options if the user wants to take advantage of OpenGL rendering (resizing, resampling)
of pictures or use the (fallback) software method. I'm sure it's not just me who would be glad to
welcome this kind of feature.

Thanks in advance
Zooya

[Sam_Zen]

A nice idea. I guess OpenGL has been integrated in the OS since NT4.
And scrolling and zooming in IV is quite slow indeed (Of course, I have Resample enabled)
But OpenGL also can consume quite some power, so it depends on the hardware too, to get any advantage of it, or not.
So I agree, that it should be an option chosen.

[Goldentime]

This is a good idea, I think. Using OpenGL may make viewing and editing pictures more quickly.

[Zooya]

I'm glad you like the idea, but there is a little thing I just forgot, if OpenGL gets implemented, zoom should be fluent, because with hardware rendering this is possible in real time, so when using GL the "zoom step" option should be an option for "acceleration of zooming", which means how fast should it zoom in/out when holding the +/- key (this should be another change in - instead of pressing the +/- key time and time again, the user should be able to hold it in GL mode and get the fluent zooming in, like in applications mentioned in my first post).

[j7n]

It should not consume computing resources. Quite the opposite. Scaling of standard resolution videos was possible even on systems from 1999. It should be possible with stills. I don't need it but one might use it for viewing all pics full screen for example.

[Zooya]

Should take advantage wisely of the resources of the computer rather. Either it should or should not it does consume computing resource (mean resizing), aside from 100% of CPU on a P4/2.4GHz/1GRAM. Even the rundll32 method (default win img viewer) works faster, but still too far from "not too slow". Nowadays, most of the applications - in my opinion - waste performance for basically two reasons: either the code is not written correctly or it doesn't harness the resources of the computer. IrfanView should not be one of these applications, I mean it's not by other means, only the scaling of images is very slow. Other things are satisfying.

[Jesper T]

If you want to use OpenGL to resize the images it would probably be just as easy to use OGL for the entire rendering process (if HW acceleration is not available on a computer OGL will automatically change to SW rendering). The advantages has already been pointed out. Some disadvantages I can think of right away is that the quality might not be as good (depending on the specs of the user PC).

[Goldentime]

I don't know if the image size is limited by the graphics card or not. When I use ShadeView to view a image(3328*4992), it tells me that it's too large for my graphics card. Maybe it's just ShadeView's problem, because the PicGL can display it well.

[Jesper T]

Lots of graphic cards have limits on texture dimensions. And, though I think it is changed in newer specifications, OpenGL 1.x only supports image dimensions of 2^n. There are lots ways to work around this though. For example dividing an image into squares of say 256x256 pixels and putting them side by side would work (I did that with my old 3DFx Voodoo card which didn't support textures larger than 256x256). Then you would only be limited by system memory.

[Zooya]

Hey there after a year. Would this ever be considered to be implemented?

[kjbaumga]

I'm curious about this, too. If not Irfanview, I wish some really good image viewer would take full advantage of openGL. I've searched for an app to do this, and I found PicGL and Piclighter, which are okay. I wasn't able to find shadeview, the site seems to be down. But the first two apps give just a hint of what I think openGL is capable of. I love the smooth pans and zooms! They make image viewing a lot more enjoyable. To me, that's huge, because that's what it's all about in the end: the experience of actually viewing the image!

At least when it comes to panning and zooming, these openGL apps make most existing image viewers seem outdated to me. I believe all image viewers will eventually have this capability.

I think PicGL and Piclighter only scratch the surface of what this technology can do. The Google screensaver (GPhotos) is another example. I don't know if it uses openGL, but the effects seem very similar. What's cool is to imagine being able to manually control some of the effects that the Google saver seems to perform automatically using formulas.

[stringZ]

I would like to see this feature too (after three years). Why was it forgotten?
Will there be any feature like this soon?