Lightsmark Updated to 2008, Adds Linux Support

Lightsmark, the popular OpenGL real-time lighting benchmark, has just seen a new release, which includes few new features, but many refinements. What is new is a faster engine, better image quality, a more stable score system and native support for 64-bit OS’. Most notable might be the addition of Linux support, both in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors.

Linux support isn’t as simple to get running as the Windows version, as a few dependencies are required. If you happen to run a Debian-based or Red Hat-based distro, the included script will attempt to install them for you. If not, you’ll have to rely on your package manager, or hunt down ‘libfreeimage3’, ‘libglew1.5’ and ‘libglut3’ yourself. In Gentoo, installing both ‘freeimage’ and ‘glew’ gave me all that I needed, so you can see if your package manager uses similar naming.

We are currently evaluating the prospect of including Linux-based benchmarks in our graphic card reviews, and if the latest Lightsmark proves to be a worthy benchmark after our in-depth testing, it will surely be included in our line-up.

Before Lightsmark, realtime global illumination was limited to small scenes, small resolutions, small speeds, specially crafted scenes with handmade optimizations. Lightsmark breaks all limits at once, running in reasonably sized scene (220000 triangles) in high resolution (1680×1050) at excellent speed (100-400fps). Lighting is computed fully automatically in original unmodified scene from 2007 game World of Padman.