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Creating a Black Hole With OpenGL
There's a cool article on O'Reilly Net concerning using 3D graphic software to emulate black holes. Interesting article - with a lot of information about OpenGL and what you can do.
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Well crap, I gave up trying to convert the makefile for VC++, so anyone else got the cahonies to port it to Windows so I don't have to put a monitor on my Linux boxes?
I run my Linux systems headless...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
This brings up an interesting idea of applying the horsepower of video cards to other purposes. A modern 3D accellerator is basically a dedicated co-processor with it's own RAM that's optimized to do specific math tasks really, really fast.
I wonder if there are any serious scientific applications that could use this. If you are running a Beowulf cluster, you could possibly improve the performance of the entire cluster very easily. Of course, it would require custom software, but then Beowulf already needs that anyway.
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I remember that! I don't remember the name though. Someone did it in PalmOS, but it wasn't as good as I remember.
_______________
you may quote me
Ya there is on but it need's a 5Ghz Cpu and 4Gb Ram... ;)
GPF : The program Win.exe has caused an erorr in
Well, you're right in that MS had OpenGL before any other consumer-level OS, but how many consumer-level OSs are there anyway? ;)
As I recall, MS farted around for half a year or so before putting OpenGL out for Win95; mainly because they were trying to push DirectX (The really early versions; you know, the ones that make developers laugh at the mention of their version numbers).
As for Mesa (not MesaGL), it works very well, thank you. The artifacts you're talking about aren't so much the fault of Mesa as of the Voodoo2, with its 16bit colour depth (although I find it perfectly usable; certainly not as bad as you make it out to be).
Well, I don't know if this was actually going to happen.
Many science fiction stories have hypothesized about this eventually happening.
My personal favorite (Dan Simmons is becoming a theme for me lately) is in the Hyperion/Endymion stories. The Autonomous Intelligences (the evolution of artificial life on our computers today) decide to create a 'doorway' through space and in their early experiments they 'screw up' (well, not really, but you have to read the story to fully understand) and instead of opening the 'Farcaster' they had hoped to create, they create a black hole that migrates into the Earth's core and slowly eats away the Earth. Of course, later in the story you find out that 'someone else' actually tricked the AI's (which were actually trying to destroy the Earth) and stole the Earth through the 'black hole' so that they could preserve it and bring it back, 'when humanity was ready'.
OK, I know it's off-topic, but it's a cool story.
Bite my yammer.
Here is a black hole simulation at MIT in JAVA even!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Why is it a story on Slashdot?
---- SIGFPE
First: (ontopoic) There are two very different aspects to computational work: the modeling, and the visualization. OpenGL works for the visualization aspect.
Second (offtopic) while perhaps pretty in it's own way, cannot tell us anything other then information along the mathematical model it is based on
Theory has progressed to the point where Physicists tell Chemists that Quantum Mechanics will model their systems if we could only do the math. Note: even with very, very, very fast computers we are calculating small to medium size molecules, not the large macromolecules. Howver, ab initio quantum modeling of chemical systems will tell us everything knowable about the system. The state of the art of technology just doesn't allow those calculations to finish in a lifetime.
Or in other words, the API abstracts away a great deal of actual code, which takes us full circle to the original post - OpenGL *is* doing a lot of work (more than half of it, according to the post above). The fact that it only takes 2% of your application code is why OpenGL is so cool - the people who designed and implemented it have written upwards of 90% of your game for you.
The word "explore" in common vernacular, as well as the majority of definitions, pertains to physical activity, experimentation, traveling, etc. While "explore" can be used for intellectual-only activity, that's not how the word is typically understood.
So, I don't consider Hawking an "explorer." And I agree, "inventor" is not the right word either. "Theoretician", "investigator", "scientist", "researcher", "thinker", "philosopher", "luminary" are all good ones, though.
I don't mean to diminish what Hawking has done; I just don't think "explore" is the best word to describe his accomplishments.
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
Just a thought, perhaps you're confusing that article with a SciFi book. The novel Earth , By David Brin describes exactly the scenario you're talking about.
Apologies for the Amazon link, but Fatbrain doesn't have a plot summary or review of this book yet
Aperature grill? What kind of dot-pitch are we talking here?
this sounds dangerous to me... i will have to report this to the authorities... they will want to know what is going on over there. the last thing i want is to get sucked up in a black hole right after i buy a new house. that would really www.suck.com .
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Sean
guess why it is called *Open* GL...
I'm only pointing out irony here. Gimme a break. I mean, it's nice to know that there are /. readers who understand an follow OpenGL issues, but this isn't one. =D
Of course, we must remember that openGL black holes are entirely theoretical. Though, I have witnessed the gullibility of those who believe they have seen a computer-generated black hole.
Of course us geeks know there's no such thing as emulating a black hole, right? WRONG!
Black holes, on the other hand, as I've been lead to understand, focus all of the consumed matter/energy to one geometrical point which possibly even expands at another end in another dimension. Kinda like how my toilet water spins clockwise in the Northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere of the Earth.
anyways, I hope i have proved my point. if not, don't expect much .. it's not as if they cloned Einstein.
hehehe, always good to see a truly funny message heheh it always gets me
Istigkeit -"is-ness" being and becoming & i'dfiying it with the mathematical abstraction of the idea
I must say that these are great....
Emulating a blak hole requires you just download the right ROM dump.
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ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Trust me. Don't do it. I'm not even kidding.
- Have a picture
Maw! Get me that NT CD, I want implosions now, damnit.
cperciva, have you been giving yourself mod points?
I was comparing D3D and OpenGL obviously.
;-)
Or not so obviously
Basically, you create particle accelerators to prove that the nature actually acts the way our mathematical models presume it does...running simulations on a 3D card really doesn't prove anything as it will always work after our mathematical models...after all humans program it!
We have no way of knowing for absolutely sure that black holdes works the way the 3D cards say...I once read that you could travel through dimensions/time through a black hole. I'm not saying you can, I'm saying thatyou certainly can't prove it (or the opposite) by programming in OpenGL.
"Your girlfriend creates a black hole when she sucks? Doesn't that hurt?"
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
While the concept of a controllable black hole gives all kinds of options (hazardous waste disposal, new option instead of cremation), the problem I would have with it is that I have an intrinsic distrust of trying to create something this potentially hazardous anywhere near Earth. I think I can safely speak for all of humanity when I say I would rather not be around if they messed up.
On the bonus side, it would give the AD&D geeks an actual 'Sphere of Annihilation'.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
You're welcome!
But would it make it clearer if I said, Direct3D doesn't have 3D textures and OpenGL does?
But now I'm confused ;)
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
I'm sorry I put your personal pictures on the web for everyone to see!
There. Will you ever forgive me? Please?
// Clear the background to black to simulate the emptiness of space
glClearColor( 0, 0, 0, 0 );
glClear( GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT );
// This accurately models the black-hole not emitting any light
glColor3f( 0, 0, 0 );
// Draws the boundary of the black hole
glutSolidSphere( 1, 10, 10 );
--
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
---------///----------
All generalizations are false.
--
I like to watch.
Nobody really chooses OpenGL over D3D for 'ease-of-use' anymore. This might have been true during the days of DirectX 3. Ever since DX5 (and especially 6 & 7), D3D is as easy to use as OpenGL.
Of course, I'm not really advocating D3D use here. I'm a graphics programmer myself and choose OpenGL, but for portability reasons.
If the DX APIs were cross platform, I'd use them.
Its really nice to have integrated sound/3D and 2D framebuffer APIs...As is now, I tend to use SDL (which more or less mimics a lot of DirectX functionality, but has a cross-platform core and supports OpenGL)
It would be an awesome power to have, and the responsibility would be even more so. I think we're quite far away from actually creating one however, and hopefully when we do have the technology and knowhow to actually create one, we will also have the sense to keep it far away from earth, or not create one at all.
Wacky adventures?
:).
Don't you mean INCREDIBLY boring adventures?
About the only GOOD holodeck episodes are those involving Regs Barclay - he's amusing with all his psychological problems
"Those people on the holodeck are my friends! I'm not crazy! Really!"
I could care less about karma or whoring a +1. If you would like me to take your comments more seriously, post as something other than an Anonymous Coward.
You are absolutly right, however for those of us who don't...
Personally, I found this article cool for two reasons:
I never knew how easy it was to code stuff like this
To paraphrase Homer Simpson: Mmmmm Sparkles!
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
Your observation is a little bit dated, things have changes. Brian has a good relationship with SGI and has AFAIK was given the conformance tests to run a long time ago under a special agreement to ensure Mesa is high quality.
Also the license for OpenGL has changed recently, the SI is now Open Source and you can pretty much use the OpenGL trademark if it runs of a free operating system and passes the appropriate tests. The conformance tests are also more freely available as announced recently.
The big issue for OpenGL is quality, you can't call any old thing OpenGL. It requires testing, and everyone who has ever shipped OpenGL has been required under license to pass those tests. Basing a driver on Mesa is not sufficient, you must test the driver implementation to be allowed to call it OpenGL. So saying a particular implementation on a specific set of hardware is OpenGL has a very specific meaning. If this wasn't the case OpenGL would be of much less value as a standard.
Actually, the real value is not so much in the stories themselves. Almost invariably, when someone posts a stupid story, somebody who knows what they're talking about comes up and corrects them. It's neat actually.
In fact, your post made me realize that my graphics knowledge from 5-6 years ago is horribly out of date, and that I need to read up on it a lot before I say anything about it again. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Time to bring out some of my fun sayings about cars.
:-P
;)
:-P
:-P
:-p
Cars are like women, the more money you have the faster they are the car does not complain at night.
Me talking to a mechanic about 4 years ago when I was just getting into cars,
Me: So.. how fast can you make it?
Mechanic: Well.. how much money do you have?
Me:Seriously??
hehe, those basically apply to computers to kind of proves computers are a guy thing
I cant tell you the countless dollars ive spent on my car.
It starts out with some simple thing like I want a supercharger charger installed, the mechanic is like well to really get full use from it you need a new x and a new y and a new z really wouldn thurt
So the dollars signs roll and roll and finally I have enough to have this work done
Kind of reminds me when I upgraded my Video card, really I needed a new processor and more ram to get any use out of the darn thing
But.. after about several thousand dollars and a little luck I can run with just about anything you see on the road, save the occasional Turbo 911.. which escapes me by about 3/10 of a second on the qm
Anyways you see my point, you have the money it will go faster
Jeremy
Great, now all we need are pocket fusion-generators and a better display technology and every datacenter can have its own universe!
I don't mean to be all negative, it's a nice demo an all, but there are more OpenGL particle-systems demos out there than there are particles in this one.
This is great news.
We can start replacing those expensive particle acclerators with simulations done on accelerated 3D graphics cards.
No longer will the people on Long Island have to worry about Brookhaven creating universe destroying black holes, instead, we'll jsut run simulations on computers.
nice.
p hy to everything in life?
do you apply the i-dont-own-it-so-i-cant-complain-about-it-philoso
Slashdot is not your average geek site that someone updates now and then on her/his spare time. it is a commercial site whit a staff of full time employees. that makes it their job the get good storys on to the site, and it is their job to know what they are talking about.
And really Im not complaining about the site, the site is great, I just think they should do some more home work before posting things like this.
I don't know but in the future it might be a good idea to set up reference gropes, to ask for advice since Slashdot storys some times in all fairness tend to be difficult to get right.
Is there a DirectX version? I'd prefer to work in that API.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Got Rhinos?
Come on, this is just a classical gravitational model piped into an OpenGL model. There are no visual distortion caused by the black hole, and no relativistic physics anywhere.
If you're going to call it a black hole simulation, do it right. Otherwise, call it a solar system simulation.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I'll have to give Microsoft credit for standardizing OpenGL on Windows. Because it sure isn't anywhere near organized on Linux!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Let's see, I think even my watch can run OpenGL/MesaGL code. Come on, if you want to use DickX, you have to use Microsoft Windows. There's no standard to it other than Microsoft's agenda. OpenGL ran fine on Win32, but no, MS couldn't have someone else succeeding on their platform. It's the same with Netscape. MS wants to dominate everything that runs on MS and will go to all ends to kill competition. OpenGL/MesaGL runs on more platforms than I can spit at - it's as close to a Standard as you'll come in 3D development. DirectX is just another Microsoft trap. Once you've developed in that, you'll be trapped in Microsoft and porting to another platform is sheer hell. IE - Lokisoft expended much effort porting Heavy Gear from DickX to OpenGL. Now it just needs to be tweaked a little to run on any of a number of platforms, including Microsoft.
But then, you know all this and are just stoking the flames, right?
-- I think, therefore I...Uhm, what was I saying?
Chris Halsall is a specialist at automated information gathering and presentation systems.
...with way too much time on his hands.
Ok, but I give the guy serious credit..this is really cool, fun stuff with OpenGL is always good to see.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I already have a black hole simulator on my desktop. It's called a computer, defined as a black hole in the desktop which continually sucks money out of my wallet, at the speed of light, and is never seen again. I assume done there is a mass of pennies so dense that very few practical value rays fail to escape. Such is a hobby...
The logical path for this is to: Laptop, palm and then some pocket computer which could directly interface to the wallet and shorten the path the money has to move.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hey, in the article it says it might be bossible to make a black hole by making a hydrogen bomb using all the water on earth... LET'S DO IT!!!
I'm trying not to rant too much about someone's work that I enjoy, but if i can make one recommendation.. everyone should go read Egan's Diaspora.
More fun like that at the OpenGL Challenge.
Most entries are GLUT or near enough to compile on Linux, Mac etc. Lots of cool ideas.
While there are dozens of other sites on the web devoted
to Stephen Hawking's scientific achievements, I am unaware of a single
site (aside from this one) devoted to his career as a lyrical terrorist.
Mr. Ska
Using classical physics to simulate a black hole is useless, as all interesting effects around black holes are described using general theory of relativity. The correct way to do this would be using linear approximation of general relativity and using relativistic ray-tracer. I remember having seen that kind of simulations somewhere and looked nothing like this uncool 18th physics simulation combined with OpenGL effects.
nothing is relative
>the alternative to openGL SMASH
What's that ? I can't find any reference...
Why do Slashdot keep posting stuff like this on computer graphics? Any one how reads openGL.org knows that there are about a zillion particle demos out there.
Some time ago there was a story about AGP 8X and who ever wrote the story asked why we would need it since we already got firewire.... Don't even know were to start complaining about that one.
And its not like there hasn't been any graphics storys to cover. The advancements in hardware accelerated programmable shades has fundamentally changed the way people think of graphics hardware, softimageXSI for Linux, Linux on onyx3, the alternative to openGL SMASH, rendering whit natural light, new 3D displays....the list goes on and on.
I think that slashdot is one of the greatest sites on the net but every time i read some thing regarding my area of expertise that is wrong I start to question the credibility of slashdot on areas i don't know much about.
Please, if you what to cover graphics please do so, but get some one who works whit graphics to do it. A "ask slashdot" on how to improve the site may also be a good idea.
Sorry about the rant, i just could not get my fingers of the keyboard.
You can prove anything on the HoloDecks computer simulations. Then you just tell the computer to do it for real and it works.
You can also go on all kinds of wacky adventures when the writers run out of ideas
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
A www.goatse.cx link is Informative??? Who the hell is moderating this? What are they smoking? And can I have some?
----
Dave
MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
- Dave
Per the article I wrote the code necessary to do this. I stepped away to get a Dew, and the next thing I know my 9 month old daughter got sucked into my monitor. I thought they meant simulator, but evidently it really is an emulator. I had to throw the circuit breakers because I couldn't get close enough to shut off the damn computer.
I wonder if I can sue O'Reilly for this. Hell, if that stupid woman got over a million bucks from McDonalds for spilling hot coffee on herself, I should be able to get something, right?
Hmmm, I wonder if this is where Jimmy Hoffa disappeared to? Does anyone know if the American mafia has been experimenting with black hole emulation?
I just have to say thank you, Enoch Root. By getting a goatse.cx link modded up as informative, you have destroyed my last scraps of faith in humanity. I can't decide whether to go on a multi-state murder and robbery spree, or just shoot myself.
Having done some development with HL mods, I agree with your statement that a very small percentage of the source code consists of 3D-API related things (probably even less than 2-5%). However, while the percentage of the source code is small, the percentage of the processor load is very high. The geometry transform and lighting (handled by the API, in systems without coprocessors for that) make up about half the CPU load, all of it doing simple and redundant geometry transformations.
------------------
I heard it really sucks
-Its like Deja Vu all over again!-
Just turn off your monitor.
Of course not, but those interested may develop it into a serious reaserch tool.
I remember reading a semi serious article about the feasability of creating minute black holes by doing some quamtum jigarry pokery with magnetic fields. The article stated that some lab was actually going to have a go at making one until they realised that an inappropriately timed powerloss could result in the black whole tunneling to the center of the earth and slowly 'eating it up'. Gived the size of the hole the chance of it actually coming sufficently close to anything was small, but still, it worried me. anybody remember this? anybody really trust those scientists? ---shadeds of V
Do it! Use Java3D, it even gets hardware-accelerated on some platforms...
My computer simulates a black hole well enough by sucking all my money in to it, thank you very much.
That or my girlfriend. Do you know how expensive movies are nowadays?
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I wear pants.
Anyway, the one part of DirectX that I really like is DirectSound. In case you haven't noticed, all the post-win95 Id Software titles used it (and I think they were developing with unix; just look at the Quake console; from mastering that, I managed to find out a buttload of BASH commands). When DirectSound is compared to OSS, DSound almost always wins. I'd like to see someone bridge that gap in Linux.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I wonder how we can emulate something we don't understand? Maybe we can simulate how we think a black hole works using OpenGL but we certainly can't emulate one.
...I didn't think OpenGL sucked _that_ much.
*rimshot*
-lb
The humor comes from noting that opengl.org, the official OpenGL website, refers to the Mesa 3D library as "Mesa OpenGL". Which, according to their own rules, they're not supposed to do...
Upon hearing this news at Redmond, a Microsoft PR person had this to say...
"It's good to hear that technology had gone so far forward, but we should remind you that Mircrosoft is still at the head of innovation. So OpenGL can simulate a black hole, DirectX has sucked that hard for quite some time."
(Obligitory, I know.)
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
I would argue that Hawking IS an explorer--more so than a non-theoretician. If you believe (as I do) that the laws of physics (and especially of mathematics) are REAL in the platonic, idealistic sense then what Hawking does is exploration. He's certainly not an inventor...
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
wow, if only we could all evolve vertical relationships; imagine a world in which innovative front-end technologies ceaselessly synergize turn-key networks; it would be a landslide, a paradigm shift, a breakpoint. Now all I need to do is visualize my bleeding-edge niches and I will be complete...
here. plus, I received the same press release from the O'Reilly flack this morning touting the story. Slashdot posting stuff because a flack told them about a story. Will wonders never cease.
3D APIs get talked about as if they're doing all the work. OpenGL and Direct3D are just that--APIs--and there's nothing magical about them. It's not like OpenGL is doing the "creating" here. It's just being used for the back-end polygon rendering. That's it. The rest of the code has nothing to do with OpenGL.
One other thing I'd like to add while I'm here is that in a typical 3D game, only about 2-5% of the code involves 3D API calls. Two to five percent. There's a consistent myth that OpenGL rendering is the bulk of most 3D games and such, which is certainly not even close to true.
Do you moderating idiots even bother to follow the links? Or do you just assume that because someone made a link that it's informative?
Education is the silver bullet.
From a letter to a congessman
Dear sir,
It has come to my attention that the internet contains a 'black hole simulator.'We have had many complaints about violence in films and video games leading to children becoming murderes and increasing the level of violence in our society. If this Black hole simulator is allowed to exist we will soon be overwhelmed by a wave of mad scientists, willing to attempt to create a black hole in their workshops. We are already seeing Genetically modified food crops, how long before they are raiding the graveyards for spare parts.
Yours
xxxxxxxxxx
Names changed to protect the Insane
Stuck where the sun don't shine!
Shame, really, because there is potential to use OpenGL's image processing hardware to actually calculate large 2D fluid dynamics problems, and doing that would definitely count as news. You'd blow a Cray out of the water with a Voodoo3.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Hell, if any data gets near the
So is this just a graphical representation of the bit bucket?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Disclaimer: I love OpenGL. I program mainly in OpenGL. I have no love of Microsoft.
;)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Friends, OpenGL is in grave danger. Already, OpenGL has become a stagnated API, with most new and intereseting features relegated to propriatory extensions. In a world where different types of graphics cards abound, and the standardness of an API is critical, important innovations should NOT be tied to extensions.
Extensions are propriatory to a particular vendo. They lead to games that don't use the hardware effectively (ie. You buy a graphics card that supports per-pixel shading, you buy a game that support per-pixel shading, but your game won't run accelerated on your graphics card, because your graphics card implements NVIDIA's version of the extension, why the game uses ATI's.) They lead to the standard become weak. They lead to headaches for developers. They lead to headaches for hardware makers. All this bites the consumer in the ass. They lead to broken hearts, anguish, and Lucifer himself! (Sorry, I just read The Crucible.) Of course, ARB extensions could save OpenGL. However, ARB extensions are few and long in coming. By the time a standard ARB-register-combiner (per pixel shading) extension comes out, hardware makers will already have introduced new features, and software makers will already have a stable of hardware-specific games. (Or, they won't use those features at all. Sucks for the guy who paid for that NSR unit that's not being used.) In short, extensions are the devils work and should be sent back to the hell-fire from whence they came.
MS is coming. OpenGL found solace in the fact that D3D was an utter piece of shit, beyond hope and repair. However, MS doesn't take lightly to people who diss their API. And the DirectX team at MS can actually CODE! The result is that in current incarnations, DirectX7 and DirectX8 are VERY competitive with OpenGL, both in terms of speed, and features. Best of all, new features are incoperated into the standard. Despite what people prefer to believe, DirectX isn't done in standard MS-empircal way. They consult hardware developers, they consult software developers, and they make a standard from that. New feautres get put in the API, hardware manufacturers accelerate those features, and developers code for those features. Everything works together, everybody is happy. This way of extending the API has another great benifit. D3D simply has more features than OpenGL. Sure a lot of those features may be in OpenGL extensions, but extensions are propriotary, and we all hate anything propriotary, don't we
Saying that OpenGL will always rule is deluding yourself. People thought SGI would always use UNIX too, before the NT-based workstations came out. Luckily, Linux came to SGI's rescue. A cheap, powerful solution to NT. OpenGL has no such rescuer in sight. Already, people are breaking ranks and realizing that D3D8 is not that same piece of junk everyone scorned. The creator of UT has already stated his distaste for OpenGL. When DirectX8 becomes the better API (which it undoubtedly will, if it already hasn't) then not even Carmack will be able to save OpenGL. Those who still doubt the pluasability of Direct3D, take note. Direct3D 8 is vastly superior to D3D 3. Each release keeps getting much better. Given the fact that D3D is improving faster than OpenGL, simple math will tell you that eventually it will overtake OpenGL (if it already hasn't, and a lot of people WILL tell you that D3D 8 is already there.)
Of course, there is one ridicoulously simple way to resolve this problem. I say that the ARB get's off it's collective ass and works on OpenGL. Dump extensions, (or at least speed up the pace of ARB extensions, which is probably the better short-term solution) improve the API, and market it. Right now, OpenGL still enjoys an air of superiority. Making it competitive with D3D (both in power and growth) will cement it as THE standard 3D API. The sucess of OpenGL has greater ramifications that just 3D. If OpenGL ever falls from favor, alternative platforms are doomed. Games stop being written for Linux and BeOS, and everyone goes back to using Windows. MS has the advantage at the moment. The success or failure of D3D isn't terribly critical to it's platform, because they support OpenGL too. However, alternative platforms have a problem. There is no huge installed base of OpenGL-only machines to keep people on the platform. If D3D becomes that much more feasible, then developers (aside from a few like Carmack) won't pay much of a second thought to developing for D3D and making their games Windows-only again. They'll only lose negligibe sales, and after the Linux hype is over (face it, that's the only reason games are ported at the moment, hype, not potential for profit) then not developing for Linux really won't be a big deal. If the ARB acts swiftly, all this can be prevented. OpenGL can soldifiy its place as the standard, Linux can continue its erosion of Windows's market share, and people like me can keep developing for OpenGL (on BeOS of course!) without getting the felling that we're using inferior technology.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
"...dedicated to Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest explorers of our time."
:)
<pedantic>
explorer (k-splôrr, -splr-) n.
One that explores, especially one that explores a geographic area.
Stephen Hawking is undoubtedly one of the greatest theorists of our time. But he is definately not an explorer. Meriwether Lewis, Robert (?) Ballard, and others are explorers.
</pendantic>
Besides that, it looks like an interesting article
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D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com