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OpenGL 1.3 Spec Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the for-the-graphics-guru-and-the-wannabe dept.

JigSaw writes "The OpenGL Architecture Review Board announced the new OpenGL 1.3 specification (1.8 MB pdf). In OpenGL 1.3, several additional features and functions have been ratified and brought into the API's core functionality. New features include Cube map texturing, multisampling, new texture modes that provide more powerful ways of applying textures to rendered objects, compressed texture framework etc. Let's all hope that GL can catch up with Direct3D now, as with the latest DirectX8, Direct3D has done some big steps towards feature-set, speed and even non-bloatiness when it comes to coding for it, while OpenGL 1.2 was released more than 2 years ago and it did not offer as much."

1 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. This is a job for the ARB by marm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you go with OpenGL you have to write your program for each different vendor extension that comes out. Honestly, what are the chances of ATI or PowerVR ever supporting NV_texture_shader or NV_texture_shader2?

    I'd put the chances quite high if it's a decent spec. Perhaps it might not be called NV_texture_shader in a year's time, it'll be ARB_texture_shader, and as an ARB-mandated extension will end up being supported by every sane driver with the required hardware support. You can bet that the NVidia drivers will still support the old NV_texture_shader as well though.

    This is the way the OpenGL spec grows. Manufacturers are free to go ahead and implement whatever features they'd like or need in OpenGL, and they implement them as vendor-specific extensions. If someone else needs that functionality for their driver, well, before you know it the vendor-specific extension will become ARB-mandated, and probably pored over and refined a little by all the OpenGL board in the process - a board which consists of all the major 3D hardware and software manufacturers. Shortly after, most drivers will support that. Eventually the ARB extensions will probably be integrated into the next OpenGL base spec, as just happened with OpenGL 1.3.

    So, there's no one single vendor controlling the spec. 3D vendors can be as creative as they want. Only if a feature becomes used on several different 3D architectures does it become a standard. Your code will continue to run fine on architectures where you used the vendor-specific extensions, as the vendor will almost certainly keep the original functionality around indefinitely as well as supporting the ARB-mandated version of it. If you want, you can go back a little later and use the ARB extension instead in your code, and the functionality becomes available to everyone.

    By using DX8 instead of OpenGL you know that effects designed for the NVidia pixel shader will magically just work on the next-generation Radeons. At the same time, you're handing over control of the whole API to Microsoft, which does not make 3D chipsets, and you're stuck with their idea of how the pixel shader ought to work, as opposed to an API for it designed by the company that makes the chipsets, and then later (if it's successful), reviewed and revised by everyone important in the industry. I won't even start on the cross-platform issues.

    Your choice.