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3D Labs Proposes OpenGL 2.0 To Kick DirectX
furiousgreencloud writes "3Dlabs is trying to drive the graphics interface away from hardware specific extentions, as seen in DirectX. Instead, they are proposing an open (no NDA) dialog on OpenGL 2.0. The guidelines mention good-ol-fashioned platform independence (linux included) and emphasis on programmability, time control and memory managemenmt. They've got a PDF availible for consumption."
Soon we'll have Nvidia making games tho I'm sure that will be created on a proprietary system even more stringent than where we are now. You don't think so? --- Example: ... "It's the hottest game of the year and they don't take ATI." (Sung to the toon of a Visa comercial. It's in Nvidias best intrest to make this happen. Tho maybe not in the markets best interest.
I am Jack's HTTP Server
...but the current OpenGL standard is extensible enough for the time being. More important would be a complete OpenAPI setup with input, sound, network, and graphics options all combined and available on all platforms.
Sure, including specific instructions for per-pixel operations etc. for all cards as opposed to stuff like GL_EXT_NVIDIA_WHATEVER would be great, but it's not likely that there will be many drivers for any older cards for this, and all the new cards have great GL drivers already...
Basically, this is unneccessary.
Going to be interviewing a friend of mine at nVidia about this tomorrow morning, after he clears it. Will submit the story tomorrow if he gets the OK.
No comment.
Not only is this a worthy cause (eliminating the depenence hardware specific extensions), but I fully support a graphics solution that doesn't have the final say on everything rest with MircoSoft.
So in OpenGL, you have vendor specific extensions.
In DirectX, you have vendor specific releases of the whole API!
DirectX 8 = DirectGeforce
DirectX 8.1 = DirectRadeon
It'd be a lot more honest and less confusing if they just used the names of the cards rather than numbers...
nVidia's extensions alone total more than 500 pages, compared to 230 pages for the entire OpenGL 1.3 spec. ATI has their own comprehensive list of extensions, as does SGI and many others. Since there's little natural overlap, each vendor implements similar features in a different way (e.g vertex shaders), and you have to code for each vendor's set of extensions separately. The OpenGL ARB can "ratify" extensions to promote standardization, but you still have to cope with them not being present at all.
This is exactly the problem developers have with DirectX - MS regularly revs the entire API to try and support features from every vendor, so there's an ever-increasing number of ways the underlying hardware differences are exposed, and the number of hardware caps that have to be checked before doing anything is growing rapidly. There are 4 different versions of pixel shaders that a vendor can support in DX 8.1, and the only reason it's not more of a mess is that there's only two chips which support any of them so far (and one of those isn't even available yet).
Regular simplification & unification of all these diverging directions is required. Vendors should of course be able to add innovative extensions, but a core of Really Useful standard features must be maintained & extended, so that hardware vendors have a baseline to target, developers can rely on the features being present, and the lowest common denominator gets steadily pushed higher for everyone.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I suppose it's not your fault that some clueless moderator thought your post was insightful but I'm embarrassed for him ;-)
OpenGL is the (free, open, clean and crossplatform) counterpart to Direct3D, not DirectX.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
True, but us game developers also buggered up the market by NOT actively pushing OpenGL instead of D3D, and developing for D3D *when we HAD a choice*.
There was even a petition to Microsoft to better support OpenGL for gaming, which Microsoft responded by ramming D3D down everyones throats.
I'm just thankfull that Carmack didn't sell out - he's the primary reason OpenGL support for games is still around. The OpenGL-Game-Dev list traffic has unfortunately slowed down, but it's not dead (yet.)
> Game developers aren't scratching their heads in a huddle
> making sure some vertex shader is going to work on a MIPS box as well as a Intel one.
You don't do any PS2 coding do you?
When your game is simulatenously being ported to X-Box, and the PS2 you need to re-implement the vertex shader natively on each hardware. It would save a LOT of time if us developers could use just ONE vertex shader description language for BOTH platforms !
> A bulk of game developers and publishers won't bitch much about standards
> while they can hit an incredible percentage of the gaming market by focusing on one system.
And loose 1/2 your sales?! That's the reason a standard exists - so we DON'T have to code specifically for one card !
Game developers want to maximize their sales with the least amount of work.
Rest of your comment is correct.
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WTF is "Your comment violated the postersubj compression filter. Comment aborted" and why isn't it in the FAQ ?