On the Subject of OpenGL 2.0

zendal writes "The danger with pixel shaders and vertex shaders is that there is no standard for programmability of graphics hardware. A schism has formed within DirectX between the competing demands of GPU makers Nvidia and ATI. Noted analyst Jon Peddie gives THG an exclusive first look at a White Paper on how OpenGL 2.0 is trying to bring stability and open standards to programmable graphics and GPUs."

Comments

interesting point at the end

[4im]

A most interesting point is right at the end of the article:

One of the key points stressed by the ARB is that the "open" needs to go back into OpenGL. The group has pledged that all ideas submitted for OpenGL, if adopted, are then open for use and not licensable as IP.

So, they won't pull a "Rambus" here... hopefully.

Re:interesting point at the end

[Alsee]

all ideas submitted for OpenGL, if adopted, are then open for use and not licensable

And the next sentence is an important explanation:

what we're seeing is a recognition ...that graphics... is pretty much the whole point, and a commitment to that is a commitment to success in graphics.

W3C take note! The same goes for internet standards. If it can't be used by everyone, then it's not a standard, it's proprietary. Anyone who wants to make/use something proprietary is free to do so, but standards bodies should never impose them.

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extensions good. opengl good.. directx???

[TechnoVooDooDaddy]

sounds really great, but i don't see it happening... nVidia, ATI, Voodoo, whomever will alway wanna do the next cool great thing and that's why the extensions are available...

And we all know MS wants DirectX to rule them all. OpenGL works, and is an open standard by definition. Extensions in there make life interesting certainly, but you pretty much know what you're getting into when you try NV_texture_rectangle or NV_texture_shader. (hint, the NV stands for NVidia) sure you can find out in directx if the hardware supports XYZ before you call it, but i find the naming convention of OpenGL a bit more coder friendly. it's readily obvious if you're trying something that's not supported across the specification.

How about a new version of X windows with OpenGL?

[boltar]

X11R6 is old enough now so how about X12 that has OpenGL (and lots of other improvements) build in?
So Xlib would have it incorporated and it would be much faster than as is done now of building it
on top of Xlib and extensions.

Cunning move by 3DLabs

[EnglishTim]

I think this is a cunning move by 3Dlabs - Their business is being threatened by nVidia and their Quadro range - it'll be interesting to see how unbiased they can manage to be when generating the spec.

Otherwise, I think it's a good idea. It'd be nice to see OpenGL keeping up with (or even outshining) DirectX...

Extensions

[Error27]

The "Specification Overview" pdf from the 3dlabs white paper page is pretty interesting. It has a list of over 250 opengl extensions and what happens to them in opengl 2.

Basically they all disapear.

Some have already become part of the standard. Some are added to the standard in opengl 2. Some just disapear altogether.

But the large majority of them are not needed anymore when you have programability, memory management and opengl objects etc.

To me that means that opengl 2 is way more flexible. Flexible enough so that we won't need as many extensions in the future.

And that's pretty cool.

(BTW: Brian Paul is a member of the ARB. He wrote on the mesa list that he hasn't been following the opengl 2 process very closely but that he expected that they would probably want him to write a free implementation).