Doom3 and OpenGL2.0

Screaming Lunatic writes "John Carmack has decided to write an OpenGL2.0 rendering path for Doom3. You can read his .plan or you can finger him. This will be huge for the development of OpenGL2.0. Video cards are typically benchmarked with respect to the framerate when running Quake3. Future benchmarks will be based on Doom3. This means IHVs will be somewhat forced to write good OpenGL2.0 implementations."

Comments

Fingers

[Wrexen]

..or you can finger him...
*pictures thousands of /.ers fingering him at once*
I think this is going to be a very uncomfortable day for someone

A Proverb

[GigsVT]

You can finger your girlfriend,
You can finger John Carmack,
But you can't get your girlfriend to write good vertex shading code!

Re:A Proverb

[Bruce Perens]

Hold out for a girlfriend who shades higher-order surfaces. Also, hold out for a girlfriend with higher-order surfaces!

Re:And why would this be a good thing?

[MrResistor]

Maybe because it isn't open?

I'll believe OpenGL is dead when I can run all my DirectX games on Linux.

Don't mod parent up before reading this.

[GigsVT]

http://www.gamespy.com/e32002/pc/carmack/index2.sh tml

I wish I could rip off Carmack's words and present them as my own, that would make me uber-leet like you.

Not as great as it sounds for OpenGL 2.0

[VenTatsu]

This won't force companies to write good OpenGL 2.0 drivers, it will only force them to write drivers that impement those functions that DOOM 3 uses, the other functions may not even be implemented properly or implemeted at all.

As a former VooDoo (various versions) owner this is just fine if you only want to play games made by a few big name companies, but if your like me and looking to play smaller or indy games you'll find that your lucky if the games even run.

Nothing like a little Carmack...

[mbourgon]

...to make me feel both ignorant and stupid at the same time. Really puts things in perspective. Sure, I may be smart, but there's no comparison.

Re:Nothing like a little Carmack...

[Dr. Awktagon]

No kidding..

their implementation of hardware displacement mapping is NOT quad based. ... so even if we don't use it because of the geometry amplification issues, I think it will serve the noble purpose of killing dead any proposal to implement a quad based solution.

Yes! I was thinking the same thing myself! Geometry amplification is key here.

support for both the fallback ARB_ extension path (without specular highlights), and the NV10 NVidia register combiners path. ..... They don't support NV_vertex_program_1_1, which I use for the NV20 path, and when I hacked my programs back to 1.0 support for testing, an issue did show up..

Definitely, any fool could see that! Watch those extension paths!

A GL2 driver won't give any theoretical advantage over the current back ends optimized for cards with 7+ texture capability

It certainly won't! 7+ is definitely not the optimized back-end texture capability quad rendering shade vertex OpenGL. Specular highlight.. Phong.. wireframe.. raycasting ... shadow cache.. texture map.. bump map... uh.. BFG 9000!!

Re:OpenGL 2.0 and OpenSource

[ToLu the Happy Furby]

Also, does anyone know if there will be a supported version of Doom3 for Linux, or will we be relying on ported versions?

id has released nearly simultaneous Linux binaries for all of their games (client and server) since Quake 1, and released Linux patches for Doom 1 and 2 as well. Loki was involved inasmuch as they published a retail box of Linux Q3; however, this was never really important because you could always get Linux Q3 by buying the Windows version and downloading a small patch from id. (Indeed, the retail Linux version sold poorly, probably because it was released a couple weeks after the Windows version and thus many people went the buy-Windows-and-download-patch route.)

I believe id has officially announced that Doom 3 will available for Linux (and Mac), but if not it's still a virtual certainty. id has always been a tremendous supporter of open standards; Carmack chose OpenGL over DirectX for Quake (and thereby single-handedly created the consumer OpenGL market), and in addition to working on Mac, Linux and Windows versions of all 3 Quake games simultaneously, released Doom ports for Next (id developed on Next workstations back then), Solaris, IRIX (I think, or maybe that was unofficial), and I believe even Linux on Alpha in addition to the already mentioned x86 Linux ports.

Again, id has always done the port themselves; most likely, you will have to buy the Windows version and download a patch which will almost certainly be available within days of release.

Re:OpenGL patents

[uncleFester]

Didn't MS buy OpenGL patents from SGI recently?

Hard to tell... (more stuff found here). The opengl.org Licensing page links back to oss.sgi.com...

It's not easy to tell who currently owns the rights to OpenGL.. er, the OpenGL API. *gak*

-fester

Re:You'll need more to bring about OpenGL support.

[be-fan]

Two things:
1) Its Doom 3. It is guaranteed to sell like crazy, whether its good or not. If you're card doesn't run Doom 3 well, you might was well just not release it.

2) ID licenses the engines. Doom 3 will be *the* engine to have over the next year or two. If you're hardware can't run all those games (definately more than a dozen) again, don't even bother releasing it.