OpenGL 1.4 Spec Finalized

Sesse writes: "SGI announced yesterday that the OpenGL 1.4 specification was agreed upon by the ARB. Trying to minimize the gap between D3D8 and OpenGL, the standard adds a lot of functionality already common (being exposed as extensions in many drivers today), but more importantly brings a standard specification for vertex shaders. This should be good news for anybody doing cross-platform eyecandy :-)" This announcement is related to, but broader than, the one mentioned earlier about bringing OpenGL to mobile devices.

Comments

Re:Didn't Microsoft just do something with this?

[sl3xd]

SGI is still in charge?

SGI isn't 'in charge' per se; the ARB is (the ARB consists of various hardware & software makers, including Microsoft, nVIDIA, ATI, Matrox, SGI, Sun, and Evans & Sutherland). However, OpenGL is a trademark of SGI, so they get to make the announcement.

"Intellectual property" issues??

[kcbrown]

I'm glad to see that they're adding more standard capabilities to OpenGL. This is necessary from time to time to keep the standard reasonably modern.

But SGI sold some of their patents to Microsoft, and I have to wonder if any of them will cause problems for OpenGL 1.4. You know Microsoft isn't about to let OpenGL dominate as the standard for 3-D graphics...

Re:"Intellectual property" issues??

[mh_tang]

KDE Developer Hetz Ben Hamo wrote this to the Register (although not speaking for the KDE Organization as a whole):

It's amazing how SGI was short-sighted when they sold lots of their patents regarding 3D to Microsoft.

I have read the forums back when you posted the news about MS buying some patents from SGI and many people pointed that MS needed it for their XBox - and that made me wonder: why wouldn't NVidia bought those patents back then? They made the XBox graphics chip, so any lawsuits against MS would have simply forwarded to NVidia - the author of the NV chip.

Few people wrote back then in the forums that MS cannot do much with their new patents - and if there will be problems with those patents, that will be the graphics manufacturers (Nvidia, Matrox, ATI, you know - the usual suspects)..

With Apple, it's not much problematic - Apple can make some deal with MS regarding those patents and license them, so Apple case is pretty clear - so Apple can have OpenGL without any problem...

Now - enter Linux (and *BSD - depends where/how you look). Inside XFree there's something called MESA which is an OpenGL "clone" without the OpenGL logo. MS can quickly kill Mesa with a simple cease-and-desist letter unless Mesa author will pay the license. MS can also ask money per copy of Mesa - who'll pay that?

Get real.

[freuddot]

we should work on our own Open Source 3D standard and give it away as Free Software

This is exactly what OpenGL is. An Open specification so that any the same 3D code can run on any hardware/platform/OS.

If it is Open, and succesfull, don't worry, MS will implement it. That's why there is the ICD mechanism on Windows, that all vendors respect.

On Linux, you have the OpenGL ABI that provides the same functionnality. Yes, they would need some more people, but the one they have do a good job.

Now, when you are Open like this, be prepared for competition. The new standard is out, people on the Architecture Review Board have been discussing it for quite a long while. You better have your implementation ready. Or people will go to better support platform.

What you propose is exactly what MS always did : shun away from standards, and try to develop stuff for your platform/OS. The only difference is that you don't have enough market share to do *any* difference.

So, please, cut your crap, follow the standard, and may the best hardware run on the OS with the better/faster support for it.

At the moment, Linux is still in the race (for OpenGL support) and superior in other area. Don't give up.

Re:Carmack dumping OpenGL

[Dimensio]

If he made such an announcement, it was probably on April 1. The last .plan I've seen is dated June 27 and there's no indication whatsoever of him dumping OpenGL.

Note: I'm aware that the original post was very likely a troll, but I thought that I'd quell the fears of those who took it seriously.

Re:Carmack dumping OpenGL

[scott1853]

Bullshit. The last .plan read:

I am now committed to supporting an OpenGL 2.0 renderer for Doom through all
the spec evolutions. If anything, I have been somewhat remiss in not pushing
the issues as hard as I could with all the vendors. Now really is the
critical time to start nailing things down, and the decisions may stay with
us for ten years.

Re:No way

[Anonymous Coward]

You are forgetting something. Gamers want vid cards with lots of filter passes and shaders. While working for a company that does a lot of cartoon modeling i find that we - with our design division - rely heavily on videocards that can pump lots of vertices per second where shading doesn't really matter. We want high fillrates and a good GPU. So the gamer's wetdream Radeons and Geforces are not suitable for us, and our WildCats / Intergraph machines are not suitable for games.

SGI PR ERROR

[Funk_dat69]

This was a PR error by SGI.
The vote has NOT been completed yet.

FUD fighting

[GeLeTo]

1. MS does not own OpenGL - it is an open standart
2. MS can not enforce any patents they bought from SGI because when a feature is added to OpenGL all ARB members agree to give their relevant patents under an "ARB Contributor License"(or something like that).
3. MS will have a hard time enforcing any new patents. To quote Neil Trevett from 3Dlabs:
"To affect the creation of a specification, an IP claim must make it impossible to create ANY implementation of the specification that doesn't infringe that IP." You can not patent antialiasing/multitexture/shaders/etc, you can patent only specific alghos that implement that functionality.