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Mesa 5.0 Released
Eugenia writes "Mesa 5.0 has been released. It implements the OpenGL 1.4 specification." There's more information as to what's been fixed/added/changed on their SF.net project page.
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But the new mesa seems to have intelligent workload distribution between the cpu and the gpu, i e
:). Server gaming woohoo!
glxgears running in a small window - 200 fps, average 2% cpu load(with Mesa 4.1 it was 800 fps 100% load),
running maximized in 1600x1200 - 80 fps, 100% load(exactly as with Mesa 4.1).
And all the games and etc run at exactly the same speeds with less cpu load.
All I can say is this is great - nobody needs insane fps numbers above 100 and it saves cpu for my poor apache running in the background
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Hey, OpenGL is at least standardized, something you can build on for years. Nobody can guarantee you that the next version of DirectX will be compatible with the current version.
In fact, there are only two 3D APIs that are standardized and (more or less) widely used: OpenGL and OpenInventor.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
Licensing fees for DirectX? If that were true, i'm surprised we're not seeing more OpenGL-development under Win32 (although there's a lot going on already, there's still far more DX-development) ..
.. they may change it completly and scrap backwards compability or they may just leave it like it is (btw, backwards compability has in fact, been maintaned quite good when it comes to DX. You may write code in DX8 that worked on DX3 etc).
The "problem" with DX from a developers point is that you can't be sure about what MS decides to do with the API in the next revision
I've spent time developing for both APIs and my personal favourite is still OpenGL, mostly because i can use the same code on different platforms.
Why would you want to see that comparison? nVidia's Linux drivers are hardware accelerated. Generic Mesa is not.
Dinivin
I dunno about this baby, but earlier GL versions are much faster on windows. For a fast machine this change is not noticable. But I run a 600 MHz celeron with 16MB RIVA TNT. I have noticed that tuxracer crawls, but UT runs much faster under higher res. Is it due to GL or due to the game. Also I have noticed that most linux games based on GL really crawl on my machine. I havent tried UT2003 yet, but could anyone enlighten my why this performance difference between linux and win, considering most other apps are much much faster on win.
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Mesa is the driver, the kernel video driver only establishs an underlying layer that makes all brands of video card appear identical to programs like Mesa or X or DirectFB.
But if you have an OpenGL driver, what does Mesa do?
a) Shows you how is it done, since you can peer at the source, and b) gives you an alternative if OpenGL is not good enough for you. Small benefits, and you may not care, but for some people these are good qualities.
I think he's talking about the licensing fees for windows (you need windows to use the latest DirectX). The DirectX SDK (like all Windows SDKs) is free.
After reading comments I want to write just one thing: Mesa is not hardware accelerated. There is no point to compare it with nVidia or ATI closed source drivers, there is no point to compare speed of Mesa and Win OpenGL implementation. You can't play any new game with Mesa, because you will get 1-2fps.
I am not sure why non-developer should download Mesa, probably only if he/she need to run OpenGL application (like Blender for example) and hardware accelerated driver works bad or not exist.
Xfree86 4.3 will not have Mesa 5.0. It is not going to make it into the mainline DRI CVS in time for the merge. It is currently in a separate development branch.
It will probably get included in 4.3.1 since it is an important feature to many users.
Direct3D STILL sucks for scientific visualisation (still favours texture pushing over high-poly-count), and is STILL Windoze-only (Wine excepted). OpenGL sucks less, and is not bound to C++ (Well, o.k. DirectX is theoretically COM, but I defy you to program it seriously in anything other than MS-bastardised C++)
Scientists tend to use grown-up OSes (i.e. no Windoze) and code in Fortran 95 or HPF, pure C or occasionally Lisp - all languages with OpenGL bindings.
You can learn OpenGL+SDL basics in an afternoon, and have flocks of teapots flying across your screen the following morning. Just beginning to learn DirectX and Direct3D means taking on board all the bizarro-world Microsoftian "C++" and COM cruft.
OpenGL's going to be around for some time.
Now, it is inappropriate for hardware raytracing cards, but us people in the scientific graphics community (and movie-making-community) are only getting to play with them now, don't expect them to trickle down to the gaming market for a while yet.
No, vanilla Mesa is not accelerated on any cards... When you see it accelerated with 3dfx cards, it's actually compiled against Glide.
Dinivin
Also I have noticed that most linux games based on GL really crawl on my machine.
Assuming you mean when running under X and Linux, run glxinfo from a shell. Near the top will be "direct rendering: yes" (or no). If it's no then you're running software OpenGL instead of hardware accelerated OpenGL.