OpenGL 2.0 Released

berny@work writes "OpenGL has finally released version 2.0. The benefits include Programable Shaders, in particular: Shader Objects, Shader Programs, OpenGL Shading Language and changes to the Shader API. If you are interested take a look at the tutorials and the case studies that are linked to from the OpenGL site."

Comments

Versus DX successor

[vectorian798]

Can OpenGL ever match DX in popularity among developers?

Re:Versus DX successor

[chrismcdirty]

Isn't it used for the Unreal Engine games and a lot of the Q3 engine games? There's a lot of games based on each of those engines.

Re:Versus DX successor

[tciny]

Same answer as to "will Windows always stay the most popular OS?"

Re:Versus DX successor

[kusanagi374]

Can OpenGL ever match DX in popularity among developers?

One word: portability

Re:Versus DX successor

[SoTuA]

That's John Carmack's chore :)

Seriously, that guy almost has kept OpenGL relevant in the gaming industry almost single-handedly.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends how well it keeps up with future changes/directions of game/graphic design.

Of course much of this depends upon whether OpenGL takes a lead in the options available within the future releases.

Recent history tends to suggest that DX takes the lead in options available, and thus maintains its popularity among developers.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Nos.]

Its used for a lot of popular games including Doom 3, Return to Castel Wolfenstein, Quake series, etc. See http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/games/ for a list of the windows games using OpenGL

Re:Versus DX successor

[endx7]

Can OpenGL ever match DX in popularity among developers?

Yes. id (quake, doom, etc) and I believe unreal both use it. Both are competitors, and as small of importance as portability to other operating systems such as Linux may seem to be, it is still somewhat important to them (although, I -still- haven't heard anything new about doom3 on linux)

Interest into porting to Linux is slowly becoming more popular between game makers, mostly because if you do it right for the windows port in the first place, it isn't as difficult as it might seem to port to Linux, and it helps open up a small new (starved?) market.

Re:Versus DX successor

[FuzzieNorn]

Game developers? Probably not any time soon. Developers of visualisation applications and the such? No-one seriously uses Direct3D for that.

Obviously DirectX has such things as DirectSound which don't really have alternatives under Windows, though.

Re:Versus DX successor

[BenjyD]

A few years back people would have been asking the reverse.

Re:Versus DX successor

[DrXym]

OpenGL is just a 3D (and 2D) programming API. DirectX is 3D & 2D, screen management, sound, controllers, music, networking - the lot.

The only way that it will match the popularity of DirectX is if someone produces an SDL on steroids. Something that matches DirectX feature for feature but in an open source and cross-platform manner.

Furthermore, I don't believe that Linux should not be the primary focus for this SDL on steroids - Win32, the XBox & PS2 should be. Why? Because obviously they're the platforms that games come out first. Get the games companies to program to this portable layer and it increases the chances that the port to Linux will appear some time after.

Re:Versus DX successor

[grunt107]

One word: portability That's why I only create Java-games (rlse date: simultaneous w/Phantom console rlse).

Re:Versus DX successor

[HAKdragon]

What about SDL?

Re:Versus DX successor

[peragrin]

In other words ID software's John Carmack uses Open GL. Of course ID software also open sources their Graphics engines after so many years. Quake 1 and 2 are out, I bet in another year or two Quake 3 will be released as well.

Long live the Kings of Death Match.

Re:Versus DX successor

[spectral]

While I love OpenGL far more than DX, your argument would be better served by not listing games that are all from the same company. (or at least, using engines from the same company)

Re:Versus DX successor

[iMaple]

Which take twice the time to load and run 1.3 times slower. In case u are wondering where I got the statistics from they come from the same place I download good Java games.

Actually on a serious not I would tend to agree with u and with Jav 1.5 the performance hit is drastically reduced so maybe Doom 4 will be in Java and will run on Solaris machines.

Re:Versus DX successor

[spectral]

Not even close to the sound support in DX (DirectSound and DirectSound 3D). OpenAL is the only cross platform library for 3d positional audio..

Re:Versus DX successor

[th1ckasabr1ck]

John Carmack posted here that the Quake 3 source would be released by the end of the year.

Re:Versus DX successor

[thatguywhoiam]

Its used for a lot of popular games including Doom 3

From the makers of Return to Castle Wolfenstein!

...Return to Castle Wolfenstein

From the makers of Quake!

...Quake series, etc.

I sense a pattern...

Re:Versus DX successor

[LearnToSpell]

I'd generally agree with
your argument would be better served by not listing games that are all from the same company

but not so much with
(or at least, using engines from the same company). There's a ton of games using those engines.

Re:Versus DX successor

[FuzzieNorn]

SDL's audio support wraps around DirectSound on Windows.

Re:Versus DX successor

[spectral]

From an end-user point of view, I guess the number of games that use OpenGL matters. From a programming point of view, the number of engines using OpenGL would seem to matter more (to me). If the only popular games using OpenGL use the same engine, that tends to make me think that people are not fond of programming for OpenGL in general, just one person/company.. And yes, they happen to make some kickass engines, so they get used a lot.

Re:Versus DX successor

[dj245]

Don't forget Tribes and Tribes2. I don't know about the rest of these games, but you can't even use DirectX in Tribes if you wanted to- support was disabled in a patch. (Tribes is pretty Nvidia biased).

Makes you kind of wonder what kinds of decisions are going on at the graphics chip companies and the game makers, and whats going on between them.

Re:Versus DX successor

[lowe0]

Huh? 3ds max supports both DX and GL viewports.

Re:Versus DX successor

[WilyCoder]

It should be noted that the OpenGL engine in Unreal Tournament 2004 is piss poor compared to the DX engine. I imagine that future versions will scrap OpenGL altogether.

Re:Versus DX successor

[airjrdn]

Unreal, no, quake, yes.

Re:Versus DX successor

[SilentChris]

Unreal's OpenGL engine is crude, and it's only really there to allow Mac and Linux clients (which aren't used nearly as much as the Windows client). On Windows, D3D is the default.

Actually, Epic has it right: they released a UT2004 server for Linux first, then built the client primarily for Windows. Play to each of its strengths.

Re:Versus DX successor

[airjrdn]

Don't forget Tribes and Tribes2. I don't know about the rest of these games, but you can't even use DirectX in Tribes if you wanted to- support was disabled in a patch. (Tribes is pretty Nvidia biased).

That might have something to do w/why it's ranked 18th right now according to www.gamespy.com/stats.

Re:Versus DX successor

[dj245]

Don't forget Tribes and Tribes2. I don't know about the rest of these games, but you can't even use DirectX in Tribes if you wanted to- support was disabled in a patch. (Tribes is pretty Nvidia biased).

That might have something to do w/why it's ranked 18th right now according to www.gamespy.com/stats.

Three things really. First of all, the game that is 18th is Tribes: Veangeance, which is neither Tribes 1 nor Tribes 2. Completely different game. Secondly, Gamespy is completely incompatable with Tribes/Tribes2. Thirdly, Tribes: Veangeance is still in Beta, which is why the numbers are so low.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

3ds max is the only professional 3d program to support direct3d. Sadly, its market-share is declining very fast (with good reason), losing ground to Maya and XSI.

Oh, and all the strong programs right now, like Maya, XSI, Houdini, are all using OpenGL exclusively.

Most of them support dynamically generating GLSL shaders of your mental-ray/mantra/renderman shaders and use them to shade your geometry in the viewport. The effects are as good as directx, and very fast on high-end cards.

3ds max unfortunately doesnt do much with its viewports, you have to render to see most effects properly and lighting is very bad compared to the others.

And Houdini VEX shaders are amazing to work with, and everything displays in realtime in the viewport, no matter how complex the effect. This works with surface shaders, light shaders and displacement/normal shaders.

Oh, and all of this is OpenGL at work, not Direct3D. And all of this works on many platforms, ranging from OSX/PPC, to Win/Linux/x86 and even IRIX/SGI Mips. That is what "Open"GL is all about.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Zorilla]

Crappy OpenGL in Epic's games is nothing new. In fact, The original Unreal and other games that used its engine, such as Deus Ex, had really crappy Direct3D code as well. It pissed me off to see computers no faster than mine run it at 75 fps with a 3dfx card while my computer ran it at less than 40 with memory issues on my TNT.

Re:Versus DX successor

[drzhivago]

And of course, the irony of it is (as was said in previous posts), the SDL is basically just a wrapper for DirectX on Windows.

Re:Versus DX successor

[drinkypoo]

You can use all the other DirectX stuff while using OpenGL for rendering - a number of games do this already.

There is no point to porting such a thing to Xbox because you're not going to get Microsoft to sign games that use it - it competes with XNA or whatever their new DX replacement is called. (New DirectX, same as the old DirectX.)

Re:Versus DX successor

[Richard_at_work]

According to this page it seems to already be available.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Lord Kano]

Yes. id (quake, doom, etc) and I believe unreal both use it. Both are competitors, and as small of importance as portability to other operating systems such as Linux may seem to be, it is still somewhat important to them (although, I -still- haven't heard anything new about doom3 on linux)

Unreal used Glide and software only. There was no true "Open GL" option for Unreal. Unreal Tournament/2003/II may use it, I'm not sure. But the the original did not.

LK

Re:Versus DX successor

[be-fan]

3DS MAX is also a modeler primarly aimed at gaming and other lightweight work.

Re:Versus DX successor

[visgoth]

Softimage|XSI supports opengl, d3d, and cg realtime shader modes on win32. Under linux it has support for opengl and cg shaders.

Re:Versus DX successor

[escher]

It's great for us low-budget filmmakers too! (Have to buy older versions though. The new one is still to pricey. If only I didn't need to eat...)

Re:Versus DX successor

[Slack3r78]

That's the game source code, which is a bit different. That's the part that say this gun does this much damage, etc. It sits on top of the engine, and is the part you'd use to create mods.

The engine source code handles the rendering, physics, etc. That's the part that Carmack was talking about hopefully having open sourced by the end of the year.

Re:Versus DX successor

[sumdumass]

You will find in some instances vendor are kind of locked into direct X. This isn't some conspiracy or anyhting but it isn't uncommon for microsoft or any technoiligy vendor to give tools away for programing and creation that only use thier version of the technoligy.

I have personaly seen this with an aplication i use. Microsoft gave them some dot net development tools that they were charging high dollars for to try to implement some dot net codes in actualt programs outside of microsofts. Of course they took the free tools as well as the free training and are now releasing expensive dotnet versions of the same stuff I had used a year ago. This is what the sales paerson told me when i was attempting to figure out if the upgrade was worth it this year or if i should wait until next year. My service acount gives me upgrades for 3 years at a time so the saleman wasn't loosing any money by telling me this. Actually he was saving me the hassle of perfomring an upgrade that didn't effect any feature i used.

It is possible that some of the other game vendors have made some arangments like this in the past rather then OpenGL being harder to program. Of course i may be wrong.

Re:Versus DX successor

[RAruler]

Holy Shit!
Learn how to use 'you' and spell things correctly, you sack of shit.

Re:Versus DX successor

[JosTodd]

The Quake III game source is released, but not the source to the Quake III engine. The engine controls the networking, renderering, and sound in the game. The game controls what the user "sees and hears" when the person plays the game.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one - OpenAL. Although I've seen it used it Unreal Tournament 200x, it's not as widely known as it should be.

Re:Versus DX successor

[FuzzieNorn]

As far as I know, OpenAL falls back to DirectSound (including DirectSound3D) on Windows, unless you have Creative hardware, so I wouldn't really call it an 'alternative'.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Loki games OpenAL? The OpenGL for audio.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

It is an alternative; it "falls back" to whatever native sound handling support is available for whatever platform. CoreAudio on OSX, ALSA/OSS on Linux, etc.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

3D modelling for games is "lightweight" work? I guess you haven't seen a game in the past 5 years...

Re:Versus DX successor

[Ilgaz]

GL ide can be called "miniGL", its real similar to OpenGL while those times opengl was luxury for those P1, P2 pcs...

Re:Versus DX successor

[fitten]

One word: portability

Yeah... that's why we see all those OpenGL games running on and being sold for all those platforms that have OpenGL on them now...

Re:Versus DX successor

[DrXym]

Well it's like this. SDL sits on top of DirectX where it makes sense to do so. If SDL is running on XP or XBox and there are APIs (in DirectX) to set the screen res for example, it makes sense to use them. If there are APIs to set the volume or create surfaces or play music or read bitmaps it makes sense to use them too.

On Linux it makes sense to hook into X extensions to negotiate screen res, ALSA / OSS for the sound and so on.

Whatever is going on underneath should be made as irrelevant as possible as far as the game is concerned. Abstraction protects the game from being tied to a particular OS in the same way that the NSPR prevents Mozilla being tied to windows. It doesn't mean platform specific code is done away with completely, but the more that isn't, the easier it is to port.

After all, people like EA simultaneously release their games on 3 or 4 major platforms at once. I'm guessing they can do this because they have written their own cross-platform APIs for doing a lot of stuff - loading models, playing music, menus and whatnot in an abstract fashion. All we're proposing is an non-proprietary library that has building blocks for doing the same. Microsoft can't dictate that you not use it any more than they can dictate EA dumps theirs.

Re:Versus DX successor

[chrispl]

According to Doom3portal.comLinux Doom 3 server will be released soon after the first patch (that has just gone beta). We are looking at a few weeks or a month hopefully.

This is not the game just the dedicated server though. Some of the graphic effects (heat ripples etc.) require a DX9 video card so this is unlikely to work at all under Linux.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Mithrandir]

Not really - they were asking whether hardware accelaration in general was worth bothering with, since their software implementations were far faster. DX really didn't come into the equation until DX8 was released. OpenGL has never really featured as a serious commerical game development API. Developers went from either custom coded or Renderware-based engines, straight to the DX series of APIs. id software is really the only standout amongst the crowd of developing professional quality games using OpenGL. (lots of simple amateur games, but they aren't the sort that cause major press releases to be issued all over the place when they go gold)

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

the original tribes was Glide(3dfx) based.. and then they added opengl support. shoddy opengl support, but opengl nontheless.

Re:Versus DX successor

[be-fan]

Compared to modeling for a movie? Yes it is. Games have much less demanding geometry, rather simple shaders, and have most effects done in the engine rather than in the modeler. 3D Studio is an excellent program, but it's optimized for this sort of work (eg: good polygon reduction tools), rather than for more quality-intensive work.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't talking about the in-game models, but rather the game movies.

I've seen games that use CGI which is every bit as detailed as any movie that's been produced. Many of the Squaresoft titles have models that rival those used in the Final Fantasy movie, which still has some of the best looking CGI to date.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

That's gonna be fun. Hey, 7 people playing on my server, I wanna join... I'll just reboot the machine to windows then. Hey, why did everyone just get "connection lost"?

Re:Versus DX successor

[Short Circuit]

IIRC, the OpenGL engine was developed after Unreal was already out. The core was optimized for DirectX, so slapping on an OpenGL layer would have had to have been inefficient, at best.

Since Linux is becoming increasingly relevant, I suspect the next Unreal engine will be designed from the get-go to support OpenGL. Or at least be designed with enough flexibility that either API will work well.

Re:Versus DX successor

[marm]

Some of the graphic effects (heat ripples etc.) require a DX9 video card so this is unlikely to work at all under Linux.

What are you talking about? The NVIDIA Linux drivers support the same OpenGL extensions as the Windows drivers, and they support the same set of GPUs - right up to the GeForce 6800. Why would an OpenGL-based game look any different between the two?

Re:Versus DX successor

[visualight]

Is this a troll? Maybe you're sincere, if so please explain. I have windowsxp and linux boxes, the game feels much better on linux than in windows. What's "piss poor" about it?

Re:Versus DX successor

[FuzzieNorn]

Which makes it a crossplatform wrapper around the actual functionality, rather than something like OpenGL, which provides the actual functionality (as opposed to OpenGL wrapping around Direct3D on Windows, and QuickDraw3D on MacOS, etc).

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, obviously the game movies wouldn't be created using 3dsmax.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

He listed those games because they are among the most well known. But then you missed the latter half of his post where he gives you a link to see a large list of other windows games that use opengl.

Re:Versus DX successor

[k98sven]

What about SDL?

What about it? It's a great idea.

But. It can't really compete. SDL is "Simple", and doesn't provide the same amount of functionality.

Also, SDL doesn't seem to be going anywhere. The 2.0 version has been 'in the works' for years now..

(I've written a bunch of posts on this.. The lack of good crossplatform graphics API:s, both for 2D and 3D is one of my pet peeves, and IMHO a major barrier to Linux on the desktop.)

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: portability

What's wrong with you man? You can't just get around using the expression 'One word: ...' and then actually only using one word. It's against the rules. It's unaesthetic. Blasphemy!

Re:Versus DX successor

[Deusy]

>> Can OpenGL ever match DX in popularity among developers?

> One word: portability

One word: monopoly

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

the saleman wasn't loosing any money

"losing".

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that 18th place isn't too bad in a field of hundreds or thousands of games.

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

"you sack of shit."
The correct phrase is "you stupid cunt."

Re:Versus DX successor

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't believe that Linux should not be the primary focus for this SDL on steroids"

Double-negative, dude, means that you believe that Linux should be the primary focus for this SDL on steroids.

Re:Versus DX successor

[rasz]

this list is outdated, it lacks for example GTA 3 and GTA:VC

Re:Versus DX successor

[WuphonsReach]

From the makers of Return to Castle Wolfenstein!

Call of Duty wasn't made by those folks... but the CoD:United Offensive expansion (releasing next week) is.

Re:Versus DX successor

[chrispl]

Because certain effects will not show up if you run it on a non DX9 compatible card. These effects have nothing to do with OpenGL.

Re:Versus DX successor

[lowe0]

Doesn't discreet use Blizzard's cinematics as examples of work done with 3ds max?

Re:Versus DX successor

[Loonacy]

But "you" is 200% harder to type out than "u" is... am... are...

Crap.

Re:Versus DX successor

[lxnt]

Why should it go anywhere? It's good enough, and that's the reason version 2.0 is not due any time soon. Insufficient demand.

Whither directx?

[drsmack1]

Now that there are changes to the way that directx is being implemented; does this open the door for a greater acceptance of opengl for games? It is important for opengl to be used as it is much more likely that a game will be ported to Linux if it is used.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all we need is cards and drivers that actually support the standard. Anyone have any idea how long we'll be waiting for them?

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

The next generation should be fully compliant, or at least have that capability. Current cards can't implement all features of ogl2, although the latest from nVidia are pretty close. Mostly the missing features are shader-specific (certain kinds of looping, branching, etc). The problem as I see it is that people aren't upgrading as much, I have a GF4 Ti4200 and I see little reason to upgrade this year, it just isn't cost effective. I'm getting 25+ fps even in Doom3, most games have more fps than what my vsynch allows. It'll take some time.

Re:Great!

[The boojum]

Many of these features where present in some form in previous versions of the standard, albiet as extensions. The main change is that these features have been promoted from extensions to the core.

There are perhaps some other fairly minor differences as well, but by and large, I'd expect that for those cards that already supported those extensions, it's just a matter of the vendors updating the drivers.

IIRC, there have also been draft versions of the 2.0 spec for a while, or at least the various major pieces. And seeing as how all of the major hardware vendors have representatives on the ARB, none of the final 2.0 spec should be coming as a suprise to any of them.

Does this work with older cards?

[Lord Graga]

Or do I need to buy some new sleek shizzle to make use of the whole lib?

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Dreadlord]

The new functionalities were in the previous versions as extensions AFAIK, OpenGL 2.0 adds them to the standard.

So (unless I missed something that wasn't previously an extension), you just need a new driver for your card and you'll be set.

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Lord Graga]

Thank you.

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[grasshoppa]

I've got karma to burn.

Shizzle is not a word. It's a flag. To the rest of the world that the speaker of said word is a fucking dumbass.

It ranks right up there with "bling-bling".

Seeing how you actually tried to use it in a serious sentence, I figured someone should tell you.

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Lord Graga]

I've got karma to burn.

tard.

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what does beginning a sentance with a preposition say about someone?

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[dave420]

No, shizzle is slang. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean the parent was a "fucking dumbass".

You're more likely to be considered a dumbass for pointing that out.

peace.

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[ConceptJunkie]

You're more likely to be considered a dumbass for pointing that out.

I would, but not as much as the folks who modded that flamebait as "Insightful"!

Now, please excuse me, I have to take a shizzle and get back to earning my bling-bling.

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 'shizzle' is more of a question: how can one country further bastardise one language?

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[period]

Fascinating. Point, but periods aren't. Just points. They're flags. To the rest of the world that the writer understands. Elementary grammar. And syntax. I just figured someone should tell you. :-)

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Puff Daddy]

You get my new favorite canned response. Congratulations, you really ARE smarter than everyone else. Kill yourself.

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it seems like you're not getting much support. The reason is that most people have swallowed the crap called hip-hop and therefore feel stupid if they admit how stupid hip-hop culture is.

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it makes you feel any better, he used the word shizzle incorrectly in the strictest "definition" of the word. It is more commonly used as a substitute for the word sure, as in "for sure" = "fo' shizzle"

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which country is that? Crappimusikkia?

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fsck you insightful! It's offtopic. Idiot mods...

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you really ARE smarter than everyone else.

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what does misspelling "sentence" in a critique of someone else's writing skills say?

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the term "shizzle" is merely a slang word that a large number of people understand as being a substitution (more polite even) for the term "shit", another slang word.

If you do not like slang, perhaps you should refraing from using it yourself (ie. "dumbass"). There is a chance that I could be mistaken and you really meant to call the poster of the previous message an "unintelligent donkey", but somehow I don't believe that was the case. If it were, the two words should have been seperate (ie. "dumb ass").

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I thought the dramatic pause implied by the period after 'It's a flag.' added humor to the post (granted the following sentence was still grammatically incorrect, but who cares?).

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[grasshoppa]

I can't help but chuckle that this phrase comes from someone who's originality begins and ends with choosing which pop star to use as their nick. That someone who chose "Puff Daddy" has the balls to call me out will have me chuckling for days.

Thank you, sir. Your idiocy is the stuff of legends, and a model to citizens everywhere.

Re:Does this work with older cards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the rezizzle conveizzle seems to be that you can replizzle the end of any wodizzle with 'izzle'.

Weird.

[endx7]

Weird. I've been seeing cards claiming to be OpenGL 2.0 compatible for a while now.

Re:Weird.

[chrismcdirty]

There were DX9 compatible cards about 6 months before the release of DX9. They set the standards ahead of time, and the card makers comply with those standards when they design the architecture. They can't really predict when Microsoft (or OpenGL's coders) will actually finish the product.

Re:Weird.

[msh104]

compatible doesn't mean they have implented it or something, it means that the card has the ability to support it. but this indeed seems old news. the dutch site tweakers. http://print.tweakers.net/?nieuws/33801 reported on 11 august that opengl 2.0 was ready.

Re:Weird.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the same thing. What was just released is the OpenGL 2.0 *specification*. You won't get an opengl library from opengl.org, that stuff is in the video driver (unlike DX). But everyone new quite well what was going into OGL2 (some previous ARB extensions were promoted to core features), so cards that supported the aproppiate extensions claimed OGL2 compatibility.

Re:Weird.

[execom]

Yes, they usually said that they are, but the top of the range are OpenGL 1.5 'officially', although they are 2.0 capable. Have to wait for the display drivers.

Check this app to find which OpenGL you are really using, and wait that this application said you've got all the core features set in OpenGL 2.0.
Future will tell us.
Only the Geforce FX and the ATI 9500 or superior (and maybe the 3DLabs 'Realizm') are OpenGL 2.0 compatible. But again, it will depends of the drivers. Maybe ATI or nVidia will only add the few remaining extensions in their later products (GF6800, X800) and ship the drivers as 'OpenGL 2.0' and leave the the previous generation (FX and ATI 9x) as OpenGL 1.5).

that's great but...

[t35t0r]

what video card's/respective drivers support opengl 2.0 . Even the top of the line ati/nvidia cards support only opengl 1.5. I don't know about SGI's graphics subsystems though.

Re:that's great but...

[tomee]

Supporting OpenGL 2.0 is the job of the drivers, which didn't support it so far simply because the specification didn't exist. The cards have all the capabilities necessary to support OpenGL 2.0, which makes sense if you understand the development process of OpenGL: The card makers come up with some new feature, and they can immediately implement it in the form of an extension and release it with their driver. After some time, the new features become generally supported, so the ARB looks over the extensions and makes an ARB extension out of it that the card makers have to implement again. This means that the new features of OpenGL 2.0 are actually just the features that the cards already have put together into one API.

Re:that's great but...

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenGL is just an API that provides a general way to communicate with the graphics card in your computer to make "3D stuff". A card may fully support OpenGL 2.0 as long as its hardware can implement (can perform) what the API specification says.

In that respect, most modern cards (that now implement OpenGL 1.5) have the hardware capabilities to implement OpenGL 2.0. So it's just a matter of updating the drivers. More specifically, update the OpenGL implementation library of them.

Re:that's great but...

[Phixxr]

3dLabs's cards support it... mostly due to the fact that the opengl/dx support is in a flashable rom on the card...

-Phixxr

Re:that's great but...

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenGL 1.5 with full arb extensions is basicly OpenGl 2.0. At least you can program the OpenGL 2.0 way.

Take a look at the Shading Language Demo at http://developer.3dlabs.com/openGL2/downloads/inde x.htm

You will see what I mean

Direct 3D

[iMaple]

Lets hope that this will encourage more developers to switch to OpenGL. Yeah, I know the argument abt Direct3D being better (and I agree with it) but the new ver of OpenGL might just be good enough and arent the game developers always on the lookout for ways to get the massive linux gamers market

Re:Direct 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument about DirectX being better? You'll have to be more specific.

All I know is that I'd deal with OpenGL code any day over DirectX.

Re:Direct 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

and arent the game developers always on the lookout for ways to get the massive linux gamers market

Yes, I'm sure that all six linux gamers would be a boon to their bottom-line. After that I'm sure they'll try and target the two BSD gamers to further increase their profits. :-)

Re:Direct 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you babbling about?

Linux gfx/games
OS X gfx/games
GameCube - GL-ish API And I and all console developers I know write their offline tools in GL
And every other serious gfx work outside of games is all OpenGL

Wake the fuck up. So the majority of the dying Windows game market titles use D3D. Big fucking deal.

Re:Direct 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

You did like the joke in the parent poster , didint you (Dont ask me how I know , I am a zen master)

Re:Direct 3D

[drinkypoo]

I'm not familiar with any argument stating that Direct3D is superior to OpenGL. In fact every graphics programmer I've ever talked to prefers OpenGL over Direct3D - admittedly it's not a large sample size, and most of their arguments date from a time when it was not possible to plot pixels while using Direct3D without using GDI calls. But, I'm not a programmer of any sort really, and I can point to the wide availability of OpenGL as a good reason why OGL is better than D3D. After all, there's hw-accelerated OGL basically everywhere and D3D is only on Windows PCs and the Xbox.

Re:Direct 3D

[BCGlorfindel]

Yeah, I know the argument abt Direct3D being better (and I agree with it)

I'm afraid I'm a little less familiar with that argument. The only advantage that D3D has had over OpenGL is it's support for pixel/vertex shading. And even that has been for the last what, two years? And Doom3's intensive use of shaders is done through which API again? I won't go into the argument further. If you want more info look up quotes from Carmack on the subject.

Re:Direct 3D

[PhrostyMcByte]

Direct3D better? The Direct3D API changes just enough with every release to piss developers off. If you use it, your game will work on Windows and XBox. The only advantage Direct3D has is it's only controled by one company so they can put new features in fast.

OpenGL on the other hand keeps the API the same (just adds extensions) and aside from windowing any good coder should be able to make a cross-plat game with little effort.

Re:Direct 3D

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually OpenGL had shader support before D3D. It also had a shading language that could be used (Cg) before D3D. But crossplatform support came later. That's the way the OGL development process works.

Re:only through extensions...

[Cutting_Crew]

those cards have been able to do fragment and pixel shaders etc through openGL extensions, hence the xxx_ARB_EXT calls. this i assume is the release of all those extensions into the core of the OPENGL pipeline and thus will eventually be without the ARB into the call..

Thank tha lor' !!!

[quantax]

All I know is that this has been a long time in the coming and is great news, especially as MS has just announced the discontinuement of DX past the current version. Finally some competition to DX in modern games, however I really hope this will help people such as myself who do 3D work in Maya and such. Maya has just included a new feature that lets the viewports do a realtime high-quality openGL render as you work on your model/scene, so this can only make that faster and better (though as of right now, realistically speaking it isnt usable nor stable for actual work). Now for ATI to include serious openGL support for its cards & drivers...

Re:Thank tha lor' !!!

[quantax]

I mistated my original statement, let me clarify: MS has announced they are discontinuing DX past the current version to launch DX under a new brand name & direction.

Re:Thank tha lor' !!!

[rd_syringe]

Microsoft never announced the "discontinuement of DX past the current version." DirectNext, as it is being called, is merged with the Avalon display technologies that will be the foundation for Longhorn (and an add-on package for Windows XP). The DirectX technologies are just existing in a different name and integrated more into the desktop.

Re:Thank tha lor' !!!

[daVinci1980]

MS has announced they are discontinuing DX past the current version to launch DX under a new brand name & direction.

And let me be the first (only?) to say that the new direction is seriously kick-ass. Basically, all of the things that programmers generally mess up on are being integrated into the API and done automatically (or not, depending on what options you set).

The next version of DirectX (I believe called DirectNext) is going to really help push the capabilities of today and tomorrow's graphics cards.

And before I start hearing it, I do not work for MS. I write graphics for games for a living.

tutorials?

[FuzzieNorn]

None of the tutorials seem to have anything specific to OpenGL 2.0; they seem to just be 'teaching' basic OpenGL stuff from previous standards.

Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez...

- OpenGL
- Direct3D

I personally think Direct3D is a bit better, since it can apparently handle more than one separate object at a time.

Back to the drawing board, OpenGL dudes!

Learn from Microsoft next time.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[t35t0r]

Your opengl link is broken.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

You really have no idea what you're talking about do you. OpenGL vs D3D flamewars have been raging for years, FYI D3D started out well behind OpenGL feature for feature and gradually added OpenGL features, each generation of D3D we had to listen to Microsoft claim that all the interesting features of OpenGL were already in D3D and OpenGL had no advantage, only for them to add more in the next release.

D3D is a proprietary windows programming API owned by Microsoft and designed for games with some incredibly ugly and arduous API semantics, OpenGL is an open, extensible cross platform industry standard controlled by a board of interested industry specialists that anyone may join. The rendering and dispatch API semqantics have been optimized by the vendors in a standard way. If there was a need for any particular feature the vendors would add it as an extension either individually (something they can do and have done on their own) or they could collaborate on shared extensiosn for a common API. Red herring features that do not make any sense or map to real hardware have no place in a programming interface explicitly designed to sit close to the metal like OpenGL.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, MS is part of the OpenGL ARB that define the standard for OpenGL. And OpenGL is a lot older that DX: OGL dates back 1980's and IRIS 3D by Silicon Graphics.

And the note about objects.. There aren't any "objects" in either really, they're just a set of vertices that make polygons - that's it. How you handle those vertices is entirely different story.

For OGL I find it easier to make high-level libs that hide the complexities of actual vertex-level routines. DX is a bit more general than OGL but not as easily used and added to applications.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[FullMetalAlchemist]

Still, as a former OpenGL developer I must say that while OpenGL is nice it is far from perfect.
The API is very C-centered, which is nice, if you develop in C; we however developed in other languages, which more suitable for enterprise apps where stability and floatingpoint correctes is AO.

I'm not fond of OOP, but it sure makes sense when you deal with visual objects, and OpenGL doesn't really feel OO. Dealing with OpenGL for Lisp or Python is easy, but sure as hell ain't pretty.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[noselasd]

>it can apparently handle more than one separate object at a time.
I'm not sure why you say this.. However OpenGL is kind of a lower level
than DirectX, OpenGL have no "objects", you as the programmer are responsible for those.
Note yourself the fact that Direct3D can be implemented on top of OpenGL, as is the case done with winex/cedega.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, ok...?

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

3 words: portable binary interface

oh yeah - that and OOP choice. Look at the D3D API - sure ain't pretty either, but from a different perspective.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Hardware tends not to be very object oriented and C++ can quite happily call C.

While I agree OO has advantages in some situations with a low level graphics API I don't think that's the case the only real omission in OpenGL caused by the C interface is function overloading for the various argument types to a few functions. That would clean up a few things.

In 3D graphics OO really kicks into it's own when it comes to higher level APIs like scene graphs and there are numerous examples. These can and do benefit greatly from OO design but nobody has come up with a compelling low level hardware interface that justified OO. Sure you could wrap a few things in a class or two but there's no compelling architectural justification and attepmts to wrap OpenGL in a trivial namespace class and call it OO are horribly naive and misguided.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[spitzak]

What? I'm sure there are legitimate arguments for D3D, but saying the C-API of OpenGL makes it "work worse with other languages" is about the most idiotic thing I have ever seen. It is well known that one of the major reasons for limiting an API to C is to make it callable from multiple languages, ie the exact opposite!

I would be much more convinced with an argument that D3D "rejects old languages and does not compromise the interface in order to support them" which is a legitimate argument.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[SilentChris]

"D3D is a proprietary windows programming API owned by Microsoft and designed for games with some incredibly ugly and arduous API semantics"

Programming anything graphic-related on the PS2 is equally as arduous, but the system is the most successful in the world. Programming simplicity does not a success make (look at Java). I think you're letting your love for Open standards blind you from the fact that D3D is flat-out the winner, technology-wise.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[rd_syringe]

Are you aware that Carmack was so frustrated with the interfaces of some OpenGL extensions that he almost switched over to Direct3D?

I think the reason many people here are so fond of OpenGL is strictly because it's non-Microsoft and nothing more.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[FullMetalAlchemist]

No, you don't get it, OpenGL should do specs like CORBA; new version do new things. The latest offering adds support for components, before that CORBA was no more useful than plain RPC. The previous version are still the same, because different versions are solutions for different things.

If OpenGL v3 added a higher level API, which helps dealing with stuff that is trivial and plain annoying so we could focus on creating things, instead of how to create them, we would all benefit.
I'm not saying, "throw away the current API", I'm saying, go with the flow.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

You're missing one point, the OpenGL entry points on Windows are owned by Microsoft and they haven't updated in years and won't.

wglGetProcAddress is pretty much it or you could use one of the popular extension wrappers, like teh wrangler.

Feel free to try to get every app that calls OpenGL on windows to distribute a new interface, after getting all the hardware vendors to agree on this of course as Microsoft tries to muscle people out of cooperating.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my, my server linked from /.! :)

Anyway, my very lame dabblings in OpenGL really shouldn't be used as comparisation to anything!

Tels

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Hortensia Patel]

C'mon, dorbie... I mostly agree with your sentiments, but I think you go overboard in a couple of places here.

The rendering and dispatch API semqantics have been optimized by the vendors in a standard way.

But there are important areas where the ARB has fumbled the ball spectacularly, render-to-texture being the most obvious.

Red herring features that do not make any sense or map to real hardware have no place in a programming interface explicitly designed to sit close to the metal like OpenGL

And yet we still have polygon stipple, and selection. There's a conflict between API cleanliness and backward compatibility, and the GL way isn't necessarily the ideal one for everybody. For short-term projects, a clean API tuned for the common things that people want to do might make sense. (I'm not saying D3D is such an API; I haven't used it since v5. I'm just not ruling out the possibility.)

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Winner technology wise?!! What are you talking about. Your argument would say that Windows 3.1 was the flat out winner technology wise, but that is obviously wrong. D3D may be the flat out winner volume wise for games exclusively on Windows, but let's not pretend that this has anything to do with technology. Microsoft has been pushing D3D as the Windows 3D API for years, that is why it is the most often used.

FWIW PS2 has no interface beyond a packet description and a DMA engine, it is popular because of the market, many programmers *hate* developing for the PS2, but PS2 has the biggest market share. If you jusge by volume then OpenGL will be the winner 'technology wise' in a year or two when Sony uses OpenGL|ES it on PS3 (a possibility) and OpenGL|ES becomes prevalent on mobile devices like cell phones (a certainty).

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[gfxguy]

I disagree... OpenGL is not supposed to be a high level API, there are other scene libraries that can do all that stuff for you.

OpenInventor, for example, was great, and it included things to easily open a window and get to work right away. In other words, it's a lot like Unix - it might seem more difficult because it's more flexible, and if you've written your own scene graph library, upgrading to the next OpenGL won't break it, unlike a lot of previous DX upgrades.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[be-fan]

I don't think that the ARB has really dropped the ball on render-to-texture. As it is implemented in current systems, it's really not a general solution. If you look at the OpenGL uber-buffers proposal, you'll find that render-to-texture is just a feature of what could be a much more powerful and general memory model for OpenGL. I think the real holdup is that they'd rather do this right, by generalizing the memory model, than to add a special-case feature like render-to-texture.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[SilentChris]

"Winner technology wise?!! What are you talking about."

I'm talking about tech that D3D has and OpenGL is catching up to. Developers were using pixel shaders right out of the gate on Xbox. A lot of what's native to DirectX is (like you said) grafted onto OpenGL.

The point of a true "graphics library" is to give programmers as many high-level choices for manipulating graphics as possible. Cross-platform compatibility shouldn't be a goal. That should be handled by another layer entirely.

Also, if you're going to compare "winners", Avalon for Windows Longhorn is likely going to be installed on some 10s of millions (if not over 100 million) machines. If you don't start learning (and liking) DX now, you're going to be left behind.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[gfxguy]

Or, like me, we've been programming since long before anything called Direct ever existed, including 3D programming on SGI's and also in DOS and Windows 3.x using our own 3D libraries.

And, like most things, when MS announced D3D, we all said "what the f*ck are they doing? There's already a well defined 3D api out there!" And we all knew already, back then, that they were specifically targetting the success of SGI instead of doing something that customers really wanted and forcing companies to "choose" sides. Luckily, for all of us, it wasn't that easy for them.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[be-fan]

OpenGL isn't OOP because it's a procedural API, low-level API. DirectX isn't really OO either --- it just happens to use objects. If you want an OO interface to OpenGL, you should use a proper scene graph library.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Your final sentence describes OpenGL better than it does D3D or are you in the habit of making random function calls to enable state you are not interested in using? There are vestigal parts of OpenGL, but they pose little implementation burden and are accelerated on high end cards where major CAD and DCC applications support them, really who cares? Microsoft used to say that stencil support was one of those vestigial OpenGL CAD features. Now it is mainstream with 8 bits and *enhanced* functionality on $100 cards with full support copied almost verbatim into D3D. The state engine means that other vestigial functions don't burden the rest of the API, until one day the market decides they're mainstream.

As for render to texture, they spent ages trying to agree and couldn't. I guess that's the price you pay for freedom, and I'm talking about IHV freedom. Let's remember that the ARB didn't fumble the ball, NVIDIA and ATI primarily fumbled and I like to think that when those two can't agree then neither one should be forced to use the other's semantics which is what happens in D3D.

They're lowering the bar to a point where they can get something agreed upon. With hindsight this could have been done 18 months ago but hindsight is always 20/20.

That's hardly a case against OpenGL on the whole, but feel free to use D3D, nobody's stopping you...... err... except Microsoft if you're on any platform but Windows.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Deorus]

You can always wrap it out to a higher level OO API and be happy with your own interface. Noone is expected to use system calls directly in an operating system the same way noone is expected to use the lower level APIs for higher level programming. If speed (processor speed, not renderization speed) is such a big concern for you, then you shouldn't be doing OO at first.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Heh, spoken like someone who has never written a line of graphics code in their life. If you read Carmack's original OpenGL .plan you'll see that he was talking about how much cleaner OpenGL was to call.

You don't cite a reference w.r.t OpenGL & Carmack, it is clearly FUD. The only dissatisfaction I've seen from Carmack was in the Cg vs glslang hardware abstraction, I won't explain it, it's too technical for you but basically Carmack was advocating the futureproof open aproach and in some respects he got his way, however Doom3 calls ARBfp and ARBvp shaders anyway.

Carmack has never waivered from his OpenGL support and the only issue he's taken a public stand on in the API was as I said, shaders where he expressed a dislike for Cg and Cg is very similar to HLSL in D3D so Carmack was taking a stand against a shader approach that is used in D3D.

OpenGL has been around longer than D3D, is a lot cleaner in design, it has a clear unambiguius specification and has conformance tests to ensure quality of implementation. OpenGL is also portable to non-Windows platforms. All of these are excellent reasons to use OpenGl that have nothing to do with being non-Microsoft.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

It's true that uber-buffers as proposed would be very general and very flexible, this is the holdup, but there's a strong case for not holding up needed features when your spec doesn't match current implementations, that's the heart of the problem.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[spitzak]

If OpenGL v3 added a higher level API

That would be something like Open Inventor.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[FullMetalAlchemist]

I agree, but my point is that it should be part of the specification.
Open Inventor support many of the thoings I want, but still, it's not part of the specification. That means that on the enterprise customers machines that run FreeBSD, Solaris and Windows there is no truly portable way to run things.

Windows doesn't do OpenGL the way it should, i.e. up to date, but that is no excuse for things not beeing in a OpenGL standard specification.
If it was in the spec, more people would use OpenGL. Which is what we all want, right?

I have not done much work in D3D; I don't like many things in its design; but that doesn't matter as I talk about OpenGL on its own merits, not in relation to D3D. Which should put things in perspective.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

You seem to be very confused. XBOX is basically a GeForce3 system with some extra vertex processors, yes it supports D3D but your assumptions about APIs are wrong. NVIDIA actually extended D3D on the XBOX with a few OpenGL like features that don't even exist today on Windows versions of D3D. So rather than D3D giving hardware the advantage it holds developers back, in a situation where hardware developers are free to extend (as they can with OpenGL) they do and bring innovative hardware features to developers early. In the unique case of the XBOX NVIDIA actually threw in a few extra functions they'd always wanted to expose on Windows D3D but couldn't because D3D didn't let them. With the shackles off on XBOX they did.

The only reason D3D is the API on XBOX is a Microsoft business decision, technical merits have nothing to do with it.

Learn DX or D3D? You do know that D3D is discontinued and Avalon is the replacement so what will it look like? I personally suspect they'll clean up D3D and it may wind up looking a lot different. The graphics scheduling, and resource/context management will obviously be a major issue/headache.

As for OpenGL, OpenGL|ES will have way more volume than longhorn units shipped, it will be on every mobile device. So I could justifiably claim that if you don't learn OpenGL|ES now you will be left behind, but I'd never say anything so silly.

Cross platform compatability is often a major goal but it depends on your project and what you're developing. Let's be clear, the hardware details and graphics programming requirements tend not to change from platform to platform, so OpenGL suitability is not compromised by it's cross platform support, it just happens to be supported on many platforms. Hardware acceleration and consistent implementation are the primary design goals of OpenGL and it succeeds spectacularly well. Implying that because it is cross platform it is somehow compromised ignores the fact that the only reason D3D is single platform (or even exists for that matter) is Microsoft's proprietary control of the market.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[LuxFX]

Programming simplicity does not a success make

Sentence simplicity does not a statement make :) sorry I had to

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[sirius_bbr]

"I think you're letting your love for Open standards blind you from the fact that D3D is flat-out the winner, technology-wise."

There's more to 3D graphics than games.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[spectecjr]

You seem to be very confused. XBOX is basically a GeForce3 system with some extra vertex processors, yes it supports D3D but your assumptions about APIs are wrong. NVIDIA actually extended D3D on the XBOX with a few OpenGL like features that don't even exist today on Windows versions of D3D. So rather than D3D giving hardware the advantage it holds developers back, in a situation where hardware developers are free to extend (as they can with OpenGL) they do and bring innovative hardware features to developers early. In the unique case of the XBOX NVIDIA actually threw in a few extra functions they'd always wanted to expose on Windows D3D but couldn't because D3D didn't let them. With the shackles off on XBOX they did

Which OpenGL-like features are those that you're claiming they added? I've seen plenty of not-normally-in-Direct3D functions in the XBOX development libraries, but none of them look even remotely like OpenGL.

When was the last time OpenGL allowed you to insert rendering fencepost callbacks in the render queue?

Answer: it doesn't.

Perhaps you could provide more details instead of rampant speculation.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[be-fan]

Uber-buffers hasn't been thought-through all the way yet. They're trying to make sure that they can design something that lasts, and something that fits the new 3D-accelerated paradigm that seems imminent. I think the point is that they'd rather do it right by implementing uber-buffers properly, than just put render-to-texture in there for the sake of keeping up. This is especially true considering that you can already to render-to-texture using WGL_ARB_pbuffer and GL_SGIX_pbuffer, which are pretty well-supported.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[tdsotf]

"Open Inventor support many of the thoings I want, but still, it's not part of the specification. That means that on the enterprise customers machines that run FreeBSD, Solaris and Windows there is no truly portable way to run things."

No portable way to run things? Why not? Inventor is open-source. Just download, compile and run/use it. Problem solved.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[rd_syringe]

Heh, spoken like someone who has never written a line of graphics code in their life. If you read Carmack's original OpenGL .plan you'll see that he was talking about how much cleaner OpenGL was to call.

I wasn't talking about his original OpenGL .plan from years and years ago (the one he acknowledges is already out of date). I'm talking about his recent issues with ARB (something DirectX had before OpenGL) and other extensions which forced him to consider switching to Direct3D. Watch the QuakeCon video.

I'm pretty sure I've written a lot more graphics code than you're assuming I have. :)

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong dude. This isn't his original, famous opengl vs D3D of many moons ago. This is his latest quakecon video talk.

Sorry fanboy, but you lose again.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

What ignorant moron modded this as flamebait. If you don't understand the discussion then stay the heck away from moderating posts. Geeze!

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[FullMetalAlchemist]

It is, but so is Mesa, but should we have to distribute Mesa with all installations for our customers FreeBSD machines?
No, so why should not Open Inventor, not be part of such a typical install?

You don't have to agree with me, I really don't care, the point is that our customers would probably love it.
It would mean that if they hire some other company, all the new developers would need to know is OpenGL v3, which they would if they take the job.
We have our own OO library set, which is supperior to Open Inventor, it's propertary.
Our customers have access to the application code, but not the core libraries which is our trade secret; as it is shared between customers and makes them come back.

I would prefer if we would have an open standard, then both customers and employers would have a safer future.
There is already indications that we will have to stall developent of our library, as customers should not depend on diversity of library version; a bugfix should apply and help all customers, not just the new.

I don't really know any more, I just do research in distributed systems security and availability, but this was a valid concern, and I think it still is.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

I already know this but it's off the table now. They have postponed the uber buffers extensions and are going for a simpler render to texture extension, they could not reach agreement. Yes you can use pbuffers but they are going for a cleaner (possibly more powerful) extension.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Sorry to break the news but Microsoft resigned from the OpenGL ARB effective February 15th 2003.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Fair enough, you never cited a source until now. I'll check it out. My choice to cite the original .plan was implying that was what you intended.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

If it had been cited I might have checked it out, as for the fanboy comment, sigh, grow up.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Ahh.... so something you don't agree with or can't see equates to rampant speculation reguardless of the foundation. Your POV does not make my post speculation.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Profound]

I used to think they should have function overloading too, ie glVertex( 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f ) but considering the massively varying performance based on data size (ie float vs double) knowing exactly what size you are sending across the bus is very useful. It is only 2 or 3 extra characters... just think of it as extra strong typing and let it go.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Oh I've let it go, it was never an issue for me, just an observation.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

FWIW I never said it was the original .plan just raise that as an example. Now that I've seen the quakecon video he was complaining about the pixel buffers for next generation game. ONE feature and a legacy one, mainly for performance issues w.r.t. the context switch and a feature that OpenGL has had since before D3D existed. *everyone* knows this is an issue including me, if you'd read the other threads or opengl.org you'll see it discussed at length. He was expressing frustration at the intransigence of the ATI & NVIDIA engineers not compromising on the spec, not saying he would seriously go D3D. This extension has been knocked around for ages by ATI & NVIDIA and since they can't agree they're now going to push out a less ambitious render to texture spec. In other words, move along there's nothing to see.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Just so you get a chance to see this reply, that .plan ref was an example not a claim as to what you were referring to, that should have been clear from my later mention of a citation. Now that I've seen the quakecon video I can see he was complaining about the pixel buffers for next generation game. ONE feature and a legacy one, mainly for performance issues w.r.t. the context switch and a feature that OpenGL has had since before D3D existed. *everyone* knows this is an issue including me, if you'd read the other threads or opengl.org you'll see it discussed at length. He was expressing frustration at the intransigence of the ATI & NVIDIA engineers not compromising on the spec, not saying he would seriously go D3D. This extension has been knocked around for ages by ATI & NVIDIA and since they can't agree they're now going to push out a less ambitious render to texture spec. In other words, move along there's nothing to see.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Earlybird]

• I'm not fond of OOP, but it sure makes sense when you deal with visual objects, and OpenGL doesn't really feel OO. Dealing with OpenGL for Lisp or Python is easy, but sure as hell ain't pretty.

You seem to have a mistaken understanding of what Direct3D is.

Direct3D does offer a retained-mode API -- a scene graph engine, to be precise -- in which language-level objects are used to represent scene objects, such as frames, lights, cameras, meshes and textures. No game, and no application that I know, uses this API. (As the interface to a scene graph engine, it's horribly convoluted and hard to use.)

What games use is the immediate-mode API, which is basically just a way to throw triangles at the video card -- no support for cameras, for example, or animation, both of which must be handled by the application, which is why you need a higher-level scene-graph engine on top of the API. In this respect, Direct3D is very much like OpenGL.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Love,
rd_syringe (aka Overly Critical Guy aka bonch)

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Love,
rd_syringe (aka Overly Critical Guy aka bonch)

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[spectecjr]

Ahh.... so something you don't agree with or can't see equates to rampant speculation reguardless of the foundation. Your POV does not make my post speculation.

No, but the fact that yet again you refused to provide any kind of examples does.

As the phrase goes, put up or shut up.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

"A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something..."

Do you believe that statement with a deep, unwavering belief?

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

"When was the last time OpenGL allowed you to insert rendering fencepost callbacks in the render queue?"

NV_Fence, actually. When it was standardized as Vertex_Buffer_Objects a couple of years ago, they changed the model to lock/unlock, which is mostly equivalent.

Awesome!

[stratjakt]

I can't wait to try out some of these features, in 20 years when ATi implements them properly into their drivers, that is.

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 20 years? Ah, you're talking about the Catalyst drivers for Windows.

I wonder if my great-grandchildren will be running Linux. And I hope they'll be using ATI hardware from the early 21st century, because none of their contemporary ATI hardware will have even half of their features supported under Linux.

Thank you, ATI. You make the best graphics cards. You just forgot that some people would like to get some use for them as well.

Re:Awesome!

[rabbot]

haha I feel your pain. I tried ATI for my last card upgrade and found out quickly how lacking the Catalyst and even Omega drivers were for OpenGL. I'll never go back to ATI.

Neverwinter Nights 2

[mahdi13]

Maybe now that it is 'officially' out Bioware will take that into consideration and green light the Linux/OSX port for Neverwinter Nights 2.
The game is still early enough in development that they could still switch from DX and not have much impact in the release date

Re:Neverwinter Nights 2

[H3g3m0n]

I don't think bioware are the ones making nwn2,its Obsidian from memory. Bioware are currently doing Dragon Age probally due to the heavy restrictions from using AD&D ip. Bioware arn't even allowed to enable player/creature stats to be changed via scripting commands, it must be done manually with the dm client or through external programs.

Re:Neverwinter Nights 2

[jwbozzy]

<BioWare> Yeah, that's a great idea. Let's re-do a whole bunch of work, lengthen our dev cycle, have to re-do our schedule just so we can pander to 1.5% of the market.

Not to mention, the release of 2.0 is just formalizing support for these features. They all existed previously as extensions. Bioware could have developed using them a year or two ago if they wanted. I suspect they chose Direct3D because it is more convenient to develop with, has more driver support, and works excellently on their target platform.

Re:Neverwinter Nights 2

[jwbozzy]

Yeah, I just remembered that Bioware is not involved in NWN2. Secure your flame gear.

Re:Neverwinter Nights 2

[NoMercy]

Bioware arn't doing NWN2, it's Obsidian under licence from Atari/WotC. Furthur, theve already decided to go the D3D route over OpenGL 2, beause at the time they decided, OpenGL2 wasn't published and tools/support won't really be around for a while I would imagine.

Re:Neverwinter Nights 2

[jvalenzu]

1.5%? You must be including the mac market too.

Re:Neverwinter Nights 2

[jwbozzy]

I was being generous I suppose. It was a guess. Either way, I think I made my point.

Go, OpenGL ARB!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only two years behind the times!

Just different enough from existing GPU programming languages to be annoying, without any added functionality or ease of use!

No standard intermediate representation, requiring OpenGL drivers to contain full-blown compilers! Hello, latency!

OpenGL -- the best API and shading language a politics-laden commitee could design!

Seriously, if it weren't for Mr. Carmack, the dinosaur that is OpenGL would be deader than the dodo bird. Sad, as I spend half my day developing OpenGL apps, but true.

Re:Go, OpenGL ARB!

[stratjakt]

I agree, they dragged their feet getting 2.0 "official" that now that it's actually "official", it's wholly unimpressive.

Wow! Programmable pixel shaders! Holy moley! How about geometry instancing? No, not yet? Ok, I'll wait another decade.

Re:Go, OpenGL ARB!

[be-fan]

That's not even close to being a good comparison. Cg is a vendor-proprietory language not a cross-vendor language. You don't see Cg for ATI cards, no do you? DirectX is a platform-specific API, not a cross-platform API. On top of that, it's optimized for gaming, not professional applications. In any case, GLSL came out last year, so at worst, you can say that OpenGL was a year behind Direct3D in getting a high-level shading language.

Personally, I've used both D3D and OpenGL, and find D3D to be a horribly designed API, with massive changes in each revision. I'd much rather get OpenGL a year later, but designed right, than the D3D hack of the day.

Re:Go, OpenGL ARB!

[be-fan]

Um, what exactly can geometry-instancing accomplish that VBOs cannot?

Re:Go, OpenGL ARB!

[t35t0r]

Deader than a dodo bird? That's quite a statement to make especially when you have: http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/scienti fic/ http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/modelin g/ http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/cad/ http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/simulat ion/ http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/vrml_we b3d/ http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/games/ not to mention that some of the most immersive 3d environments are created by SGI hardware all based around the OpenGL API. Now if you want to simply talk about games, sure there are more DirectX games since MS monopolized the desktop market. Anyways I think serious gamers should do something productive. I only play ut2k4 to blow off some steam.

Re:Go, OpenGL ARB!

[uchian]

Cg is identical to HLSL, the shader language in DirectX9.

While I agree with you about DirectX in general, I find HLSL/Cg to be an absolute joy to program for, so credit where credit's due - I don't see why we need a seperate, different and incompatable shader language when the one we already have been kicking around for the past couple of years is so well thought out.

Re:Go, OpenGL ARB!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cg works fine on ATI hardware, and any other hardware that supports D3D or arbvp/arbfp assembly.

Have you used D3D recently? It's generally perceived as being vastly improved over earlier incarnations (just like most of MS' products), and perfectly useable these days.

But you are right on one point -- linux, like Mr. Carmack, is indeed a factor contributing to OpenGL's lack of demise.

OpenGL, by the ARB's very nature, will always be playing catchup, and perhaps that's fine. Unfortunately, the ARB is increasingly driven by political, rather than technical considerations, giving MS further opportunity to extend D3D's lead.

Re:Go, OpenGL ARB!

[be-fan]

Why do you think ARB is increasingly political? The ARB has been very good about keeping OpenGL up-to-date over the last few years.

Re:Go, OpenGL ARB!

[orasio]

D3D is just not enough for real 3d graphics. Games are nice, and drive a nice portion of the industry, but OpenGL is much more than Unreal Tournament, and Doom. D3D is not an option if you are talking about high performance cards.
Plus, closed standards are not an option if your whole business relies on them. Even if OpenGL were "technically" inferior to D3D in some aspects, it would still be the safest choice, if your business is not games (developing, or playing [Anyway, specifically for gaming, even consoles are a safest bet, both for players and developers]).

Re:Go, OpenGL ARB!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess -- you've never been to an ARB meeting. ;)

Let's just say that the big dogs on the ARB are often as interested in preventing their perceived competitors from getting a leg up (no pun intended) as they are in advancing the state of the art.

As business becomes more cutthroat, the parties look for any and all advantage they can find. The ARB does a reasonable job of balancing the competing forces, but the price is the mediocrity of compromise/design by committee, excessive caution, and delay...

OGL 2 Compliant cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia and ATi will just 'upgrade' the driver support to GL 2.0 like theyve been doing incrementally. My GF3/GF FX 5200 supports GL 1.5 in the drivers now. It didn't on launch. Same applies to my Radeons.

Re:OGL 2 Compliant cards

[Ilgaz]

My computer (Apple G5,1600) has that 5200 now.

Funny is, I saw new iMac G5 uses same 5200... So I say, don't throw away your card...

Point Sprites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone care to explain what that means?
From the "What's New" document:

Point Sprites

* Point sprites replace point texture coordinates with texture coordinates interpolated across the point. This allows drawing points as customized textures, useful for particle systems.
Point sprites were promoted from the ARB point sprite extension, with the further addition of the POINT SPRITE COORD ORIGIN parameter controlling the direction in which the t texture coordinate increases.

http://www.opengl.org/documentation/opengl_current _version.html

Re:Point Sprites?

[stratjakt]

You used to be able to draw "dots" on the resulting screen, used for whats called "particle effects", like mud spraying out of the back wheel of an offroad racer, for instance. Very simply (quicky) drawn because you're just handing out x,y coordinates for htem.

Now, rather than just colored dots, you can use textures or sprites (little pictures). So instead of a cloud of brown dots coming from a dirt bikes rear tire, you could have little chunks of rocks and grass. Or rather than a cloud of red dots coming out of a guys head when you shoot it, you could have little chunks of brain and skull.

Re:Point Sprites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray for brain and skull!

Re:Point Sprites?

[Corngood]

Take that, DirectX. Let's see you do Brain and Skull!

Re:Point Sprites?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't the same thing be accomplished by using a bunch of tiny, texture-mapped vertices?

Re:Point Sprites?

[The Real Nem]

When drawing particle effects traditionally you would draw thousands of little square polygons orientated to face the camera from any position. This means you need to send 4 * 3 vertices and 4 * 2 texture coordinates down the pipeline as well as transform the vertices to face the camera on your CPU. This takes up valuable CPU time and bandwidth. With point sprites you only send 1 * 3 vertices down the pipeline and the transformation is done on the GPU.

Re:Point Sprites?

[TrancePhreak]

DX allows you to have brain, skull, and intenstines.

Re:Point Sprites?

[Bob of Dole]

Yes, but this makes it easier to use.

Pirates of XXI Century

[News for nerds]

This 3D game titled Pirates of XXI Century by DIO soft is in development on OpenGL 1.5, and is going to utilize OpenGL 2.0 eventually.

Re:Um, is this news item accurate?

[be-fan]

Um, what do you think OpenGL 2.0 is? It's a specification.

Re:How is this IT?

[Anonymous Coward]

because they want to kill more brain cells in their readers so they think subscribing to this site is a good idea.

more tutorials?

[boolean0]

any other resources for someone interested in starting to tinker with opengl programming?

Re:more tutorials?

[The Real Nem]

NeHe is one of the best for tutorials. GameDev and FlipCode are also good general sites.

Re:more tutorials?

[happyfrogcow]

The OpenGL Programming Guide is available from opengl.com in electronic form. It's an older edition, but i have been using it anyway.

Re:more tutorials?

[happyfrogcow]

er, opengl.org that should be. not opengl.com, though that will take you to opengl.org anyway. alas, just clicky clicky

Re:more tutorials?

[DruggedBunny]

You could try Basic4GL. This is a relatively easy way to get started, but the long-running Blitz Basic goes cross-platform/OpenGL in the form of 'Blitz Max' within a month or two. OpenGL code written in Blitz Max already compiles without changes on Windows, OS X and (some versions of) Linux -- instant porting!

(It'll get its own 3D engine next year, too. See Blitz 3D for evidence that this isn't some silly fantasy!)

Linux games market

[gr8_phk]

Sure it's a small market, but any good game will get bought by a large percentage of that market due to the lack of titles. There is far less competition, and if you develop with portability in mind it shouldn't be a big deal to dominate that 5 percent of the gaming market. People using the new Doom engine should really consider this.

Re:Linux games market

[Kristoffer Lunden]

any good game will get bought by a large percentage of that market due to the lack of titles

Don't bet on it... the Linux people might be just a bit too used to not paying for their software at all as it seems. When games appear for Linux, the Linux crowd is not buying. That is why Loki isn't around anymore. Look at a place like GarageGames, which actively supports and produces games for Linux: they have an engine (Torque) that runs almost exactly as good on Linux as on Windows (same fps etc on same machine) but performs poorer on Mac (due to lack of ppl writing optimized code). Still, according to their FAQ (entry #9), their sales are to 65% from Mac people, and 7% from Linux people.

Your argument does ring true for the Mac crowd - those are people prepared to pay for stuff for their computer (after all, they pay alot just to have the machine). Linux people really, really hate to open their wallets.

Ok, so that is just one example, but that is the general feel you get when you hang around Linux people - lot of wishes, as long as it doesn't cost money.

This is good

[Rubberpants.net]

IMHO OpenGL is a lot easier and more straightforward to program in.

Re:This is good

[kisea]

I have programmed in DirectX because my Game programming class required it and i have to say the API was horrible. I have looked at OpenGL and the API looks much better. The biggest problem is that OpenGL is just a graphics API, many people use DirectX for DirectInput and DirectSound instead of having to write their own input or sound. However, I hope that this will nudge the game industry back towards OpenGL.

Re:This is good

[Ilgaz]

Why not go Carmack's way? Use opengl for gfx, use directsound, directinput for those...

Re:This is good

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO OpenGL is a lot easier and more straightforward to program in.

I agree. I've played around with DirectX and OpenGL and I find OpenGL alot easier to use. With DirectX you have to access all sorts of COM interfaces, with OpenGL, just a few function calls.

Re:This is good

[kisea]

Because, you are then still tied to Microsoft and DirectX.

sigh..

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenGL 1.5 with full arb extensions is basicly OpenGl 2.0. At least you can program the OpenGL 2.0 way.

Take a look at the Shading Language Demo

You will see what I mean

Bioware?

[DreadSpoon]

Bioware has nothing to do with NWN2.

Re:Bioware?

[cornjoelio]

Actually Bioware has a lot more to do with it than you think. They aren't writing it, and they aren't coding it, but there are a few Bioware employees that are going to be working closely with the guys at Obsidian for a while. But the fact remains that BW has nothing to do with whether or not the game is released for Linux or Mac OS. Neither does Obsidian for that matter. If folks want a linux client or mac port, they'll have to ask Atari, and I think they're immune to the "pretty please with sugar" tactic.

Re:Bioware?

[wed128]

i dunno...Atari worked with epic on UT2004, and there's a linux/mac port of that...

Yeah but

[CGP314]

The benefits include Programable Shaders, in particular: Shader Objects, Shader Programs, OpenGL Shading Language and changes to the Shader API.

Look, all I want to know is if I can shade something.

Re:Yeah but

[__aailob1448]

thanks for the laugh :)

gmail fo ya

[Anonymous Coward]

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-90f0dcbb0-46dfd618 8e-a37e78aa60

why not run it on the fastest PC ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac OS X takes Macintosh graphics capabilities beyond anything you've ever seen on a desktop operating system. Panther gives you the support you need for full-screen movies, monitors with huge resolutions and millions of colors as well as thrilling 3D games. Add to that killer audio with surround-sound, and your Mac has the audio visual qualities for the next decade in computing.

Why not run on the first 64 bit PC?

Plus it's great for running Microsoft Office !!!

Just buy a mac :-)

Re:why not run it on the fastest PC ?

[Anonymous Coward]

And now if there were some games for Mac we'd be all set. Oh, I'm sorry I forgot. Mac gaming has, what are they, Brickout, Super Brickout. . .Photoshop.

Re:why not run it on the fastest PC ?

[westlake]

Mac OS X takes Macintosh graphics capabilities beyond anything you've ever seen on a desktop operating system. Panther gives you the support you need for full-screen movies, monitors with huge resolutions and millions of colors as well as thrilling 3D games. Add to that killer audio with surround-sound, and your Mac has the audio visual qualities for the next decade in computing.

what OS/X does not have is a significant share of the pc gaming market or a compatible MacBox console platform to support the development of pc games.

Re:why not run it on the fastest PC ?

[Anonymous Coward]

...or a compatible MacBox console platform...

There was one, and it was a bad idea.

Re:why not run it on the fastest PC ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not run on the first 64 bit PC

cause Alpha's aren't as easy to find as they used to be

Don't you mean nvidia opengl? :)

[Ndr_Amigo]

Apart from having no relevance to OpenGL, most of the lighting examples etc on the page rely heavily on either NVs registry combiner extension or NVs 'CG' shader asm. Both of which are non-standard methods that have been depreciated for ARB standards for a while now.

Anyone know...

[OSeXy]

What version of Open GL is in the current version of OS X (10.3.5), or how to find out?

Re:Anyone know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try running glxinfo from the command line.

Re:Anyone know...

[BayBlade]

Look here

Re:Anyone know...

[bsartist]

You can use the OpenGL Driver Monitor that's included with Xcode to find out.

All id Software engine games

[rd_syringe]

How about listing something NOT based on the Quake engine?

Re:All id Software engine games

[Anonymous Coward]

IL-2 Sturmovik, the Unreal series... Did you check out the list he linked to?

Re:All id Software engine games

[rd_syringe]

Unreal includes both Direct3D and OpenGL renderers (as well as a software renderer). I'm talking OpenGL-exclusive games. Yes, I read the list.

Re:All id Software engine games

[be-fan]

Yes, but id software is a major and high-profile supplier of engines. Each OpenGL-based engine they release leads to a whole host of OpenGL-supporting games.

Re:All id Software engine games

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Love,
rd_syringe (aka Overly Critical Guy aka bonch)

Re:Offtopic: Gaming Question & gmail :)

[mahart]

Try:
How to convert your Windows Server 2003 to a Workstation

You might want to follow the whole guide if you want to use win2003 as your desktop machine.

Re:Offtopic: Gaming Question & gmail :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably tried this but worth a shot. http://forums.jolt.co.uk/archive/index.php/t-14412 3.html Been wanting a gmail account. jimrob2020"AT"yahoo"DOT"com

Re:Offtopic: Gaming Question & gmail :)

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenGL needs two parts: MCD and ICD. The other one (low-level) is provided with the drivers for your display card. The other one is by OS vendor (MS in this case). Maybe they didn't see it necessary to include 3D graphics API with a server edition (same story with W2k server).

You should locate opengl32.dll in a desktop edition (Win 2000 or XP) and copy it to the server (usually in WINNT/system32 or WINDOWS/system32).

And about gmail account, "Ai've already got une, you see. Oh yes, it's verry nïce" [/end_monty_python_mode] ;P

Re:Offtopic: Gaming Question & gmail :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Set Hardware Acceleration to Full on the Troubleshooting tab of Display Settings.

Massive linux gamers market?

[alexborges]

Are you kidding?

Come on, thats no argument. There is NO linux gamers market worth mentioning, and there is NO massive linux market in the first place.

A better argument:

OpenGL is a long standing industry standard which give developers more control over the way stuff gets rendered. Its simple, straightforward and does not depend on a large, antropophagic competitor, platform owner like Microsoft.

And THATS why ID uses it. So the MS wont choke them by controlling that critical part of the API.

Not many developers have the muscle ID has to invest in remaking a lot of stuff DX already provides, but for some sizes, its worth it.

Re:Massive linux gamers market?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a Apple market for game companies... Which, Apple uses latest OpenGL.

Those guys , aka apple guys buy software unlike PC ones who pirate...

Re:Massive linux gamers market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Zero multiplied by two is still zero.

Re:Massive linux gamers market?

[Cryect]

Hmmm what about how the Mac Version of Halo ended up being pirated more than bought?

Popularity breeds.... popularity

[phorm]

Indeedy. Back in the days when I was but a measly VB coder (yes, I know I know, this was many years ago) - I actually had a fairly decent 3d program working using.... D3D. Now the D3D stuff wasn't actually supported for VB back then, there was a 3rd-party module which made interfaces with the API rather easy though (I believe it was made by some french dude, though the name long escapes me now). In the latter stages, I also incorporated some amount of OpenGL support into my renderer.

Now, even with a rather undocumented API and a non-supported module, the D3D stuff was just plain easier. In fact, it was too easy, given that I could code a 3d app in VB without truly understanding some of the more intrinsic details of how the APIs/D3D worked

Of course, the more people using it and putting up samples, etc... the more other people can pick it up.

Nowadays I've been getting more into OpenGL, though recently I've been sidetracked. Documentation is still a bit sketchy at times, but I've coded some basic GL C++ apps. Obviously, there's no D3D or DirectX in general for Linux. After I understand some more about Mesa and GL though, I'll probably move to SDL which is supposed to be similar.

The true strength that I see is that there are a lot of people willing to contribute, a lot of existing games/etc that are open-source for me to pick apart, and of course GL runs on 'nix and windows (as well as I'd assume Mac).

Fo shizzle, yo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Word up bro! I'm feelin' it!

DOOM3

[Anonymous Coward]

The box of Doom 3 lists it as requiring DirectX, and makes no mention of OpenGL.

I think it is a D3D program.

Re:DOOM3

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom3 uses DirectX for DirectInput and DirectSound. It uses OpengGL for the rendering.

Combine Linux with game on CD

[endeitzslash]

Has any company ever tried to actually put the OS on the CD with the game?

I.e., instead of saying "Windows compatible" or "Linux compatible", just having you boot the game from the CD which loads an operating system (like a Knoppix CD) and then loads the game on top?

It seems this would appeal to companies because it would give them some consistency in the operating system setup. Of course, the OS would have to have great hardware detection ability. Also there is the hard drive issue I guess. Hmmm. . .

Re:Combine Linux with game on CD

[Rubberpants.net]

That's a pretty good idea. Sort of like a Linux rescue CD.

Re:Combine Linux with game on CD

[codemachine]

I wonder if something like coLinux would allow this to happen, even while inside the Windows operating system?

Might not be too resource efficient though.

Re:Combine Linux with game on CD

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo did that in ~2002-2003 but they have dropped the project iirc

Re:Combine Linux with game on CD

[gfxguy]

Remember when games used to be like that?

Anyhow, I think it's a good idea... perhaps the game could come with a USB drive to save game data (and also act as a "dongle").

On the other hand, I probably wouldn't want to buy a game like that... 20 years ago I didn't mind, but now we multi-task. You know, iconify the game, check email, find a walkthrough on the web, go back to the game...

Re:Combine Linux with game on CD

[mav[LAG]]

I remember you could boot Gentoo (of all distros!) CDs straight into UT2003. Hardware detected, X configured and then ran an xinit ut2003. Luvly...

Re:Combine Linux with game on CD

[codergeek42]

$ echo "exec /opt/games/bin/ut2004" > ~/.xinitrc
$ startx

Re:Combine Linux with game on CD

[grolschie]

I am sure that there was an Americas Army or RTCW Enemy Territory bootable Linux CD doing the rounds. Now that only one I can see is Frozen Bubble.

Re:Who the fuck cares

[tr33limbz]

Excuse me, sir, but in order for your Troll Post to be compliant with OpenTroll 2.0 Standards, you will need to implement the spelling of "the" with the standard "teh." Thank You Very Much, the Mgmnt

Too Little, Too Late

[mod_parent_down]

At this point, DirectX is at least 4.5x better than OpenGL.

Re:Too Little, Too Late

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, OpenGL needs to really push the boat out and release v2004 or something...

Re:How is this IT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the developers color scheme is way too nice. A soft blue? Nooo, you must have infantfeces instead.

More than just id's Engine

[MooseByte]

"If the only popular games using OpenGL use the same engine, that tends to make me think that people are not fond of programming for OpenGL in general, just one person/company."

Yes, but as you say they may have just simply created a kick-ass engine, in which case if you wanted to leverage OpenGL (cross-platform titles come to mind) there's less reason for others to create from scratch.

Combine that with the OpenGL-friendly Torque game engine and you've got a good pair of heavyweight tools.

From their site: "The Torque Game Engine started life as the technology behind Dynamix/Sierra/Vivendis products Tribes, Starsiege, and Tribes 2, and is an industry proven engine. It is currently being used by thousands of developers around the world with shipping titles such as Marble Blast, Orbz, Think Tanks, Tennis Critters, and the upcoming mecha game, Lore."

Re:Offtopic: Gaming Question & gmail :)

[egreB]

You could always try this, although it is stated to work with nVidia cards. A better bet would probably be this thread. I'd recommend downloading a test application to find out wether the card is 100% OpenGL-compatible (though it should be). If else, try the generic drivers.

Cheers!

Reading OpenGL tutorials is such a harsh reminder

[zaqattack911]

To a web/enterprise programmer like myself (who lately has been using Java), reading opengL tutorials kind of reminds me that no matter how good a programmer, learning an API extensively is most of the work.

Fuck I'm just totally lost staring at openGL code :)

Anyone else feel inadquate ? :)

Love,
Zaq

P.S. I noticed the tutorial was using .NET C++. Does this mean I can easily use C#? or is that a whole other ballgame? C# does pointers/references "under the hood" like java correct?

YES!!!

[eventhorizon5]

Now when can I get the code burned into my laptop's onboard Trident Cyberblade 16mb world's greatest chipset? ;) mmmm... 3d.... lol

OpenGL will win at the end.

[master_p]

3D graphics is something that no sane developer would ever lock himself to a proprietary API like Direct3D. More and more companies use OpenGL for their games, and now with 2.0 even more will ever use it. Using OpenGL has the additional benefit of porting a game to architectures other than Windows. As for other parts of DirectX, there are various combinations that can do the job: OpenGL + SDL, OpenGL + AllegroGL + Allegro, etc.

Re:OpenGL will win at the end.

[Ilgaz]

Also don't forget Java3d, for future (aka all devices) uses OpenGL. ... apple user :)

Re:OpenGL will win at the end.

[TrancePhreak]

I you think that's all there to DirectX then you are horribly mistaken. There is also the debugging support, the easy to use tutorials and samples, as well as the integrated help. You mention Allegro, but you probably don't realise that Allegro uses DirectX for some things.

Also, your statement about more and more companies using OpenGL is false. More and more companies are using DirectX right now, even if you include all the Quake engine games.

Re:OpenGL will win at the end.

[Flagran]

Allegro is a cross platform API. If it uses directx for some things, it only does that on Windows, and not DOS, Linux, Mac, etc.

Re:OpenGL will win at the end.

[IrresponsibleUseOfFr]

3D graphics is something that no sane developer would ever lock himself to a proprietary API like Direct3D.

Then most of PC game industry must be insane. Except for Doom3, almost every commerical game uses DirectX. Of those that support OpenGL, they also usually support a DirectGraphics rendering pipe-line. But, you do realize that Doom3 has 3 different rendering backends using different OpenGL extensions. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of using the API if you have to write a different rendering backend for each card or chip line you want to support? I'll go one step further, I'll claim OpenGL + extensions (which you have to use to do cutting-edge real-time graphics rendering) is in fact more proprietary than using DirectGraphics.

Using OpenGL has the additional benefit of porting a game to architectures other than Windows.

Great!!!! That is why I see a Mac version of Doom3... no!? But surely a Linux version... no!? Gee... apparantly even if I write something in OpenGL I don't automatically get portability either. But, many DirectX games work fine under WINE. What was your point about portability again?

Look, OpenGL has been a mess the last 5 years. SGI has had financial worries. Microsoft left the ARB. OpenGL has gotten better. OpenGL 2.0 is a step in the right direction but there still is a ways to go to catch up to DirectGraphics. ATI and nVidia still implement stupidly incompatible extensions while Apple is off doing their own thing with it. Then when the extension gets approved, it ends up looking like something that they are forced to implement for DirectGraphics anyway.

I'm sorry, but display lists is not the way you want to get performance out of todays graphics cards. You want vertex buffer objects. Render to texture needs to fixed. But, that just catches OpenGL up to DirectGraphics. Where is the advantage of using OpenGL? You'd be hard pressed to name one once your face hits something named reality.

Direct3D used to be a retarded API. But, Microsoft has drastically improved it. It is competitive with OpenGL in all areas and surpasses it in many others. I personally believe there will continue to be a place for OpenGL, but I don't see it ever returning to be the premiere real-time graphics API that it used to be.

Re:OpenGL will win at the end.

[master_p]

It is the Windows version of Allegro that uses DirectX. Allegro for other platforms does not.

Since Allegro offers support for mouse, timers, sound, joysticks, bitmaps, datafiles and other things, it is quite a good idea to use it alongside OpenGL. It maybe does not offer the full range of DirectX capabilities, but it is an option.

Re:OpenGL will win at the end.

[Chris_Jefferson]

While it's easy to say "use OpenGL+SDL instead of DirectX, then you can get to Mac / Linux users", there is one important thing you have missed.

Quite a few (although it's getting better) graphics cards have sucky openGL drivers. So is there more windows users with bad openGL drivers than there are mac and linux users? I suspect the answer is yes.

Is OpenGL really "open" ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Is OpenGL open-source or free software? I couldn't find that info on their website. If it isn't, why does everyone root for it? Is it at least more "open" than other langauges?

BZFlag

[djdavetrouble]

Oh boy, I can't wait for a new bzflag with ummmm..... shades?

Well, kind of released

[beaverbrother]

It appears that only the specification was released. No platform implementations are availible, so its not currently possible to make and use open gl 2 applications.

Three Short Plays about Boot CDs

[Blakey Rat]

People always post this crap and it's never a good idea.

Look, here's an example of something you CAN'T do with a boot disk game:

Bob: "Hey, Joe, let's play some Return to Castle Wolfenstein."
Joe: "Cool. Wanna do the voicecomm?"
Bob: "Sure. Let's use Roger Wilco, my IP's 127.0.0.1"
Joe: "Rock, see you there."

(Or whatever those wacky kids are using these days for voicecomm in games.)

Here's another little skit:

Joe: "I just bought a new ATIVidia SuperCard that has 20 times the performance of older cards!"
Bob: "Awesome! Boot up 'Super Linux Brothers' and let's see how it runs!"
Joe inserts Linux CD that boots into game.
Joe: "Screen's just black."
Bob: "Shit, must be missing the driver..."
Joe: "How the hell do you put a driver on a already-burnt CD?!? This game sucks!"

And here's a third:

Joe: "Here, try my copy of 'Super Linux Brothers.'"
Bob: "Ok."
Bob runs game.
Bob: "These controls are really awkward."
Joe: "I know, it took me like three hours to get controls I liked... just use my control set."
Bob: "Where is it?"
Joe: "Shit, it's saved on my HD at home! I forgot to bring it! Goddamned."

I hope I've demonstrated that having a boot disk for a game is a BAD idea, and why nobody will buy a game distributed that way. There's a reason we haven't done that since the 80s, you know.

Re:Three Short Plays about Boot CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Bob: "Hey, Joe, let's play some Return to Castle Wolfenstein."
Joe: "Cool. Wanna do the voicecomm?"
Bob: "Sure. Let's use Roger Wilco, my IP's 127.0.0.1"
Joe: "Rock, see you there."

Functionality can be built into the game itself.

Joe: "I just bought a new ATIVidia SuperCard that has 20 times the performance of older cards!"
Bob: "Awesome! Boot up 'Super Linux Brothers' and let's see how it runs!"
Joe inserts Linux CD that boots into game.
Joe: "Screen's just black."
Bob: "Shit, must be missing the driver..."
Joe: "How the hell do you put a driver on a already-burnt CD?!? This game sucks!"

Driver can be placed on a USB key which the game can then utilize.

Joe: "Here, try my copy of 'Super Linux Brothers.'"
Bob: "Ok."
Bob runs game.
Bob: "These controls are really awkward."
Joe: "I know, it took me like three hours to get controls I liked... just use my control set."
Bob: "Where is it?"
Joe: "Shit, it's saved on my HD at home! I forgot to bring it! Goddamned."

Again, USB key can be used for storage of config information. Besides, I know of no game that ever came with _exactly_ the control scheme that I prefer and have always needed to be reconfigured.

I hope I've demonstrated that having a boot disk for a game is a BAD idea, and why nobody will buy a game distributed that way. There's a reason we haven't done that since the 80s, you know.

I have a few examples that can debunk that statement. 2600, NES, SMS, TurboGrafx, Genesis, SNES, PSX, N64, DC, GC, PS2, XBox and the others that I've forgotten.

Re:Three Short Plays about Boot CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Mainly you are saying that you can't save and load data.
Like config files, drivers and savegames.

Well, you can save on hd, floppy or usb thing.

I'd say the disadvantage is that it need to boot the whole os each time you wanna play the game, and that probably some hardawre wouldnt be detected.
Also, game makers dont wanna be responsible of updating or compiling drivers.

Re:Three Short Plays about Boot CDs

[r3m0t]

...There's a reason we haven't [distributed boot disk games] since the 80s, you know.

I have a few examples that can debunk that statement. 2600, NES, SMS, TurboGrafx, Genesis, SNES, PSX, N64, DC, GC, PS2, XBox and the others that I've forgotten.

Well, guess what? There were very few releases of those consoles! The driver problem (which is massive) didn't exist!

Re:Three Short Plays about Boot CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

..and also you can't quickly play a game for 20 minutes, whle leaving your work open in the background, when you need a break.

In fact, I often play games like Civ3 in the background while working.

Re:Three Short Plays about Boot CDs

[Chris_Jefferson]

OK then so we get this USB key.

And we install our controls to it

And any new graphics drivers

And any new controller/CD/IDE/motherboard drivers

And any updates to the game which come out

And any updates to the operating system

And we've GOT THE FREAKING OPERATING SYSTEM!

I think too many people weren't around in the days before windows 95. One of the MAJOR selling points for gamers was escaping the world of incompatable VESA/Sound blaster drivers and changing autoexec.bat/config.sys files which had to be tweaked for each game and how old games never worked on newer hardware.

SDL and DirectX

[MenTaLguY]

SDL is basically just a wrapper for DirectX on Windows

SDL only uses the parts of DirectX that generally don't overlap with OpenGL, to which SDL hands off the remainder of the work.

Now doom3 will take a bit longer

[DaMouse404]

Now doom3 will be postponed while they make it support OpenGL 2.0 on linux to make it own for us more than windows >:D

-DaMouse

Re:Now doom3 will take a bit longer

[dcstimm]

we would have to wait for Linux Opengl 2.0 drivers then from companies like Nvidia and ATI, dont hold your breath.

Re:Reading OpenGL tutorials is such a harsh remind

[PhrostyMcByte]

There are C# bindings to OpenGL but as with any P/Invoking, you'll take a decent speed hit every time you call one of it's functions. Afaik DirectX.NET is entirely managed so you don't get the speed hit (think I saw this on MSDN TV).

The magic of outsourcing

[heroine]

Now it's time to wait for India's code monkeys to implement OpenGL 2. This is a true example of outsourcing producing higher level offerings. If it wasn't for the Indian code monkey, we wouldn't have a spec called OpenGL 2. All the spec writers would be programming, leading to a bunch of different implementations of software to perform shading. Now all we do is write a spec, wait a few months, and automatically have full implementations for every different microchip coming out of Taiwan.

OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[tvadakia]

Anyone want a gmail account get a hold of me... I have six left and have no more friends/family left to give them to (I'm lonely.)

Quite seriously, whoever wants them, they're yours.

MesaGL?

[jshriverWVU]

Anyone know when MesaGL will have OpenGL 2.0 support?

Re:MesaGL?

[GooberToo]

Great question! Too bad someone more knowledgeable didn't answer. :(

Re:Reading OpenGL tutorials is such a harsh remind

[discord5]

To a web/enterprise programmer like myself (who lately has been using Java), reading opengL tutorials kind of reminds me that no matter how good a programmer, learning an API extensively is most of the work.

APIs are indeed most of the work. Learning a language completely is simple (unless it's perl, and no, that's not a flamebait), but it's the APIs that make you an effective coder. When I first started web-coding, I knew next to nothing. It took me a while to find my way around things in perl (the Camel book helped). I'm pretty sure if tomorrow I need to do a Java Enterprise project, I'll be messing about for a couple of weeks in finding my way. Unfortunatly this is a fact that many managers seem to forget.

Fuck I'm just totally lost staring at openGL code :)
Anyone else feel inadquate ? :)

When I first read the openGL API I wanted to run to the bookstore and get lots of books on the subject.
When I thought about it for a while, I wanted to run to the bookstore and get lots of math books teaching me the skills I need to do things.
When I got a girlfriend, I gave up on the "running to the bookstore for knowledge" and started thinking about other things.
When said girlfriend and I broke up, I was preparing for endterms.
When I got a job, I thought "I'll have time in the evenings to learn new stuff".
When I was working for 3 months I discovered that I really didn't want to code at home anymore.
When they fired me (yesterday) I thought "I wish I'd spent some time learning openGL."

Re:Reading OpenGL tutorials is such a harsh remind

[VistaBoy]

Yeah, I used to feel the same way about OpenGL, but I discovered that using SDL as a wrapper for OpenGL makes it a little more tolerable for those used to using standard C++. You know, like the kind that uses int main() and not int WinMain().

Also, a real good place to learn OpenGL is http://nehe.gamedev.net/. It has tutorials that cover everything from drawing your first polygon to using pixel shaders. Also, most of their examples are available in a wide variety of programming languages and platform-specific code.

Re:OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[tvadakia]

Just so peeps know, only three left.

DirectX v. OpenGL is academic

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the DirectX v. OpenGL debate somewhat academic. DirectX APIs are now deprecated. DX9 is the end of the line for DirectX. There will be no compatiblity layer between DX9 and Microsoft's replacement. It's simply going away.

DX games simply need to be recoded for the new API. OpenGL games, well they don't need any changes unless they want to take advantage of the new 2.0 features...

Re:DirectX v. OpenGL is academic

[codergeek42]

Microsoft always makes it hard to keep backward-compatibility. Just look at how the office documents are stored. It's how they get there money: by forcign upgrades of their software. the OpenGL API/specification, however is-correct me if I'm wrong, please-not owned by a single monopolistic company, and it evolves as a whole, not simply by changing the API every version. (Granted, X 9 did have DX 8.0/8.1 backward-compatibility, iirc.)

Re:DirectX v. OpenGL is academic

[TrancePhreak]

Not only is there 8.0/8.1 compatability, but you can use versions as early as 3. I see alot of people complaining that they change the API but it's not really that big of a deal. You can stick with the older version if you want. The change from 8.0/8.1 to 9.0 was not even very big API wise. You just need to change a couple calls and your done. (For ex you call SetFVF instead of SetVertexShader for fixed function pipeline)

WTF?!

[codergeek42]

Mod me troll if you want, cuz I don't care.

But seriously! I had submitted this story to /. almost A MONTH AGO and it got rejected. C'mon, lamebrains! stay with the frickin' times, please!....

(to quote my "Recent Submissions" page:)

Here are your recent submissions to Slashdot, and their status within the system:
2004-08-11 19:21:26 OpenGL 2.0 Released(Developers,Graphics) (rejected)

Screenshot: clicky [ramshacklestudios.com: my own domain and hosting, clean]

Re:WTF?!

[codergeek42]

I just realized I put my webhost in a position to be /.-ed. Oops :-|

Re:WTF?!

[Anonymous Coward]

there's a small problem here...

"OpenGL version 2.0, released on September 7, 2004"

so, you submitted this a month ago? sounds like you're a troll afterall :)

Re:WTF?!

[codergeek42]

http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_rel eases/2004/august/opengl.html

SIGGRAPH 2004, LOS ANGELES (August 10, 2004)--The latest version of the OpenGL® specification, incorporating support for the OpenGL Shading Language application programming interfaces (API), was announced today by Silicon Graphics and the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB) at the SIGGRAPH 2004 industry tradeshow. One of the most important and enduring standards in the computer industry, OpenGL® 2.0 presents a revolution in graphics by providing high-level access to the programmable features of modern graphics processors and is an important step in creating photo-realistic, real-time 3D graphics.

See the date? August 10, 2004...

Re:Reading OpenGL tutorials is such a harsh remind

[Mithrandir]

So the simple way to understand OpenGL code is to think of a really big state machine. Each call just modifies the currently existing state. The state persists until the state is changed - even to the point of maintaining it between rendered frames.

If you want Java bindings for OpenGL, there's two major projects.

JOGL, which is the basis for the formal bindings in JSR 231.

LWJGL which is a community driven project and somewhat akin to DirectX in that it also merges audio and input device APIs as well.

If you need some tutorials to get started, check out http://opengl.j3d.org in a couple of weeks when it gets officially opened and has lots of beginner tutorials to play with.

After that, the OpenGL Red Book is your friend.

Linux users are not a new gaming market

[AHumbleOpinion]

Interest into porting to Linux is slowly becoming more popular between game makers, mostly because if you do it right for the windows port in the first place, it isn't as difficult as it might seem to port to Linux, and it helps open up a small new (starved?) market.

Linux users are not a new gaming market, they are largely already customers who dual boot or emulate. Switching these people from Win32 to Linux is actually a loss, no new sale but additional expenses. The new gaming market only consists of those few who refuse to run anything other than a native Linux version.

Linux does make sense for game servers and these game servers are the reason many of the game clients exist. If Linux game servers were not needed the list of native Linux games would be much shorter.

Re:Linux users are not a new gaming market

[Hatta]

Linux users are not a new gaming market, they are largely already customers who dual boot or emulate. Switching these people from Win32 to Linux is actually a loss, no new sale but additional expenses. The new gaming market only consists of those few who refuse to run anything other than a native Linux version.

Any money I don't spend on Windows licenses is likely to go to gaming. Further, if I'm deciding between two games at the store, and I can play one without rebooting, I'm probably going to pick that one. For instance, I'm not going to buy HL2. I am going to buy Doom 3, once the linux client debuts.

Re:Linux users are not a new gaming market

[some guy I know]

I am going to buy Doom 3, once the linux client debuts.

Same here.
If there is a Doom3 purchasing spike when the Linux client is released, it may be a further incentive to game companies to release Linux versions of their games.

Re:OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[tvadakia]

All right peeps, they're all gone. Thanx for playing! Slashdot pays off once again!

Just buy a mac :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the "just buy a mac :-)" troll.

Wake up, moderators.

Read the title, have to say it:

[A_Non_Moose]

Let the *GAMES* begin!!!

(OpenGl, of course) ;)

OpenGL 2.0 Released

[althalus1969]

And the political pissing contest goes on and on and on. Wer zuspät kommt, den bestraft das Leben, he woho is late gets punished by life .... Honestly, they are too late..

Why Microsoft jumped the shark with DX 9

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they stand an excellent chance of tosing out DX. Every few years MS reinvents DX, and we all have to throw out all our code and start again. Now that's fine if you're a developer with a game that'll be on the shelves for 6 weeks at best. But if you want to write code with any sort of permanence, anything you write in DX will be bitrot in a couple of years. We had to do this when they dropped DX RM, and now having rewritten our code for DX 9, guess what? Well, we will one last time Gates, but this time it'll be OpenGL.

Check joelonsoftware.com for an interesting article about Longhorn and the Win32 API. Gates expects everyone to rewrite their code for Longhorn for absolutely zero benefit (except Gates). Joel figures they'll jump to the web instead. For someone so smart, you're pretty stupid Bill.

Shizzle IS a word...

[wrinkledshirt]

Or, maybe closer to the truth, a concept.

But I'm willing to bet my life on this: It was created by African American culture as a joke, mostly because they knew that once whitey came around to copying it just like we copy just about everything else they do, we'd look stupider than ever.

And it's worked. Beautifizzily.

Hm.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you're back to modding up your current account with your other troll accounts...

Nice work. The Troll High Council is pleased.

Welcome to 2001, OpenGL!

[Mskpath3]

Glad you decided to drop in.

Official Specifications

[NEOtaku17]

Here is the official specifications of the OpenGL 2.0 in PDF format.

Hot diggity...

[grolschie]

You mean to say we won't have to play ASCII TTYQuake anymore?

Re:Reading OpenGL tutorials is such a harsh remind

[Profound]

Yep, and have a default state that is expected by everything (matrixmode = modelview, culled faces on or off, depthmask etc) change it if you need to but put it back when you're done. PushMatrix() then PopMatrix() help to get back to the original state. Easy.

The hard stuff with 3d is the maths & knowlege, not the API....

Neverwinter Nights

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not in the list

Re:OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[digital bath]

I have five free invites for anybody that wants them - reply with your addy and I'll send you one.

Re:OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[andrewa]

I'll have one

raindog @ digiverse.net

Re:OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I wouldn't mind one either! Mine is getting a bit embarrasing after I made it after a few pints one evening....

My addy: stonkingpenis@yahoo.com

Re: Your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think this post needs to be modded down, try using the reply button instead.

OK, I hit reply. (BTW, it's a link, not a button.) Now mods, MOD PARENT DOWN!!

Re:OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[notamac]

Sure I'll take one...

notamac99 @ yahoo.com

Re:OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to have a gmail invite, please.

Send to forgmailonly@hotmail.com

Thanks!

Re:OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[andrewa]

Slightly suspect email address there. Ebay gmail invite collector maybe...?

Re:OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[Senorchris]

Would I be the fifth? If so, really appreciated. :) senorchris (at) hotmail.com

Re:OFF TOPIC. Gmail...

[lrandall]

Hey

I'd love one! Hope you still have some invites. My address is

lrandall * bluebottle.com

Thanks

-Luke

"OpenGL Shading Language" (the "orange" book)

[pogopang]

In the tradition of the "color books" of OpenGL (red, blue), there's the "orange" book, called the OpenGL Shading Language

Loki is a bad example...

[freakmn]

Loki is a bad example, yet I understand why people use it. It is the most well known. But that doesn't make it a good example. I purchased many loki games. I spent some time on the newsgroups, both giving and recieving help. When loki went down the tubes, at first, I mourned the loss of the company. Then I found out what really happened.

It appears to me that Scott Draeker really mishandled the assets of the company, taking out loans that he could not pay back, and putting the money into his personal accounts. Just because one person mishandled the assets of the company doesn't mean that their product was not selling. In most cases, when a business goes under, it is because of a bad product. In this case, I believe that it is because of corruption. It is not fair to use the example of Loki as a reason that selling Linux games would not work, however, life isn't fair.

As an aside, I have looked at GarageGames, but I do not buy their games, as they are not the type that I play. It seems that they are, for the most part, simple puzzle games, which do not appeal to me.