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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."
Can OpenGL ever match DX in popularity among developers?
One word: portability
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
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.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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.
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.
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.
NO SIG
At this point, DirectX is at least 4.5x better than OpenGL.
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.
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.
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."