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Windows Vista May Degrade OpenGL
srw writes "OpenGL is the industry choice for cross platform, hardware accelerated 3D graphics, and it is also the only way you can get fast 3D graphics on your Linux desktop. It now seems Windows Vista implements OpenGL via Direct3D, seriously degrading its performance and attractiveness to developers." From the article: "In practice this means for OpenGL under Aeroglass: OpenGL performance will be significantly reduced - perhaps as much as 50%, OpenGL on Windows will be fixed at a vanilla version of OpenGL 1.4, No extensions will be possible to expose future hardware innovations. It would be technically straightforward to provide an OpenGL ICD within the full Aeroglass experience without compromising the stability or the security of the operating system. Layering OpenGL over Direct3D is a policy more than a technical decision."
Looks like open standards will be left butt-naked on Baltic Avenue.
Microsoft, you're fucking stupid. The EU are going to murder you over this and rest assure the settlement with the EU wont be as lenient as the last time. I think it would silly for prosecution to demand anything less than the division of the company for a repeat offense. And I think that this time they'll get it.
Microsoft, you must understand three things.
I am confident of one thing: the future of Microsoft will not be dictated by how well it fares in the US market but how well it fares in the EU market. It simply wont make sales in India, China or the South American countries. Linux is quickly becoming intrenched in these countries because these companies can't really afford to prop up the American economy. In many ways, the fact that they're so poor means they have to be smarter with their cash.Something that's better for us all.
Simon
Now we know where Microsoft plans to suck in all those extra CPU cycles that everyone has too much of.
MS. . . *shaking head* That is all
Is this going to affect games or OpenGL Apps? If so, SOMEONE in gaming will come out with some sort of patch or solution. That, or Vista will be boycotted by many.
Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
This seems in line with what MS normally does. They've been trying to snuff out OpenGL (so far as I can see) and keep everyone in proprietary DirectX technologies.
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
shooting your own foot, eh?
again...
of course it's their policy. Just like breaking kerberos protocols, complicating NTFS so it is hard to reverse engineer, etc, etc...
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Why risk using cross-platform standard while you can tie developers to your platform with Direct3D? It seems that Microsoft has no interest in supporting cross-platform solutions. Why should they?
Read this post for an explanation of why this problem is NOT as bad as people are making it out to be.
If it's open, then why don't we just create a 3rd party implementation? Surely this library will be faster and more enhanced the Microsoft's OGL support.
Yet another reason Vista will flop, or at best, why more users will switch to alternative OSes. Anybody remember Windows ME, and the way it crashed when they showed it off?
Or we'll see a cage match between Gates and Carmack. (of ID software, who uses OGL for thier games) My money's on Carmack and the other game developers.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Seriously, they screw up portions of visa randomly at any given time: MultipleSclerosis Windows Visa
PRINT "Signature line broken."
GOTO 1
Do we really believe Microsoft is going to break popular OpenGL-based games like Doom 3 and Neverwinter Nights?
I, for one, do not.
Amen to that. I actually went through a period of not hating them at all. I thought they were OK, I just didn't have much of an opinion or much technical respect for most of their products. Now I realise that this period of hating exactly coincides with the 5 years since XP was released.
I only hate them when they develop anything. When they release important new products they ruin the world of my hobbies.
"I hate MS." --God
Now that Microsoft have cancelled all the planned new features for Vista, the only thing left for them to remove is stuff that works fine in current versions of Windows.
Kinda like IE7 crippling the Google Toolbar. We know how that played out.
LINK
Microsoft is "upgrading" itself out of the marketplace. No serious gamer is going to want to use Vista now. It's turning into same mistake Apple made back in the day - trying to control everything at the expense of flexibility and compatibility. The only thing Microsoft has going for itself is ubiquity - people use it because other people use it. They're chipping away at that foundation with a jackhammer now. This also comes at a time when people are switching to Firefox in droves, with Mac and Linux OSes on the rise. Not a smart move.
Microsoft is like a big stupid 8 year old bully after his premature growth spurt, greedily clutching his melting ice cream and knocking others' ice cream out of their hands so he can delight in is gluttony and his victims resentment...whoa, did I just write that? That came out of left field. I must be pissed.
I doubt layering OpenGL over directX will make a 50% slowdown; all the time processing is in the GPU and the amount of time spent in an API is insignificant. /.ed
The whole blurb sounds like a scare tactic to me. The article of course is
This is a really nasty thing MS is doing, but that's just the default OpenGL version that comes with Windows, right? What's to keep games from including newer/special versions of the dlls?
Or does OpenGL not update like DirectX does? Is it that only extensions are added through drivers while the base dlls never change?
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
.. installing it on my amd k6-2/350 with 192mb of ram and 5gb hard drive! yes this is my primary desktop. it runs windows 2000 :-)
lameness filter thwarted.
Does anybody else not believe this at all? I think this was totally blown out of proportion by the opengl guys and the real situation is going to be nothing like this. Of course, nobody on Slashdot is going to read the article anyway and the hyperbole is just going to grow and grow...
"So, when a display driver for OpenGL is loaded, Aeroglass shuts down. First and foremost: This has absolutely no implications for fullscreen games on single monitor setups! So, with that important detail out of the way, let's look at the scenarios where we DO have a serious problem: * Multi-monitor setups * Windowed mode applications" Dude, damn near every 'geek' I know runs a multi-headed setup. Ive been doing it for years... Believe it or not, people with large resolutions like to run mmo's windowed.
PRINT "Signature line broken."
GOTO 1
Forget games becuase you can just write games in Direct 3d. What about the stuff that OpenGL does that Direct 3d, such as the CAD and scientific areas. OpenGL has a lot of 2d/ line functionality that Direct 3d just sucks at. Not to mention it also destorys the cross platform 3d market. I guess this is just another reason to switch to a MAC.
mnewberg.com
I imagine that this is only the case in the Microsoft drivers. It is less effort for them to write a set of DirectX drivers for each graphics card they intend to support and an OpenGL wrapper that can be used with all drivers than write a DirectX and an OpenGL implementation for each card - particularly since DirectX OpenGL wrappers have been around for years.
Vendors like nVidia, ATi and Intel will continue to provide non-wrapped OpenGL drivers, since they will lose sales if their card does 50% worse than a competitor who provides a native implementation.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Mmm... I never would have thought that MS would do that AGAIN!
fortunately, real time ray tracing isn't too far away
This article is clearly brought on by a bunch of linux fanbois trying to put value to their miserable lives be creating some great conflict they think they need to correct. MS would not do that.
windows vista (I preferred longhorn!) is intended by microsoft to be as big an upgrade as win95 was over win3.1, but every time I read news about it, I simply make up my mind more not to buy it
.not running opengl effectively? are they kidding? how many independant software developers ( ms's biggest asset according to steve ballmer), gamers ( the #1 reason windows guys don't completely switch to linux), and researchers are going to be pissed off?
microsoft product designers like to develop software according to idealistic hypothetical usage situations. they assume that all users are happily running directx 9.0,that their video cards are all top notch and a 50% degradation would be nothing for the misguided few who still run GL. heck, maybe it will make them upgrade their dinosaur era hardware!
What does this mean for current and future games that use OpenGL?
Is Carmack around?
Does this mean that games that currently use opengl based engines when say run on Vista versus XP take a performance hit?
1. Watch the yipping competition nipping at your heels
2. Get annoyed
3. Watch the market share slides (IE)
4. Announce how bad the competition is (Get the Facts)
5. Embrace the competition (Kerberos/Active Directory)
6. Engulf the competition (OpenGL with DirectX)
7. Profit?
So many ways to a profitable monopoly.... Still surprised?
Consider OpenGL is an open format, that anyone can use, why would Microsoft allow a "lowly" format to compete and get the same or better results with it's DirectX? I mean they invested millions into it.
It's just another way Microsoft will continue to play "fairly" ("oh we'll let IE7 conform to standards sure they will... but it won't conform to acid test or that like")
Honestly it's just another step in distancing Windows from the rest of the OSes, so Microsoft can get monopolies everywhere, or have their own propietary software for everything.
Even something like the Intel DRM chips are making Microsoft get a chance to have their own computers somewhere down the lines, who knows what they will do next, because they just seem to want to forge their own pathes.
...for different applications, but after this, I'm dropping DirectX, and I will not be deploying Vista ANYWHERE. Fuck MS. Business reality and market share be damned, I will no longer be a participant in the quiet strangulation of any software that isn't Microsoft.
Sooner or later they will have killed off the medium guys and come for us little guys. I won't give them the rope to hang me with. I'd rather go broke now than get fucked over later with the lube I provided.
Until this, I was fairly platform agnostic, and I will remain so, with the exception that MS Software is NEVER an option.
Meet a newly-minted anti-MS zealot.
LoadLibrary()
lets you load any library that implements OpenGl...bypassing any opengl default lib. Its up to the card makers and game developers to determine if they want to do this. Remember the days of 3dfx? Do you remember copying the 3dfx dll to your quake directory?
so relax...let ms do what they want. in the end people will circumvent anything that affects performance or limits card capabilities.
There will be no MS sympathizers in this thread.
I see what the problem is here, but for a serious project, what's the big deal with providing your own OpenGL DLLs along with your program?
Now, now... Before we break out the pitchforks and torches, let's see exactly how MS plays this. The article is already slashdotted, so I'm going to have to do a little speculation.
If MS goes with a GL to D3D wrapper as a default implementation, but allowing vendors to write their own drop-in driver if they choose, then we get the best of both worlds.
For a small graphics device shop, maintaining a full ICD is a lot of work. If they had the option of "just do the D3D back-end and you'll get basic OpenGL functionality for free through the wrapper", the problem is solved. In this way, you actually get broader OpenGL support than you would with the current model, where anyone who wants good OpenGL support is stuck with having to implement a full ICD.
From the app writer's point of view it's also a win. Right now, as an OpenGL developer you have basically two choices: 1. Pick a PFD that goes through the graphics vendor's driver, and accept whatever coctail of driver bugs they never tested for you because you aren't Doom 3, or 2. Pick a PFD that runs your code through the dog-slow MS software path. If we had a 3. Pick a PFD that puts you in the safe but fast GL->D3D path, it would be easier and faster to bring accelerated OpenGL apps to market. I know of several OpenGL apps that purposely pick the software path because of driver bugs which wouuld immediately benefit from such a scheme.
So in conclusion, if MS is smart about this, they could keep their business focus on D3D, and broaden OpenGL support at the same time.
Linux does exactly the same with Direct3D when you use Wine or Cedega, nothing evil in that, it just makes driver writing easier, since you only have to write one driver and not one for OpenGL and another one for Direct3d. Beside from that I doubt the 50% performance drop, while there might be a drop, most of the work is done on the GPU, so a bit translation from one API into the other should be that bad.
Off-topic, but...
Anyone notice that every announcement about Vista details the removal of some interesting/important feature they haven't managed to complete or the addition of a newer, shinier way to screw everyone over?
Why am I using Windows 2000? Oh, that's right. It fucking works, and I don't have to deal with any of this shit.
Before everyone starts frothing and gnashing, please go back and read the title of the article: Vista may impact OpenGL performance. Not will impact, may impact. Vista has just now reached Beta 1. There is much that can and will change about it. Look at the other possibilities: Beta 1 could've included a full OpenGL ICD, but it could've been pulled before it reaches release, so even if this supposed layering wasn't present in Vista now, it could be later. There's just no good reason to get worked up at this point.
Now, let's get another little thing out of the way for just a moment, and that's OpenGL versus DirectX. Four or five years ago, OpenGL was the bees knees and DirectX was the red-headed stepchild. No longer. Pretty much every game released today is DirectX. There are a few notable exceptions, but they are the exceptions. OpenGL largely has itself to blame for this, for while it took ages for OpenGL to reach the 2.0 milestone, Microsoft has been radically increasing the functionality of DirectX. Game developers, knowing their largest market is the Windows platform, have gone where the money is, and Microsoft has done a lot to make DirectX very, very attractive to them, both from a financial standpoint and a performance standpoint. And while the idea of cross-platform gaming is a neat idea, I don't think too many game developers and producers lose too much sleep wondering how they're going to market to Mac OS X or Linux gamers; there are simply too few of them to matter. It's not nice to say that here, but it is the truth.
As for professional applications, typically the stronghold of OpenGL, even that has been fading. 3D Studio Max, one of the most popular 3D applications for the Windows platform, now strongly recommends you use the DirectX drivers versus OpenGL. Performance is usually better, and you get to make use of all the DirectX features implemented in hardware on gaming-derived video cards like nVidia's Quadro line. For a while, DirectX stability in these apps was dicey and OpenGL was rock solid, but even that has now been reverse. 3DS Max 7.5's OpenGL is noticeably slower and buggier than its DirectX, again a reflection of where developers are spending their development and Q&A time. Maya, Lightwave, and others are in similar positions. OpenGL won't go away, but it is slowly being marginalized. That's been going on for a while.
There's a lot of angst over what this will do the OSS platform since DirectX is solidly proprietary. Unfortunately, the answer isn't one you're going to like. Nobody, not Autodesk, not Microstation, not Adobe, not anybody in the large-scale commercial software space really gives two damns about the OSS market right now. And why should they? It represents an amazingly tiny fraction of their global market, yet would very likely consume a disproportionate amount of the overall support, troubleshooting, and Q&A resources available. That's not a winning combination for any company. Furthermore, most OSS adherents don't like paying for their software, and they certainly don't like paying $4,000-$10,000 for major OpenGL-based design packages. Thus, not only is the market tiny, it's unreceptive as well. Again, if the OSS market is wondering why no one is paying them attention, you don't have to think on it very hard to see why.
The good news here is that the OSS community can do whatever it damn well pleases with OpenGL. Don't want to follow the DirectX bandwagon? Write your own OpenGL app. Who knows? If it's done well, it might actually gain a foothold. But I sure wouldn't bet on it. I wish I could, because I'd love to see more competition in this arena, but I'm too much of a pragmatist to really have much faith in this area. Companies are going to keep using -- and paying for -- what works for them, and what works for them is what has always worked for them. Microstation shops generally stay Microstation shops. Ditto for Autodesk. Ditto ditto for Maya
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
what'll happend to the CAD/Graphic Workstation Market when they've realized that Linux/FreeBSD/MAC outperforms MS Vista easily in SPECVIEW with about 50%?
And what will happend with NVIDIA's Cg?
anyway, not my beer!
What's to keep games from including newer/special versions of the dlls?
Think about the implications of that. Any game that does this risks breaking another application that was developed/tested using the DLLs that came with the OS.
Any company that screws around with your machine's config in that way had better be careful, or they could get lynched.
That also means that you'd have to give the user the option to use the default OpenGL drivers. Which means you'd have to test your own app under both. Or, optionally, you have your own set of drivers that only you use, but that means you have to check if it's compatible with all the video card drivers out there (because goodness knows, ATI and Nvidia aren't likely to care about your proprietary OpenGL implementation).
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Why oh why do the /. editors refuse to utilize Coral cahcing or similar?
poor poor linux.
you cant do anything for youreself.
since when does ms have to support youre whiny bitch ass.
I for sure would welcome a selling ban to microsoft in the EU, but where will my games run on, and my tax return program O-:
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
That graphics card/chipset manufacturers provided their own implementations of OpenGL through their drivers anyway. (That's definitely the case for NVidia-based cards at least) Therefore, this would only apply to the system default drivers, which almost no-one will be using anyway.
This is going to be a non-issue for the vast majority of people, and certainly for anyone who cares about 3D performance. Don't let that deny you an opportunity to bash "M$" though.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
This is based on early beta version! Of course they will fix it by the time of final release. There are a lot of features broken so far - but they will be fixed.
No, they are not going to slow down 50% of games around, as well as they will not prevent Google Toolbar from working with IE7, will not prevent third-party desktop searches from indexing files, etc, etc, etc.
This is too paranoid even for SlashDot...
Slashdot - free anti-Microsoft propaganda 24/7
For many years I've been perturbed, having to retain Windows hosts for my gaming needs. Though I would love to use Linux/*BSD fulltime, in the past I haven't been able to just from compatibility.
Now, it appears with Vista's pathetic OpenGL support, we are going to be forced to move.
Fortunately, WINE appears to be doing great things, and World of Warcraft is on the gold list. Hell, even Teamspeak has a linux client too!
They'll do this, effectively crushing OpenGL on Windows. It will force game/application developers to write windows-only apps instead of cross-platform. OpenGL made is quite a bit easier to do that.
Then, when the EU or whomever else comes knocking four years later, it won't matter. Pay another few billion dollars and you're scott-free.
Microsoft has such a huge bank-roll that they could continue to operate like this for a long time, until finally someone says "Microsoft Windows is BANNED." Which would never happen, because they're a monopoly and many people depend far too heavily on it.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
In Aero Glass mode, the desktop is running in Direct3D mode. To have OpenGL applications play well, you'll have to make them use the same API as Aero Glass does. And that works by wrapping OpenGL.
Isn't the OpenGL implementation (opengl32.dll) in current Windows versions even worse, being a software renderer?
:-)
And that's why the video card companies are currently distributing their implementations with the drivers, e.g. nVidia's nvoglnt.dll?
In Vista it'll at least be accelerated then, although more slowly than if directly working with the hardware.
Please correct me if I'm totally confused by this.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
As far as I can remember, Microsoft has never defeated a strong competitor through competition.
Instead, thanks to the PC OS monopoly given to them by IBM, Microsoft has always been in a position to resort to cheating, i.e. to sabotage their competitors' products.
Examples:
Microsoft was losing to DR-DOS, so they resorted to FUD, and adding incompatibilities to Windows.
Microsoft was losing to WordPerfect, so they resorted to fraud (the OS/2 feint), then sabotage through broken Windows APIs.
Microsoft was losing to Netscape, so they resorted to paying off or threatening Netscape's customers, tying IE to Windows, and so on.
Microsoft knew they were going to lose to Java, so they resorted to sabotaging ("polluting") the Java cross-platform standard with J++.
And now Microsoft is worried that they are going to lose to Linux, so they want to undermine the OpenGL 3D graphics standard which Linux shares.
Through these, and similar acts of destruction, Microsoft has held back the progress of the PC industry, by a decade or more. How long are people going to stand for it?
Not to be ignorant but doesn't this destroy the possiblity of making this platform a decent gaming platform?
Simply put, because people use OpenGL to code games for the PS2, Gamecube and (in the past) Windows it has made designing a Multi-platform game easier. Although some engines do support both DirectX and OpenGL most open source, inexpensive, or small development house produced game engines only support one API. All this is going to do is force smaller developers to choose between making games for either the XBox and Windows, or the PS2/PS3 and the Gamecube/Revolution (PDAs, Gameboys, NDS, PSP, etc.)
I don't know, but it seems odd to me that on one hand Microsoft is trying to apeal to developers with the XBox 360 only to piss in their hand with this. I honestly wonder if they're going to see any fall out from this.
With a resource editor that works on executables, you'll discover that explorer.exe has several Start bar side bands, including "Embedded" and "Whistler" sidebands. I've never viewed a sideband in my startbar. Running sysinternals procexp, I see that explorer has a lot of pointless handles open. I deleted the sidebands in the copy of explorer.exe that I let Windows XP run. and it runs just fine.
We do a lot of in-house scientific code. We use OpenGL because that's what EVERYONE in the scientific simulation business uses. I think I've bought by last Windows license.
"Layering OpenGL over Direct3D is a policy more than a technical decision."
Yes, in keeping with Microsoft's policy of hobbling/destroying any platform, file format, or other technology they don't have complete control over.
This is good news!
If this flaw carries through to the release version, it is the same as Microsoft ceding the whole high-end workstation space to Linux and Sun. It would be an admission that they will never recapture the Hollywood production line. It will encourage all other heavy 3D users to seriously rethink their OS choice, and nudge their suppliers - the ISVs and software producers - to hustle over to where the grass is greener and the standards open.
Yes, except the goal of D3D in Linux under wine is to be as fast and compatible as possible, so your favorite games work.
Microsoft doesn't have such motivation. The only goal that makes business sense is to have enough OpenGL to write it down as a feature, but broken enough that it's not actually viable, to promote D3D.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/d9dae7856a9ec0ea4 0d232fedb95c380/index.html
mirrordot.org article mirror, it seems this story is really blow out of porporation.....
one of the arguments for dual-cores is that gfx processing is cpu intensive. the unreal guys said transferring the gfx software overhead to the second core could free up something like 30% of the primary core for ai/audio etc.
it's not trivial. opengl is actually much more efficient in this respect than d3d last i checked. d3d is just easier to program in most of the time, and some of the features come free.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
It seams all that Microsoft does is f#*cking other's achievements! At most, when they use the creativity of their 55000 employees, they implement other's technologies. That's why I hate them. And at last, as Steve Balmer says: Developers, developers, developers, developers ....
This entire story is anti-Microsoft FUD. Microsoft is not bothering to maintain their "generic" OpenGL support as anything more than a wrapper to their preferred API. However, the only thing anyone is likely to be running the stock generic OpenGL driver on Windows for is the OpenGL screensavers on workstations not using a nice video card or downloaded drivers. Every Nvidia and ATI driver comes with its own OpenGL implementation.
Maybe this will push PTC into putting pro-e out on the Mac.
Huge monolithic corporation takes existing standards and mutilates it. News at eleven.
This is nothing new. Typical modus operandi from Microsoft. Take something that's not invented or controlled by them, fuck it up royally and slowly kill it using their primary product as leverage.
Wow, really surprising.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
What Microsoft is probably doing is revamping their software OpenGL client so that it runs on top of DirectX. This will make software only OpenGL even slower. What it will mean, though, is that in cases where crappy hardware manufacturers release bad (or no) OpenGL drivers, but merely mediocre DirectX drivers, they can use Microsoft's OpenGL drivers to get better performance and quality than they could with their own drivers.
So I suspect that for most people (i.e. those with decent video cards) there won't be any difference. For people with low-end cards, this will probably be an improvement.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
Mirrordot link: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/d9dae7856a9ec0ea4 0d232fedb95c380/index.html
Remember Sun's Java runtime environment. They removed that from the Windows XP distribution, because they wanted to push their own technology, Activex, instead of Applets. Now the same thing is occuring. They want to push DirectX, and they want even more! They want to kill the opponent.
I can't understand why they don't stand fair competition. Oh, my god, monopolies....
Year after year after lawsuit after lawsuit. Yet MS still continues. And so many enlightened "open" source developers STILL code to make MS work. When will it sink in that they are NOT YOUR FRIEND and they are playing you for suckers? When will it sink in that continuuing to "support" MS, either by "just that one app" or "games", or by working on their crap, or rewarding the hardware vendors for OS lock in at the retail level,is screwing you long term? Is this just some sort of masochism? Is this really all that hard to see? How many times does retard charlie brown have to fall on his ass when lucy is holding the football for him before he stops trusting her?
In order to have good software and open source software you have to ONLY USE that. That is how it works. You cannot de-demonize MS, they are so far gone into being crooks and skunks that they will NEVER CHANGE. All you've done by including MS in your pet open source project is rip cash out of your wallet and send it to them, or rip hours of your coding time to MAKE THEM MONEY so they can keep screwing people over. All you get when you freely develop "open source" or "open standards" for MS is them screwing you over EVERY CHANCE THEY GET.
I once had a CO-OP job where they developed imaging software that ran on just about any platform... We had SUN supercomputers and OSX for some developers, new students could use windows, and many used Linux. The windows boxen will shortly become very small in number..
If this makes windows Smaller and more stable, I'm all for it.
Heh. Okay, that's probably not it.
If Microsoft is trying to make Direct3D the prefered rendering technology on Windows platforms by making OpenGL slower, they will only find partial success.
This won't work, because most Graphics Card manufacturers are the ones which make the OpenGL drivers for their own cards. These drivers are fast and (usualy) stable. Open GL won't go away, especialy since every other platform (Linux, BSD, Mac, BeOS, Whatever) support OpenGL as their primary 3d rendering technology.
So, who's affected by this? Game Makers and Video Card Makers. (Oh, and us, the customers, but I'm ignoring that for the moment.)
Game makers have to decided if they're going to make their games OpenGL, D3D, or both. OpenGL is more universal, but D3D will, of corse, be prefered. On the other Hand, if they don't want to make their game cross platform, they can just go D3D, and have the Half-Speed OpenGL built in. The Serious game makers will either Make it work on all video cards or rendering technologies (like Epic does) or specificaly push one technology and work on getting good support from Video Card makers (Like id does with OpenGL).
Video Card Makers now have an easy way to "opt-out" of making a good OpenGL driver... It's already emulated by Windows D3D. Sad, but I see lower end cardmakers doing this, but probably not Ati or nVidia. They will want to keep every inch of their market, and will provide a fully functional OpenGL driver for the platform.
So.... Nice try Microsoft. Again, if the goal of this is to make windows Smaller and more stable, I'm all for it! My graphics card vendor won't let me down, unlike what Microsoft has done in the past.
Maybe with the two button mouse apple made and its new hardware and its opengl support it will become the industry leader for gaming. We might see a lot more games ported to linux too. Then again the worse could happen; the developers could feed into this and start developing in DX. I think however if that does happen, theres nothing anyone can do about it I think. Then again they went after microsoft for internet explorer, media player, this could surely be something that they get brought to court over. Certainly monopoly tactics its like were back in the 1920's again it will just take some time for the justice system to figure it out.
It's not the implementation that reduces the speed of the OpenGL, it's their policy to add a nasty DirectX layer, and that will reduce the speed; You can consider this making things easier, but the truth is: ``making things polluted even more than before, with microsoft things.''
As a programmer of both DirectX and OpenGL, I can imagine that the real reason they might do this is because they want control of what OpenGL does to their desktop. You see, they are rendering the desktop using DirectX - the video card - all the time, in Vista. This means that any other 3D app running MUST play nice with the desktop, for example, if its running in a window, it has to use resources in a certain way in order not to mess desktop rendering up. Since DirectX is theirs, they can write it in such a way that it's not possible to screw up window rendering by using DirectX calls. However, they have no control over OpenGL. By tunneling OpenGL through their DirectX 'safeguards', they can ensure that OpenGL cannot mess up the desktop or screw up other apps. Their other alternative would have to be to write their very own OpenGL implementation that includes all the bits and pieces that make DirectX work on desktop and in Windowed 3D apps at the same time, and as far as I know, Microsoft doesn't exactly LIKE OpenGL. It probably didn't seem worthwhile compared to just tunneling it. Just my analysis.
What, Microsoft crippling an open standard in favour of their own, thereby forcing developers into using an MS technology so that their products are less able to run on other platforms, leading to users being locked in to Windows?!?! I never thought they'd try something dirty like this.
Oh wait...
How so very NOT SURPRISING.
You can either complain, or do nothing. You don't get both.
Does this mean that the drivers written by MS will emulate OpenGL using D3D, or does this mean it's impossible to write a native OpenGL driver.
The former I'm fine with, the latter will be laughed straight out of the industry.
1p}{ 1 sp34k |33+ +|-|e|\| p30p13 \/\/il| 8e i/\/\pr3553|)
Uhm - so MS decides that the default implementation of OGL that really, nobody ever uses will be built on top of DirectX (thus ensuring that (a) it'll just work going forward and (b) they don't need to spend any resources on it); any graphics card manufacturer worth their salt continues to ship their own version of OGL; /. bitches and moans loudly - and this qualifies MS as the 8 yo? I beg to differ.
So how will this affect driver development? Will OpenGL still be actively developed for the desktop end user because of the Mac as well as Linux?
Maybe I'm missing something, but except for superior icon previews, "Tiger" already seems to be better than Vista, and Apple still has that one shot coming. Just what was Microsoft doing all these years?
It seems every time I hear about Vista, Apple stock looks like a better investment. But then maybe I should start reading something other Slashdot...
I wonder what the game industry heavy weights will have to say about this eg Tim Sweeney & John Carmack ... hopefully they come out swinging ...
MS and OpenGL: supporting it to death?
e ngl_supporting/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/12/06/ms_and_op
quote:
"Microsoft quietly drops Windows OpenGL support? Oh yes, we think so..." (december 1999)
Regards, Roman
If Direct3D really allows efficient 3D programming with access to low-level details (isn't that what they advertise?), then it should be possible to implement a high-performance OpenGL on top of it.
If MS chooses to cripple OGL, then I guess everyone serious about 3D computing (i.e. lots of serious companies out there with big investments in OGL) will have to quit using Windows (or the clients will be forced to get a Unix to get good performance on their workstations).
If Microsoft were prevented from doing business in the EU, would that affect OEMs based in other areas shipping Microsoft products?
At any rate, the install base of WinXP is sufficient to carry further application development for another few years--long enough for Microsoft to bribe its way back into sales or take moderate measures to be allowed to trade in the EU again. Still, in the interim, there'd be a fair opportunity for Linux and BSD to gain significant market share, *if and only if* a sufficiently capable, user-friendly distribution were available and did some marketing. But advertising is expensive.
Now OpenGL on Vista has a chance at being as slow and buggy as it is on OS X!
The world's richest software company and they can't even properly implement OpenGL on their systems and proper CSS in their webbrowser. Stupid third rate gits deserve all the scorn they get.
And for all the fanboys, here you are: micro$$$$oft.
Screw'em.
When I do a google search for +OpenGL +Aeroglass I get exactly 6 hits, it doesn't sound like it's a big deal.
Nuff said. And they're pulling RSS into the core OS now too? Boy I can't wait for the next winblows.
I know it's hip to be pro-Microsoft lately on Slashdot, but this story really is true. Loading an ICD will disable Windows compositing unless you go through Microsoft's wrapper layer which is fixed at OpenGL 1.4 with no extensions. Look at the Mirrordot story to see the Slashdotted article.
As an example, let windows update install your ATI Radeon drivers, and then try to run an opengl screensaver. Sure, most games seem to work fine, but that screensaver sure doesn't. Now, go to ATI's website and download the latest ATI built driver and-TADA-that screensaver looks really cool again! Not much is changing, and CAD people will never let go of OpenGL, esp. for Direct3D. This whole issue is...well, a non-issue. OpenGL will be implemented at the driver/software level.
I have three OS X machines now, I'll stick with those. Thanks.
High quality OpenGL support is a requirement for scientific and engineering applications. MS now provides compelling reasons to recommend alternative platforms to all high end customers.
This is good news for small ISVs in these markets. Windows installations are very expensive in terms of support. Malware often cripples Windows installations. Customers with service contracts demand the systems being fixed regardless of the cause. The cost to small ISVs supporting these systems I would estimate is about 400% higher than other platforms that don't suffer from these problems.
Deprecating OpenGL provides just the kind of arguments to convince customers to purchase solutions running on alternative platforms.
Which in turn lowers support costs translating in more R&D and higher profits.
Microsoft went OUT OF THEIR WAY to make OpenGL keep working on their 3-D desktop compositing. They built an entire wrapper to translate its calls to D3D. It would have been way easier to not support it at all. OpenGL is not compatible with Direct3D surfaces and the translator is necessary to provide compatibility with OpenGL.
I hardly see how poor performance in an early beta OS and beta drivers means anything. And the translator is only used in Windowed mode not fullscreen. And they allow display driver manufacturers to make their own OpenGL drivers like usual. What the fuck is the problem?
THat would give a trade war with the US a nice start, so I would not promote that option. Illegal is not correct either, but just some demands before they can sell it in Europe like no more disabling tactics, a browser which is not so prone to exploits and which follows standards, demands like that?
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
they wouldn't have made Direct3D and would be backing, helping and implementing OpenGL because it is a standard and makes computing better.
On a side note: OpenGL, I predict, will become less important - new technologies premeire every year at those computer conventions we /ers attend. I have thought of doing simple 3D animations in an SDL/C++ game by rendering frames in POVray, saving them as flat images, then having plain old SDL Blit functions draw the frames onscreen. Just to point out, not EVERY 3D animation absolutely requires run-time ray-tracing. Also, all OpenGL is is a set of functions to simplify drawing the same pixels on the screen you'd be doing by hand, only you don't have to sit there punching co-ordinates into a calculator to figure out what angle and what shading.
In short, it's math. OOOOO, scary, scary math, bugga bugga! If you've seen AA-Lib http://webpages.mr.net/bobz/ttyquake/ you know we can even do 3D in text-mode, for cryin out loud. I, for one, do *not* predict the imminent death of 3D graphics.
Same story, new victims.
Stop whining and use a real solution you goddamn retards.
Vista actually IMPROVES performance significantly over the generic OpenGL driver that ships with Windows. Before it was a software driver and got something like 2 frames per second. Now it's implemented on hardware using Direct3D. Microsoft has always been a supporter of OpenGL, it's been shipped with every version of Windows thus far. There's also a billion technical reasons why they needed to wrap OpenGL on Direct3D as well.
If Microsoft was ever setting itself up to fall flap on its face, Vista is that time. You mean I not only get degraded picture quality if I don't upgrade to a DRM monitor with the new windows, certain games will run like a steaming pile of cow feces? Wow! Where do I sign up???
So much of Vista reeks of Microsoft management telling customers what they want. Windows XP is going to be the last Microsoft OS I run.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
linux 3D graphics drivers still aren't as good as the windows one and producing a linux boot cd that was fully legal (you have to be carefull about redistribution rules for propietry drivers) and worked with all current graphics hardware would be a real pita.
not to mention it would screw anyone with slightly unusual hardware, remember its not just the graphics drivers its also things like the drivers required for the motherboard to properly use agp.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The application would install the dll's in their own directory. No other applications would use the dlls. Windows looks in the application's directory first for the dlls it needs and then in the system directory. This can be done with different versions of DirectX as well.
Windows XP didn't come with hardware accelerated OpenGL drivers at all. You got a cheap old software renderer. OEM's usually installed the accelerated drivers themselves, or users had to download the driver from the video card manufacturer. Now, with Vista, you still don't get a full OpenGL driver, but you get an OpenGL wrapper for Direct3D, like GLDirect or AltOGL, which is almost as good, but still evil. No doubt, OEM's will still install full OpenGL drivers so that users won't call up asking why Doom 3 performs like crap on their new PC, and everyone who doesn't buy the expensive boxed Windows Vista will be happy with their 3D gaming experience.
Up to 50% slower isn't that bad anyway. "Up to" is just something you say to make your argument sound stronger. Something can be both up to 50% slower and up to 50% faster at the same time. If 50% slower is the worst case, I doubt we can expect the average to be much worse than 20-30% slower, which is pretty impressive for an OpenGL wrapper. Plus, if the wrapper is written well, you can promise that if Direct3D works, OpenGL should work too. I've seen too many instances where a card had good Direct3D support and OpenGL simply crashed the system after so many minutes.
The extremely bad part is, the wrapper will lead some manufacturers to stop supporting OpenGL, so there will be nothing for them to port to Linux. So by embracing OpenGL, while at the same time eliminating the need for driver level support, Microsoft will weaken manufacturer support for OpenGL on Linux. If you're a Windows user, you'll benefit from Microsoft making their wrapper as good as possible to kill manufacturer support. Microsoft has an incentive to not make the wrapper buggy. If you're a Linux user like me, this'll suck ass.
This seems like a good thing on the surface-- if you only release a D3D driver, then you still get some OpenGL capabilities. However, in the end, it seems likely that many chipsets will have less of an incentive to support the open standard.
My concern here is that this is the beginning of a strategy on the part of Microsoft to prevent coexistance with a well-established open standard which might allow a threat to their monopoly to emerge.
To be on the safe side, I will be writing my congressman and requesting that my concern be forwarded on to the DoJ, FTC, and others. I would suggest that others do likewise.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
You wrote: The EU are going to murder you over this and rest assure the settlement with the EU wont be as lenient as the last time.
I am afraid you're entertaining hopes about the EU. The real power in Brussels is the Commission, which is entirely made of unelected technocrats. There is an elected Parliament, but it's mostly a registration chamber for the Commission's directives. The Commission has such a contempt for the Parliament that they openly displayed it in several occasions, the last one being the Software Patent affair.
Last time MS and the Commissars met, MS paid half a billion and got away with their monopolistic behavior (Windows-N with no media player, anyone? Any taker? No? Didn't think so.) I fail to see why the next encounter would be any different. As for the Parliament, it just doesn't have any mechanism at its disposal to intervene in that kind of issue: that's strictly Commission business.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Hi everyone, this beeing my 1st slashdot posting, i regret already haven to be somewaht arrogant. 90% of the so far postes comments are bullshit, and you guys have absoulutely no idea what you are talking about. anyway, to the technical aspects: a) it seems doubtful to me that microsfoft would do stuff like lyering opengl underneath d3d, wich would undoubtedly let the whole CAD merket fall into the hands of Linux/unix. b) 50% performance would be _nice_, but when you have worked with OpenGL and d3d and know about the issiues it looks like this: in d3d lots of stuff is _not_ excatly specified, for example when you upload a floating point value to a pixelshader, you cannot be certain in what representation it will be treated there, and just reading it back can change the preccision. In OpenGL it is strictly specified. texture coordinates is another "mystery" in d3d, why do you think you can set optins like "use center of pixel" or "use upper left" in the drivers? exactly: not clearly specified. opengl extensions are somewhat more hardware specific thus not compatible on all cards, guranted. but implementing them or some other issiues mentioned before, imitationg the strict behaviour from openGL sometimes a software-implementation will be the only way, in that case you can all do the math. imagine: a 400 mhz 3d card with with 16 pixelpipelines working at max capacity( and they can do stuf like exp in one cycle) vs. a 3ghz cpu( hyperthreaded or dualcored or not) needing for an exp ~150 cycles. ( + bus trafic, of cause :)
the exact calyulation remais as task for the reader.
as said, 50% would be a very lucky guess. /abductee
p.s.
in case sombody cares, some screenshoots from my current project ( opengl ): http://abductee.untergrund.net/stuff/
p.p.s: btw, i keep quiet about stuff i have no clue on, maybe others could too,,, would certainly reise the quality if the posts...
This really sounds like a bonehead move to me on Microsoft's part. The PS3 will support OpenGL whereas the Xbox360 will support DirectX. Its almost the universal opinion that the Playstation3 will be the next generation gaming standard just as the PS2 was the prior platform standard and the PS1 before that.
It seems to me that starting in 2006, it will be much easier to port those very same PS3 titles over to the Apple MacTels versus Windows Vista considering OS X natively supports OpenGL and not DirectX. If Apple plays its cards well and has hardware that can use off-the-shelf Nvidia based graphics cards, its going to become the computer gaming platform of choice by default.
Either that and/or gamers are going to shun Windows Vista just as they did WindowsME and Windows2000 before. Or, who knows, perhaps more titles will be released for Linux besides those created by id Software. Could we finally see a "gamers" Linux distribution in the works?
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
No serious gamer is going to want to use Vista now
;-))
i hope you are right, and everyone will switch to "better" platforms
but don't you think that it's FAR more likely that game designers will from now on design with ONLY direct3d in mind and that soon every gamer will have switched to vista and the possibility of game ports to other platforms will be reduced to 0???
i hope you are right and all the gamers stick to their windows xp/2000/98!
Thanks for the link to a real discussion.
During my history at Microsft, I've worked on the Direct3D team. Microsoft's stock OpenGL implementation has ALWAYS been a wrapper for Direct3D. The only reason the OpenGL wrapper is there at all, is for general compatibility. Nothing is new here, OpenGL runs fully accelerated if your video card provides its own implementation.
This whole article is just a big god damn troll.
This is the very definition of monopolistic behaviour. They have the power to destroy competing technologies through unilaterally manipulating the market. They should have been broken up a long time ago, Bill Gates' assets dissolved, and turned over to the public school system.
just imagine, a normal windows user has some opengl apps, be it celestia or blender or some id game (a lot of joe sixpacks still do quake1/2/3), maybe their favourite screensaver. so, the user updates her operating system, and the apps/ games suddenly doen't work as fast as before.
and it's not that joe sixpack has to switch to the mysterious "linux", he just pulls out his old xp cd and that's it.
but as we all know, ms may be evil, but they're not stupid. their tactics will work, because vista will be shipped by default on many mainstream pcs. the only hope i have is that the software market changes a lot until vista is available, and switching the os will be a common thing like downloading new drivers.
beer as in "free beer"
or they have crappy managers over their programmers or crappy directors over their managers.
They can't write decent cross platform applications period.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
What does this mean? The compositor will indeed run more slowly (in software) when a full-blown OpenGL app is run. In most cases this does not seem like an all that huge issue, it ought to be plenty usable anyway (try tunning OSX without Quartz Extreme, it is a bit more sluggish, but not unusable). And for the typical light OpenGL app (non-games) the wrapper will probably do OK and then not interfere with the compositor.
Sure it would have been much better if the hardware compositor and an OpenGL ICD could work together, but it is on the other hand also clear that it would most likely have been a lot messier for both Microsoft and driver writes to achieve (basicly an OpenGL context is to be composited into a scene drawn by a Direct3D context). But it is hardly the end of the world for OpenGL, notably pretty much no games at all will be affected at all since one does not tend to window-manage a great deal while playing a game.
If I have misunderstood the available information I apologize, but if this is correct it is, while maybe not ideal, hardly the sky falling either.
By using the OpenGL API, under Microsoft's scheme, the calls will be translated into Direct3D calls and invoke the Direct3D runtime instead of being sent directly to the graphics subsystem. What this means is that there is extra software, more code that runs under OpenGL than under Direct3D. Also, there are some differences in the two APIs so some things cannot be translated cleanly, requiring a lot more processing to make function properly. This is why performance can drop as much as 50%.
(A good graphics API will be a thin veneer over the hardware. Making the API even slightly heavier is a significant penalty. There should be as little CPU processing as possible, only enough to make the thing easy to use. OpenGL is already an easier API to use than Direct3D, so they cannot use that defense.)
On top of this, it will not even provide the latest version of OpenGL, with the latest 3D features. It will be a FULL TWO VERSIONS behind, so even if your card can do all the latest and greatest, your OpenGL program will not be able to. The short answer is that they are intentionally hobbling OpenGL, because they cannot kill it in the marketplace. It is simply a superior system they want to kill using their monopoly.
(On the superior comment, that is due to its simplicity, portability, and cleanliness of design. Please do not start a flamewar over their roughly equivalent capabilities. Those are determined by the underlying math, not the specifics of the APIs.)
First, they have to use graphic software that isnt theirs (DX) to implement one of their newest features, Aeroglass. So instead of saying ok and using it they screw it up and tag it onto their crappy software which makes people need to buy better vid cards to run it through an extra layer, kickbacks...anyone? Plus they get to attack their greatest competition in the graphics market by essentialy booting OGL from the Vista Gaming market. Sounds like good 'ol MS tactics to me. Cant wait to hear them get beat for a monopoly. Then maybe they'll lose Aeroglass to and make Windows XP Vista.
Looks like from this thread", that with the current plan, windowed OpenGL implimentations will have to either not be truly hardware accellerated, or else have to shut down the Windows desktop hardware accelleration. That makes for a really bad choice to give the user when developing a cross-platform 3-d application, because we don't know what trouble that might cause for a user yet to force them back to a 2-d desktop.
Shame - I'm starting to develop some nice casual window-only games in my spare time (for people tired of minesweeper, pinball and card games) using SDL and OpenGL, and I'd like windowed users to be able to use them. I'll still keep going - it's too much fun working with OpenGL to stop for some boneheaded MS decision - just don't like having to tell people their SOL for using a certain OS in certain situations.
Ryan Fenton
"I imagine that this is only the case in the Microsoft drivers. "
I believe Microsoft generally does not write drivers. The drivers that ship "in the box" with MS Windows are generally written by the hardware OEM. The OEM submits them for WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) testing. If they get approved, Microsoft may include them with future releases of Windows.
I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I believe that is how it goes, normally.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
There are plenty of cards out there, like some of the old ATi Rage series, that support DirectX/3D to some degree, but not OpenGL. Means if you use GL with those cards, it uses Microsoft's software GL that's included with Windows and does everything on the CPU, and not that quickly. Think MESA, but probably even slower.
Now good cards, like modern nVidia and ATi cards fully support OpenGL with their drivers, so they install their own GL layer that talks to the card and accelerates everything. Just like you do for Linux, install their drivers, and then all GL is handled by the card and is fast and benefits from the quality enhancements of the card, if they are turned on.
So my guess would be that this will just help with better GL on cards that don't choose to support it. So long as they provide D3D acceleration, they'll have some OpenGL acceleration, even if it isn't all that fast. It'll still be faster than an all-software path, however.
I seriously doubt nVidia or ATi will stop releasing their own complete, hardware accelerated, OpenGL ICD with their drivers. Why? Well because whoever did would have the slower performance (and there's still plenty of GL in use in games) and they'd lose that round of the graphics wars.
Actually, it might save a bit of developer time for Microsoft, all their code is already written, so they'll never need to touch it again.
Meanwhile, graphics card makers will obviously include their own GL drivers along with windows.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If Motorola can be sued for crippling bluetooth in their phones then MS can be sued for crippling OpenGL.
Just wanted to say I'm running my own blog now, and I've basically restated the previously linked GameDev.Net post in my first blog post. For the more sane of you, please try to spread the link around, just to keep things properly in perspective. This is a major problem, but it is not the end of OpenGL. I want to encourage people to realise that.
...at least that of their server.
go to http://www.licktheblade.com/ now spamming rules you troll haha fuckers download some free mp3s here now
Amongst those that do run on it, they generally run quicker already anyway.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Uptime.
No way am I going to give up my 174 days uptime!!
And the secret location of your hidden lair?
For those of you who have never worked with graphics drivers on windows, let me fill you in on why it doesn't work. Direct3D wants/needs full access to the graphics hardware for it to use hardware acceleration. Ever wonder why two windowed D3D apps run like crap compared to one single full screen D3D app? There's your answer, whenever D3D doesn't have full access, it has to go through a software layer to serialise video card hardware access... that translates to slower performance. Now, throw in OpenGL and you have a huge mess. You have a full screen D3D app (the windows UI), and now you want to run OpenGL via direct hardware access on it in a window? There is no way that the OGL ICD and the D3D drivers are going to nicely co-exist. One is going to have to translate their calls into the other driver's native API. Microsoft made the decision to force OGL to get translated into D3D calls to allow its desktop UI to run natively (ensuring all of windows runs nice and quick) and makes the OGL app take the performance hit. It's not some conspiracy, it's how they got things to work, and trust me, I know first hand how it works. The solution is actually pretty damned good considering the SHIT that graphics card manufacturers do to their cards from a hardware point of view. ATI and Nvidia require their entire pipelines to be flushed everytime you'd switch windows from OGL to D3D, that KILLS perfomrance. Throguh my many years of OGL and D3D experience I can assure you taht there is NO other way of doing this, except by forcing D3D apps to go through a translation layer that maps them to OGL calls, doing the exact same thing except in the other direction. And it makes no sense to give the graphics speed priority to a single app, when all other non-graphics apps will suffer (all standard windows programs will now be rendered using D3D), just think of how pissed people are when a single app hangs in windows today, and other apps are slugish to respond to minimize or restore commands... amplify that ten fold if they would have serialised OpenGL and D3D instead of forcing OGL to go through a translation layer and continue to run D3D natively. MS is evil. Sure, but this is truely the fault of Graphics card manufacturers, NOT MS. They could have made their hardware support both quite easily, but choose to do as little in the hardware as possible, and force the drivers to pick up the slack, well in this case, there is nothing the drivers can do that won't absolutely kill performance, so MS did the logical thing. And one last thing, on OSX they'd have the same problem if they had some sort of alternate 3D api. On windows, 90% of the stuff is D3D, or available in D3D versions. Just from a marketing point of view, their solution works at 100% the original speed 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time, it can run UP TO 50% slower, in practice it's usually about 15% slower. La-dee-dah... my old ATI 9200 compared to my newer X800 is at least 15% slower anyway, there's the 'performance difference'...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
With Microsoft perpetually attempting to muscle out any and all competition, isn't it time to give them a bit of their own medicine? Isn't it about time to proverbially walk out of the building and leave Microsoft in its playpen, playing all by itself -- as it seems to want to do?
Why can we all just get along -- except with Microsoft. Why cant we play well together -- except with Microsoft. Why don't we declare peace with all things geek -- except for Microsoft. Really. I'm real tired of hearing about Microsoft breaks CSS; Microsoft breaks OpenGL; Microsoft breaks this and that.
Can't we all just boycot Microsoft? Can't we ban together and do like unions do and call a stike? Why don't we all help get Linux, BSD or Macs in schools? Why don't we, weekly, help educate our employers about Linux, BSD and Macintosh? Everyone knows about Microsoft. We don't have to tell anyone about how broken a player Microsoft is in the industry. We just have to keep extolling the virtues of Linux and BSD (including Mac).
Every time we are on the phone with a vendor we need to insist they write drivers for Linux and BSD. Every time we're in front of a customer, we should at least ask if they have cost-sensitive requirements and would they consider a Linux or BSD solution. What's wrong with that?
Everyone who does Windows tech. should pick up a book (if you haven't) and learn a little bit about Linux or BSD. That way, the fear of "Oh, God! My skills may become less valuable if I don't defend my industry!" will diminish. If you're working for Microsoft, get the hell out! I turned down an offer from them -- you can too. Even their "campus" gave me the creeps -- and that was in 1998.
Aren't you just sick and tired of Microsoft?! Come on. They're NEVER going to change.
You don't understand. If Vista detects that any other OpenGL ICD is loaded it will disable Aeroglass completely until the third party ICD is unloaded. There is nothing the driver can do to get around this, short of using API hooking or in memory patching to hide the fact that the driver has loaded it's own OpenGL ICD.
I thought Direct3D had actually surpassed OpenGL in about all areas that matter (performance, capabilities, and ease of use), mostly due to the extremely slow OpenGL community process. Am I mistaken?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I agree, but let's not forget about Cormack and the Doom series that uses OpenGL!
Q: Is the Doom 3 engine OpenGL or DirectX?A: The Doom 3 engine is Open GL.
Source
I'm not a "mac-head" but here's a flash from the past. The poorer the support in Windows for OpenGL the more likely Microsoft will lose out to Doom Legacy and equivalent ports of OpenGL software. Does Microsoft want to be a victim today, in future or never? (that might make a good slogan for anti-MS company).
All that graphical 'goodness' is running maily thanks to the fact that windows esentially built DirectX into the compositing engine for the desktop. So it should come as no surprise that they wouldn't really care too much about implementing OpenGL as they are running everything in DirectX already.
winXP - graphic engine + Direct X and/or OpenGL layer
winVI - graphic engine=direct X
Yeah it's the exact same thing they did with IE, but come on like you didn't expect it.
Im.
To confirm you're not a script,please type the word in this image: cuckoo
Obviously Microsoft has always been trying to drive out OpenGL in favor of DirectX, but I wonder if the existence of the Xbox has given them additional incentive--if they get game developers to use DirectX instead of OpenGL, this not only makes porting to Mac and *NIX much harder, but also makes porting to Xbox360 easier.
If the "translation" layer doesn't support HLSL vertex and pixel shaders, it will make OpenGL dead in the water for PC gaming. I wonder what this will do to the 3D workstation market, though. Will users of Maya start switching to Macs, or will the next version of Maya use D3D?
Although the article is slashdoted, I can speculate on this from the other comments I have read and my knowledge from my 3d graphics engine hobby programming.
As I understand it, OpenGL applications will be implemented through D3D when AeroGlass is running. Since AeroGlass is based on D3D, it is impossible for OpenGL to co-exist in the D3D composited desktop... however..
OpenGL-based applications will still work exactly as they used to in fullscreen mode!
That said, it would be nice to see the OpenGL->D3D conversion layer support extensions and more advanced OpenGL functionality. I'd assume if Cedega can implement D3D9 with OpenGL, Microsoft can implement OpenGL with D3D.
http://brandonbloom.name
SLAM DUNK
From what was spoken at the SIGGRAPH OpenGL BOF, heres the news. Any OpenGL driver, default or native WILL be written as a layer over DirectX. The vendors reluctantly acknowledge this (nVidia, ATI, 3DLabs). Apparently Microsoft has provided no other ways for applications to transfer graphics commands through the hardware abstraction layer to the drivers. As for those who posted that "most of the work is done in the card, not the api" hasn't written any serious OpenGL programs. Its a holy grail to write such an app, but in reality this isnt the case. True - the graphics card does alot of work, but its all the low level stuff - rasterizing, clipping, transformations, but every time you change a texture, change a geometry object, change the model matrix, etc, you access the API and use it to transfer data from application memory to video memory. By forcing the programmers to do this through a wrapper pretty much halves the data transfer rate. The vendors also stressed that this may not be locked in stone - Vista still has one more beta release. Users, programmers, vendors can petition Microsoft to change their minds by letting them know how this will affect them and their willingness to switch to Vista. Thanx :)
Didn't you see the update.. microsoft is F2'ing OpenGL to be a new 'advanced version' ClosedGL.
Boxing Equipment Reviews
They should have implemented Direct3D in OpenGL. That would have made more sense. Then they could also start selling emulation layers for their games under Mac and Linux and kill off the market for Cedega. :-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
You people who didn't RTFA need to get a clue.
The people raising the stink about this are 3Dlabs, ATI, Nvidia, etc. at last Wednesday's Siggraph. When you load an OpenGL ICD into Vista, the desktop compositing is disabled unless you instead use Microsoft's OpenGL.
Get it yet? Saying "ATI or NVidia will provide their own OpenGL" illustrates complete ignorance of the article. If ATI or NVidia load an OpenGL ICD, Vista disables hardware compositing of the desktop unless you go through Microsoft's crippled OpenGL implementation...or go full Direct3D.
Again...got it?
Jeesh.
ATI and nVidia are getting screwed over by Microsoft.
All serious CAD software uses OpenGl.
The best solution is to provide FULL open source drivers for Linux.
Get AutoCAD etc to port their software to Linux. Its either that or port it to DirectX. You can provide Linux free so AutoCAD could be provided on a bootable Linux CD / DVD.
I hope nVidia / ATI have enough brains to work out this course of action.....
XP era vendor supplied OpenGL implementations don't support virtualization of the graphics hardware. This isn't a problem when you don't have to share the 3d hardware, but it is a problem when you've got a multi-tasking operating system that uses the 3d to render content for every application running.
Funny, Mac OS X doesn't seem to have a problem with the same vendor-supplied OpenGL all the way back to the Radeon 7000 and whatever the corresponding nVidia software is.
According to an article I read, if you try to view video media on a monitor that doesn't have DRM enabled, Windows Vista will actually DEGRADE the image so you can't see it (or see it properly, I forget which.)
This is pathetic - but good. Microsoft is dooming itself with this nonsense.
Vista is the death knell of Microsoft. When this POS comes out, the entire IT and consumer market is going to say, "Oh, hell no!" and switch to Mac and Linux (mostly Linux.)
This is what happens when you have a greedy, unprincipled asshole running your company - it self-destructs sooner or later.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Making a competitor's product appear inferior when run on their monopoly platform is really an old Microsoft trick. As I remember they did the same thing with MP3s when played on their multi-media player. Made the quality artificially inferior so that their own WMP format would "appear" to be superior.
Having the multimedia player built in means that most people won't bother to download and install an optional media player. So playing a mp3 file is an unpleasant or at least less pleasant experience to playing a music file in Microsoft's file format.
Good ol' Microsoft. Always pushing the legal/ethical envelope.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The major 3D applications like Maya, 3d Studio, etc. will be forced to port their code to avalon. These applications are all "windowed" OpenGL programs that need every bit of performance possible, make use many OpenGL extensions, and certianly use fragment/vertex shaders.
/linux ports they have more expensive development costs. They will have to either maintain code bases that support OpenGL AND Avalon, or they will stop supporting the lastest features that are added to their Avalon version, or possibly even just drop the non-longhorn platform support.
Maya and Softiamge et al will either appear outdated when running on Longhorn, or they will be forced to port to the new usloth API. Even better for usloth, is that the new API is only present in Longhorn. So now, every user of the newest versions of Maya, 3dStudio, Cinema 4D, etc. is also forced into upgrading their workstations to run windows Vista.
It also means that for those ISVs that have mac
A win win win situation for usloth.
If Apple were particularlly clever they would provided man-years worth of developer support to help these ISVs to ehance their OpenGL applications with even stronger features in their Mac OS versions. For example Apple could help each ISV add in support for VAR and other Apple OpenGL extension that can boost performance, tweak the Apple OpenGL drivers, and of course help tweak the applications. Then Apple could advertise better performance on Mactel hardware for the same applications as compared to the LongHorn version.
As studios are forced into examining the cost-vs-time-savings for the migration to Longhorn they just might consider migrating to a different platform altogether, particularlly if the time savnings can be demonstrated on the non-windows platform.
Of course Apple may not have high end mactel boxes for a while.... so we'll see what happens.
Microsoft makes shit APIs but they are very smart businessmen.
I don't run windows so my question is academic. I'm curious how easy it will be for you to squeeze your DirectX over OpenGL shim in between this Aeroglass layer ? Being compatible is one thing, getting the OS to use it can be another thing.
If it is easy, I'm sure these OpenGL complainants, e.g., ATI, NVidia would be very interested in your project. You may even be able to get some sponsorship from them if you needed it.
Of course, there would be benefits to Linux users as well,as you've mentioned.
Good luck with it.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Well doom3 anyway requires a pretty powerful pc. i wonder whether you will get even 16 frames at 640x480 with GF6 on Vista then?
Dont waste you time reading stupid sigs like this.
People, this is NOT an attempt to block OpenGL, there are VALID technical reasons for why microsoft is doing this.
:)
Aeroglass is rendered via hardware-accelerated Direct3D. So, its effectivly the same as running a full-screen Direct3D game. Then, running an OpenGL app/game on top of that (e.g. in a window) means that OpenGL and Direct3D are both running at once and both claiming "ownership" of that area of the display.
As long as windows (and windows apps including games that do DirectX) can still run even without all the Aeroglass "eye candy" stuff (which is turned off when you load an OpenGL ICD from the graphics card vendor), there should be no problems.
NVIDIA, ATI, Intel etc will release vista drivers with included OpenGL ICDs.
People who dont need good OpenGL will run with the "stock" drivers and get OpenGL-over-Direct3D plus the Aeroglass UI eye candy.
People who need good OpenGL will run with the drivers from the manufacturer and get good OpenGL but no Aeroglass eye candy. (I dont know of too many gamers that dont install the "good" drivers from ATI/NVIDIA anyway)
Although if I am mis-understanding what Aeroglass is or what "disabling it completly" actually means/does, please feel free to correct me
How does this compare with (setting aside marketshare for a minute here) Apple's implementation of compositing various 2D and 3D technologies onto the same screen in the latest OS, performance/efficiency-wise? (Not a graphics guru...)
[QUOTE]Not only do people work, they also create work. Production. Wealth. The more people you have, the stronger your economy. The problem in the 3rd world is a political one and has to do with corruption unfairly affecting the distribution of wealth. It's not due to "overpopulation" and "undereducation". [/QUOTE]
Overpopulation and lack of adequate education are also problems, as are lack of natural resources.
[QUOTE]The literacy rate where I live is higher than that in the US, which is suprising since our health budget is much less, per capita. Be careful, the US is slipping quite a bit, despite what your politicans tell you.[/QUOTE]
Regarding literacy rate - the US definition may be different from that used in your country. The US literacy rate reported for a number of years refers to 'functional literacy' which is a much higher standard than 'basic literacy'.
LetterRip
MSFT is truly suicidal at this point. I guess they just cant see it.
$ whatis msft msft: nothing appropriate
So does this basically mean that Doom 3 and all the other games using its engine will run 50% slower on Vista?
Big companies (id, the ut guys) will simply do d3d renderer for windows and if they're going cross-platform they'll do an openGL renderer at the same time.
It's probably most annoying for small devs who want to do a windows/linux port of their game/software, stuff based on free engines like ogre3d will suffer greatly in the short term.
But really, all it means is people who want to run openGL stuff will turn off aero, which i'm sure most of them would be doing anyways.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
I was under the impression that the stock version of OpenGL that came with windows has always been a Direct3D wrapper (Or at least, it was this way with Windows9x).
OpenGL is implemented by your video card manufacturer- Why would microsoft go to the trouble of writing an opengl driver for every major video card when they already have a perfectly good HAL in DirectX?
Seriously people, this is a non issue. Stop looking for excuses to trash Vista before it's even released.
Microsoft is virtualizing the display hardware in the same way memory was virtualized long ago. In the Longhorn world programs have graphics timeslices and schedule graphics rendering similar to the way threads share the CPU.
Obviously this model is a huge departure from anything currently known and this requires the entire graphics stack be rethought. Part of that rethinking is that Direct3D (and the 3d accelerator hardware) will be doing the heavy lifting. This means you have two choices for OpenGL: force it to play nice with the virtualization just like everything else (in which case you get a performance hit) or run the app full-screen where the ICD can monopolize the hardware just like most things deal with it today.
Any just like in the past hardware will continue to get faster (and better at virtualizing specifically) to the point where we just accept the virtualization without question and happily pay the overhead cost. (After all running a single program directly without OS VMM and scheduling overhead is faster!)
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Hello,
From my point of view, when M$ releases it Beta Operating system-ViStA-, and Virii start been written for it
and they pull back the scripting out of there VISTA for security
they are applying open source philosophy in an indirect way, even without their understanding for that
and that proves that the community, and OPEN SOURCE really produces best of the best Software WAKE up BILL
Kind Regards
Kernel The Canine
First as was already mentioned in other post, for now native windows OpenGL don't use hardware at all, it's pure software and 1.1 to boot. But no one use it anyway, all Videocard manufacturer provide OpenGL driver and GL.h headers for their card. So situation defenetly will not be worse.
Where they got this wild 50% ?. IMO this number blown form the thin air. The wrapping OpenGL to DirectX is very simple, both API have similar functonality, the only diference go with videomemory managment. But OpenGL have no decent expilicit videomemory mangment anyway, so you may have OpenGL more slow then DirectX, but not wrapper OpenGL considerably more slow then native OpenGL driver.
Professional graphics applications will be hit harder. 3DS Max recommends DirectX - but then, it is not cross-platform. Maya, Lightwave etc all run on multiple other platforms (like Linux and Mac OS), and all use OpenGL only. Same with many 2D compositing apps.
These apps are not going to do a separate DirectX/WGF version just to get a little more eye-candy on Windows. And for the most part, the users of these apps will be more prepared to lose Vista's eye candy (many pro WinXP users already run themeless, to get a faster experience).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
And you guys remember the drill?
:)
As long as I am the one to kill Bill
** yeah! I made a funnie!
I personally agree with this statement. I think overpricing windows does great for the Open Source cause and if I had my way it would cost somewhere about the GDP of Italy. However, looking back at the parent poster's previous posts I wish to point out that he works or has worked for MS, the company that claims that selling a PC without Microsoft Windows is tantamount to Windows piracy since it is considered the only OS that people would install. This seems to me to be hypocracy through association. Microsoft seems to like to claim that they are the only option when it works for them and that they are not a monopoly when that helps their cause.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
It sounds to me like Vista is going to actually translate OpenGL code into DirectX code. If this is the case, even a driver from the manufacturer won't do anything - UNLESS the device manufacturer finds a way to override the code that performs this translation. Sounds to me (more and more, all the time) like maybe "MS Vista" should be called "MS Disappointment." Nowhere near as many features as promised, no cool new features that aren't already available in other OS's or through third-party programs. . . not to mention it won't run DOOM 3 as well as its open-source alternatives. . . what a horrible move on MS's part.
www.linuxpenguin.net
If we manage to take this discussion to ID Software products somehow and troll enough, we can make Mr. John Carmack comment on this thing and make a reality check :)
I start: "Doom 3 FPS will be even lower! OMG!!!"
Seriously, you really imagine MS will release an opengl killer OS while huge, popular games run on OpenGL themselves? I mean, while people comparing 105 fps with 95 fps?
Well I hope OS X users realize opengl is a must for their games...
t ory/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=12;t=000001
I'd call this FUD but looks like OpenGL people took it serious, pasting from forum, admins post:
Microsoft's current plan for OpenGL on Windows Vista is to layer OpenGL over Direct3D in order to use OpenGL with a composited desktop to obtain the Aeroglass experience. If an OpenGL ICD is run - the desktop compositor will switch off - significantly degrading the user experience.
In practice this means for OpenGL under Aeroglass:
OpenGL performance will be significantly reduced - perhaps as much as 50%
OpenGL on Windows will be fixed at a vanilla version of OpenGL 1.4
No extensions will be possible to expose future hardware innovations
It would be technically straightforward to provide an OpenGL ICD within the full Aeroglass experience without compromising the stability or the security of the operating system. Layering OpenGL over Direct3D is a policy more than a technical decision.
What can you do?
Write to your preferred ISV, hardware developer or OEM and tell them to bring this up with Microsoft (e.g. 3Dlabs, ATI, Intel, Matrox, NVIDIA, HP, Dell)
Bring this issue up on other developer and tech-related web sites. If you have a personal blog or podcast, talk about the issue there. Windows Vista might end up being a great product, but not if OpenGL is crippled
Post your comments to this message board (please no Microsoft bashing - Just make it clear that Windows needs to stay a great platform for the OpenGL API and offer any suggestions)
http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/cgi_direc
Wait, I thought China pretty much owns the US economy at this point!
-- thinkyhead software and media
Just watch, soon somebody will create a trojan that exploits the potential of your GPU to the point that DirectX becomes unsecure, and then Microsoft will be forced to use OpenGL.
Hey, it could happen.
What about when using full-screen mode? Both DirectX and OpenGL have somewhat degraded performance in windowed mode anyways, and I don't care if there's a performance hit while switching in/out of OpenGL games. If Microsoft and/or nVidia/ATI can't provide OpenGL in full-screen / direct access mode, then they're probably not trying hard enough.
I attended the OpenGL Birds of a Feather session at Siggraph last week. This issue was brought up, and were were encouraged to complain to Microsoft. The speaker asked who thought this was a good idea. There was one lone hand up in the audience. The speaker then explained: "He works at Apple".
Please forgive my mistake.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Aye, I work at MS (for the next 30 days) but I don't think that makes my statements hypocritical. I don't think MS is an "evil" corporation at all, in fact, I would venture to say it's more ethical than most large organizations. They make decisions I don't agree with at times, but so does any rule by committee organization. They are a for profit public corporation, you know.
:)
:) )
I don't think, however, that they are the be-all-end-all of software development by any means and I think that competition is good for them and the end user. Personally, I use very few MS products because I think most of them have better alternatives out in the market, for my uses. MS is the volkswagon of software. It's cheap, it gets the minimal job done and it doesn't take much training to know how to drive it. I just do my part to make the products a little bit better and they pay me hansomely for it. When I do get to make policy, I make it according to what I feel is best for both the company and it's customers, but no one at MS is responsible for ALL the decisions here, and there are some really bad ones, both technological and marketing.
To invoke godwin preemptively, I'm not aiding the Nazis to exterminate Jews here... I'm improving some C++ code at a company that sells software. Take a step back and gain some ethical perspective
(and secretly I'm just a gentoo fanboy
The GOAL is to reduce performance by 50%.
If just layering OpenGL over Direct3D wasn't enough to kill OpenGL performance, they'll add a whole bunch of wait and sleep calls to make sure they hit the 50% performance hit target.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
fascinating
WINE tries to be compatable with the *newest* DirectX. Not with some old version. Any additions Microsoft makes to DirectX are implemented in WINE as fast as possible.
Also it is absolutly SLOW. OpenGL Windows games are able to run under WINE at twice or more the frame rates as DirectX ones. Apparently the overhead is easily 50%, and this is from people who don't have an incentive to make it perform badly.
The claim is that latter.
For the first version, a Microsoft fanboy here has repeatedly posted something about "rewrite the driver to use LDDL" or something like that. Ie perhaps the driver has to be rewritten to a new interface, which is perfectly reasonable, *IF* the same is true of DirectX drivers.
Unfortunatly nobody seems to be backing up this claim with any real information. An 3DLabs spokesman has said this is false, but there is no reason to believe him either, perhaps they want to avoid writing it or want an excuse for some problem with their OpenGL.
Maya and every other advanced graphics appliation out there uses OpenGL and also uses the windowing system. This will seriously impact them. If this story is really true (and I have my doubts) then this is a direct attempt to force all high level appliations to switch to DirectX, thus making portable vesions very difficult or impossible.
Unlike office-type applications, these high-level programs are very popular on Linux and Mac. I think 50% of our sales are Linux. Yet we are very small, if OpenGL is not supported on Windows, we will have to drop half our market (hard to say which, though it is obvious Microsoft hopes we will drop Linux).
I never said anything about Microsoft being a big evil entity (although I do believe that personally). I simply said that it is Microsoft's policy that Windows is the only viable desktop operating system for x86 platforms and that you work for them so thus are connected to this policy in some way.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I always preferred running my games in opengl because it just looked better, plus it was faster.
Nowadays the difference between D3D and opengl is a lot less, but I bet it has more to do with Microsoft not wanting a competing architecture and the actual abilities of the layer itself...
Oh well I guess i will have to live with D3D, I had big hopes for OpenGL2.0 too...
I have a hard time playing a lot of games full screen anymore. But then, I leave a lot of apps running, including messengers, and don't worry about having every resource dedicated to giving me the full eyecandy effect for a lot of games. At the same time, I'm not expecting to use Vista when it comes out. I run XP Pro right now, but have switched back and forth between it and Linux as my sole desktop OS a few times. Fiddling with Wine/Cedega can take a little time but it tends to give me enough gaming options in addition to the Linux native ones to fill what free time I have to waste on it anyhow.
I read the thread, and it looks like this is a fishy-sounding rumor. Before everyone one goes karma-whoring with anti-MS rants, why don't we wait for some facts?
Try a little skepticism. The FA is a posting on a bulletin board by "Administrative User #4" who, when asked for a source, says that it was from a conversation at SIGGRAPH.
Vista certainly has significant changes going on in the rendering department. Avalon is built on DirectX, so perhaps there's some re-jiggering going on to make OpenGL work alongside that. But a 50% performance degradation? Come on. Microsoft is not that stupid. They know applications sell computers, not OSes. If they screw several games and CAD apps, it'll hurt them.
That was then...
1) Write office productivity apps that run best on MS OSs
2) Everyone uses MS/Intel at home so everything works.
This is now...
1) Write games using OpenGL that work fine on all OSs.
2) MS makes them run best on non-MS software.
3) Kids use alternative OSs to play their games.
Note to self: Put all os versions of games on 1 cd. When kids start using the non-MS version because it runs better, they'll have less need for MS Windows