OpenGL Spec Now Controlled by Khronos Group

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes "According to a recent press release, the OpenGL Architecture Review Board has voted to transfer control of the OpenGL API standard to the Khronos Group, an industry working group that seems mostly known for its focus on mobile applications. Apple Computer has also just joined the group, presumably because of their interest in OpenGL for the OS X platform. I wonder what affect, if any, this will have upon the future development of the OpenGL standard."

Comments

Great!

[Gr8Apes]

Anything that helps OpenGL and provides drivers for it will be welcome. May it prod developers to write more OpenGL games (mainly) and thus make porting easier.

What "affect" **

[just_another_sean]

I wonder what affect, if any, this will have upon the future development of the OpenGL standard.

Well reading TFA and not finding Microsoft on either their promoters page or their contributors page I'm cautiously optimistic.

** affect? effect? I can never keep this one straight either.

Google also a member

[Foofoobar]

If you look at the list of Members you will also spot Panasonic, Toshiba, Softimage, NCSoft and alot of other heavy hitters.

The fact that Google and Apple are involved gives me hope that people will start making applications for Linux and Macs soon. Also, since DirectX 10 is only available for Vista, this may be the prime time for OpenGL to start stealing some market share.

Re:Google also a member

[Quarters]

Also, since DirectX 10 is only available for Vista, this may be the prime time for OpenGL to start stealing some market share.

What would be so different about the exclusivity of DX10 on Vista as opposed to the exclusivity of DXs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 on Win 95, 98, NT (DX3 only), 2K, and XP that makes now the proper time for OpenGL to become dominant?

DX wins out in terms of "market share" (as if an API can be measured against something like that) becuase of two things...the dominance of Windows in the marketplace and the fact that DirectX has pretty much wiped the floor with OpenGL when it comes to support for contemporary rendering hardware features. Extensions be damned, the OpenGL ARB moves *way* to slowly to be competitive. Maybe the Khronos group will help with that...Lord knows they can't be any worse.

Will OpenGL have a ratified spec for equivilent DX10 features like geometry shaders by the time DX 10 comes out?

Re:Google also a member

[Foofoobar]

All of them required you to update if you wanted to use the features.

Funny. Didn't have to update my Win98 box to move to Win2k. Just needed more RAM.

Didn't have to update my Win2K to move to XP.

So by all of them... were you talking only Vista or were you merely talking outta your ass?

Good -- maybe now it will progress faster!

[mrchaotica]

Part of the reason Direct3D took off (aside from Microsoft's market influence) is that the ARB worked too damn slow and caused OpenGL to lag behind in terms of capability. If Khronos can make decisions faster such that OpenGL can keep feature parity with (or even get ahead of) Direct3D, it'll be great!

It would also probably help if they form close ties with the people making OpenAL, SDL, etc. so that there can be a big, open, complete solution to compete with the whole of DirectX.

CAN WE PLEASE NOT HAVE THIS DISCUSSION?!

[mrchaotica]

Whether Apple contributes back to Free Software isn't really relevant here, and it's been beaten to death in other threads already. Could we please save it for the next KHTML article, at least?!

Besides, the more relevant thing regarding Apple is their behavior regarding other standards (as opposed to software implementations), such as USB, WebDAV, ZeroConf (aka Rendesvous, Bonjour), etc.

Effect as verb

[WilliamSChips]

can also mean to bring into existence.

Close ties to mobility affecting OpenGL?

[QuantumFTL]

I wonder how the growing pressures of the mobile market will be on the OpenGL framework, especially with Khronos at the reins. Perhaps there will be more emphasis on procedural methods (to deal with the small VRAM sizes of mobile chips), or better resource usage for power conservation?

Re:Maybe OpenGL and DirectX need to diverge

[mrchaotica]

Maybe the two just need to diverge, with OpenGL returning to what it was intended for - enterprise apps, while leaving DirectX to cater to the games market.

The problem with that is that DirectX isn't a standard -- it's a proprietary Microsoft technology. We'd still need a standard to use for gaming on Mac, Linux, PS3, Wii, etc.

Re:Some notes to people that may not know a whole

[LionMage]

A couple clarifications/corrections:

Also DirectX/Direct3d is tied directly to the hardware. If your card doesn't support DirectX 9 your [sic] not going to be able to run DirectX 9 application.

Besides the spelling gaffe (your is the possessive of you, you're is a contraction of "you are"), this statement is not 100% correct. DirectX/Direct3D developers can mandate that certain API features are handled in hardware in order for the application to run, but they can just as easily allow DirectX to emulate in software what is not implemented in hardware. It's just that, for performance and usability reasons, most game developers don't want to allow DirectX to let the CPU handle certain things. So really, the practical difference between DirectX and OpenGL here is nil.

Since OpenGL is used for much more than just games, and since it's not as tightly tied to hardware specifications, it is more likely that OpenGL applications will tolerate missing hardware acceleration for some features. Having said that, I know there's a mechanism for programmatically determining which extensions an OpenGL implementation supports; what I don't know is whether you can easily detect if a particular feature is hardware accelerated or not. (I suspect the answer is yes, since there are still game developers out there who write to OpenGL.)

OpenGL ARB is 'Advanced Review Board'. They create a set of extensions to the current OpenGL standard to create proven/established OpenGL-related stuff that they can then wrap up together and place into the next generation OpenGL standard.

Actually, ARB stands for "Architecture Review Board." But the rest of what you said about the ARB is pretty accurate.

Re:SGI was considering it an asset to sell.

[starfishsystems]

My money is on nVidia buying up the IP once SGI is gone

I'm with you, as long as nVidia doesn't lock it up and throw away the key.

I have a longstanding fondness for OpenGL but it doesn't work if it stays on just one graphics platform either. It's for portability. So by that reckoning, Apple would make a better steward. Apple has good reason not to tie itself to any one component vendor, and OpenGL helps it in that purpose.