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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."
Sony is also a member of the consortium, and is providing the API suite as part of the PS3 development kit.
Khronos *already* handled most OpenGL related specs, like OpenGL ES.
On the negative side, this probably means that yes, SGI is going to be asset-stripped and wound up in short order. One must remember that the writing was on the wall a long time ago. Like CBM before them, Microsoft placed a "mole" in an executive position to wreak havoc, and SGI never really recovered from that period of moronic rebranding and windows NT workstations.
OpenGL has been stagnate for quite some time. Most of the newer features of 3D cards have only been accessible with their horrible extensions interface. Well, it's not horrible, but it's not ideal either. At a minimum, better support for pixel shaders (nearly a decade old feature) is much desired. Better support for NURBS & subdivision surfaces (without using evaluators) would rock. I doubt that things like this are on the agenda.
OpenGL, IMHO, has no place on mobile phones... not yet anyway. Poor Java stacks, pathetic amounts of RAM, and CPU's slower than my TI-82 calculator make phones a questionable 3D platform. How on earth can OpenGL grow if it always has to support the lowest common denominator.
I'd hate to see the focus change toward embedded systems and not have enough energy dedicated toward advancing desktop development, where OpenGL has a very important role. Outside of DirectX, it's the only game in town... especially on the Mac & Linux.
I write all of my 3D apps on top of OpenGL, so this decision is very important to me. I like that OpenGL will finally get some much needed attention, I just hope it's the kind that benefits me... not just teenagers and their cell phones.
NVIDIA and ATI are both members of the ARB as well.
Ok I posted this previously(again) but this thread is more on topic with it and would like to see what people think.
It would be a lot easier for them to port if all games were opengl. I remember way back when John Carmack had his open letter to microsoft on the merits of opengl. Unfortunately, it seems d3d (even though crap back then) has won out in the end. Not that it's better than opengl, it could be now, but that's beside the point. Microsoft saw how big gaming was getting and wanted to tie developers and as a result it's users to one platform.
I think a turning point was the release of half life. Even though being a quake 1 engine game (don't start the q1/q2 halflife thing) it's default support was d3d. If valve stayed native opengl when that game exploded, we might have seen co's like ati get their act in gear a lot earlier with better opengl support. And potentially might have become a more attractive option for future developers.
Glad carmack still codes for win,nix, os X just cause he thinks 'it's a good thing.' Too bad developers like him are far and few between.
Consumers can kill something off like a plague when they are aware of the hardware/software tie in, like the death of the original divx hardware players, but when consumers (even tech savvy ones) don't think about it, or don't care what goes on behind the scenes, things like this happen.
I can't really see it changing drastically now. You hear about the odd port from a company which is great but the only way a lot of games to be natively available on linux is for linux to all of a sudden gain huge market share (hopefully one day, but still a long ways off).
If/when that time comes, developers would have to look at their development strategy, it will be a hassle to support d3d and opengl. So if they did see a market for both windows and linux they'd most likely consider opengl from the get go.
So, it would be nice to at least have more developers using opengl now, so the option is there for a port, but again I can't see that happening. People would have to do something radical and boycott a game and state the reason is because it uses d3d which is enforcing the tie-in of games to only one platform.
And just look at the moves microsoft can pull when they have this clout. Halo 2 being directx 10 only. Please... An xbox 1 port requiring the latest d3d. A strong arm tactic for vista if I ever saw one.
So I'm going to add this, can we actually blame developers for the state of affairs of linux gaming? Should we hold them accountable? See the majority of people do not care about anything except (in this case) what's best for their company. I mentioned Carmack because someone should be recognized when they do something knowing it's not necessarily the profitable move, it's just that they think it's right.
I see most people complaining about some limitations of opengl. This may be true, but did opengl's current situation come about much further back? Citing my example of half life (not that it was necessarily the linchpin of all this). Why did they port a opengl engine to dx back then? I certainly don't remember reading articles claiming superiority of dx at that time.