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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."
I can't believe I saw this and thought we were talking about Klingons until my brain caught up.
I can't make up my mind what affect it will have ...
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.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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.
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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.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
If this doesn't come out favorably, don't blame me!
I voted for Kodos.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
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.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Sony is also a member of the consortium, and is providing the API suite as part of the PS3 development kit.
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.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
I did a little more looking after submitting this article and while I was not familiar with the Khronos group's work aside from mobile applications, it seems they are also responsible for the COLLADA standard Sony is promoting for open exchange of graphics/models primarily for video games. Perhaps with OpenGL, COLLADA, and some multimedia standards all under the same roof, we'll see development directed to be a better alternative to OpenGL aimed at multiple platforms (Windows, PS3, Mac, and Nintendo?) to offset the threat of MS's DirectX development aimed at Windows and Xbox simultaneously.
... Because this is a direct competitor to DirectX.
Although Microsoft has not been openly hostile. They distribute OpenGL with Windows. And although there are concerns that they are "crippling" the implementation they are shipping with Vista (of which I, personally, am skeptical), hardware vendors ATI and nVidia will be shipping the latest versions with their cards.
can also mean to bring into existence.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
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.
!. Direct3D vs OpenGL:
Doesn't realy matter, for a couple reasons:
Only games are written using Direct3D/DirectX. It is very rarely used for anything beyond that. If given a choice no developer would ever use Direct3d for anything.. but if your making games for technically challenged people and your target platform is Windows then writing it to use Direct3D/directX makes more sense since it's more likely to work well in Windows.
All the major gaming engines already run on Linux. They already run using either OpenGL or Direct3D.. All except HL2/Steam stuff.
The reason Linux doesn't have more games isn't because of DirectX. It's because of lack of ease of use for OpenGL acceleration and market share.
Also DirectX/Direct3d is tied directly to the hardware. If your card doesn't support DirectX 9 your not going to be able to run DirectX 9 application.
For OpenGL it doesn't work that way. It's a programming API that can be accelerated. If you have a card that was designed to accelerate OpenGL 1.x you can still run OpenGL 2.x. It just won't all be hardware accelerated.
If your programming a 3d application and it's not a game and your not Microsoft.. Then your using OpenGL or OpenGL-based system. Period, end of story.
2. 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.
This is were all that extra stuff goes that people say that OpenGL lacks and DirectX has. OpenGL has a much more formal review system then DirectX/3D has. It needs to be carefull as any standard they create will need to be replicated by multiple people on multiple platforms and be sustainable into the forseeable future.
Microsoft and Direct3D/DirectX doesn't have to deal with that. They can abtrarially make decisions becasue they only have to worry about one platform.
3. Kronos group is partially responsable for the OpenGL-EGL extensions which allow for easier OpenGL based displays for embedded devices.
This is required for a stand-alone XGL-based X Windows server. Current AIGLX (Redhat) and XGLX (Novel) require you to either run a OpenGL-based X server on top of a normal X server (XGLX) or run OpenGL extensions to a normal X server (AIGLX).
This approach has numerious issues. Instead of making a clean break and going with pure OpenGL system your dealing with multiple legacy drivers that can only do a fraction of what OpenGL can do in addition to OpenGL acceleration drivers.
To put it another way.. The current driver model for X is broken. Right now we have 2-3 drivers acting on the same video card at the same time and they need to share resources. These drivers come from different vendors. This is technically difficult and doesn't lead to good acceleration or performance.
Another point:
Legacy 2D X drivers (EXA, XAA) can only provide 2D acceleration.
OpenGL 3d drivers can provide 2D AND 3D acceleration.
OpenGL 3d drivers can provide faster 2D acceleration then what the legacy 2D drivers can do. (due to the nature of the hardware GPU, not so much the drivers)
Having 2D and 3D drivers at the same time makes things much more complecated then just having 3D that can do everything.
3D acceleration is a hard requirement for a modern desktop.
So obviously having OpenGL-based X server is the way to go. And stuff like GLITZ (Xrender replacement) and other things means we can move to a pure OpenGL X server and still keep binary compatability. It's quite a acheivement.
Now the reason we cna't have a pure OpenGL-based display yet is because OpenGL lacks the API hooks to allow you to control the display and other items like that. There is nothing in OpenGL that says "Set the monitor at this resolution". That has to be handled by other stuff.
Kronos had to solve this same exact problem for it's embedded OpenGL display stuff. So they created the OpenGL-EG
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?
Jesus fucking GOD how hard is it?
It amazes me that you have such a grasp of the use of "affect" and "effect" but don't seem to grasp that the word "fucking" should only be used as a verb or adverb and not an adjective. Unless your really meant to express that Jesus is copulating with God, which to answer your question, would seem to be pretty hard to do.
fucking Pronunciation Key (fkng) Vulgar Slang
adv. & adj.
Used as an intensive.
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.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.)
Actually, ARB stands for "Architecture Review Board." But the rest of what you said about the ARB is pretty accurate.
(1)Ironically, you yourself appear to "not know a whole lot." There are several reasons that developers use D3D over OpenGL. Personally, if I need cross platform, for example Sense8's WorldToolKit back when I used to work there, I used OpenGL. If I need multi-monitor and/or multi-device hardware acceleration on anything other than an upper end SGI, like what I currently work on, I HAVE to use DirectX9/10 and Win32. There are other reasons to prefer D3D over OpenGL but they are somewhat subjective (i.e. some people absolutely detest the extensions mechanism in OpenGL for example while others don't really care.) Some people like to write simpler code to support multiple rendering paths, et cetera. There are subjective reasons to use OpenGL as well, but this is unimportant, what is important is pointing out that "If given a choice no developer would ever use Direct3d for anything" is a ridiculous and biased statement. Also, if your hardware doesn't support OpenGL 2.0, and your application uses OpenGL 2.0, your application isn't going to run either, so the statements:
"Also DirectX/Direct3d is tied directly to the hardware. If your card doesn't support DirectX 9 your not going to be able to run DirectX 9 application. For OpenGL it doesn't work that way. It's a programming API that can be accelerated. If you have a card that was designed to accelerate OpenGL 1.x you can still run OpenGL 2.x. It just won't all be hardware accelerated."
This is VERY misleading. Presuming scenario 1 where the developer (for either D3D or OpenGL) has coded a support for only a particular version of the API, neither API will run partially in software if the driver does not support that level of the API. D3D9 will not run in software unless you're going to use a debugging rasterizer (highly unlikely), and OpenGL 2.0 WILL NOT RUN on a card with a 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.4 driver. Now, there are some 1.4 drivers which were written so that people like myself could write 2.0 code and execute before the hardware was available, in which case the 2.0 distinctions were supported via software emulation, but this was for developers. You're confusing the ability of a specific OpenGL implementation supporting a specification to the maximum of its ability. For example, if a I have an OpenGL 1.4 driver but the card I'm running on doesn't have Hardware T&L, OpenGL's pipeline is quite capable of transparently deciding whether or not it should offload the lighting to the card or doing it in software. This is not the same as some future version of OpenGL running on my old OpenGL card with an old driver.
"If your programming a 3d application and it's not a game and your not Microsoft.. Then your using OpenGL or OpenGL-based system. Period, end of story" - I certainly hope you're not in a decision making capacity at your job (or that your job is doing something other than writing rendering code) because you're screwing your company over. Right tool for the right job, every time. It's a toolbox not a religious jihad.
(2)"OpenGL has a much more formal review system then DirectX/3D has" - No it doesn't. Crimony. Do you know what the specification process for DirectX is? You can say they're different, but it certainly isn't less "formal." You could say it is less open, but that's because it isn't an open API.
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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.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
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.
That's bogus considering that Khronos provided (and still does) all the spec details for all the other specs, including OpenGL ES (Which is what's used on most of the mobile platforms today), OpenMP, and others. They've got more invested in being open than the ARB did- and I doubt they'll do what you say.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Yes, your tiredness had an effect on your affect and affected the effect of your post.