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OpenGL Spec Now Controlled by Khronos Group

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the passing-the-torch dept.

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."

2 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Kronos? by andphi · · Score: 5, Funny

    That would be the Q'onos group, you spineless p'taq!

    BTW, I included the "spineless p'taq" comment in order to keep with the theme, not because I'm trying to be insulting. I think of it as an "insensitive clod" joke, only with more glory and honor. Qapla!

  2. Some notes to people that may not know a whole lot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    !. 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