OpenGL 3.0 Released, Developers Furious

ikol writes "After over a year of delays, the OpenGL ARB (part of the Khronos industry group) today released the long-awaited spec for OpenGL 3.0 as part of the SIGGRAPH 2008 proceedings. Unfortunately it turns out not to be the major rewrite that was promised to developers. The developer community is generally furious, with many game developers intending to jump ship to DX10. Is this the end of cross-platform 3d on the cutting edge?"

Comments

Question

[Narpak]

Is this the end of cross-platform 3d on the cutting edge?"

Probably not. As long as DX remains solely in the hands of MicroSoft; there will be use for other forms of cross-platform 3D. More so as the "none-MS" OSes continue to grow in numbers.

Re:Question

[Narpak]

Indeed. But preferably games should be possible to play without Wine. Hopefully as Linux, and other OSes, continue to get better and become more "newbie" friendly; it will become interesting for more companies to invest in Linux versions of their games.

Re:Question

[hr.wien]

Their code will require a huge architectural rewrite no matter what the API looks like. Hardware just doesn't work like these programs are using the APIs anymore, and hasn't for a long time. Keeping this legacy stuff around in the new API won't change that. It'll still be a complete mismatch with the hardware.

If they want to take advantage of GL3 (either the promised or the delivered version) they will have to rewrite large parts of their code, so why not just drop all this backwards compatibility nonsense and make GL3 actually good, while still keeping GL2 around for legacy? With the original plan for interoperability between the two they could still switch to GL3 one piece at the time while they rewrote their codebase to modern standards. This would have been much simpler for everyone involved. These companies included.

This can't be good.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Jumping ship to DX10 would be nice, if it were cross-platform. (No, Xbox + PC does not count as "cross-platform".)

Unfortunately for those of us on Linux/Mac, a lot of Windows developers don't care.

Unfortunately for those of you who think you don't care about this, consider that porting an app generally improves it, and can shake out bugs which aren't as apparent on the other platform -- which means potentially less reliable games, even if you're only on Windows.

And unfortunately for those of us who hate Vista, that's kind of a requirement for DirectX 10. At least with OpenGL, those in charge have no agenda to push Vista -- so an OpenGL 3.0 game should run on XP, if it runs on anything.

Re:This can't be good.

[commrade]

Gallium3d will enable just that. The Wikipedia page even mentions DirectX and wine.

That said, I don't think the uproar over OpenGL 3.0 is as widespread as the summary would have you believe. OpenGL's grave will likely be right next to Unix, X, vi and C (ie. no time soon).

Re:OpenGL falling down a pit

[Ynot_82]

"The library needs to be able to interoperate with current and future video hardware, so that all hardware acceleration features will be available to applications using the 3D library..."

Now, I know next to nothing about the nitty-gritty details of OpenGL or DirectX,
but I really thought they were pretty much equal (in terms of being able to fully utilise the hardware)

I was under the impression that MS wrote the DirectX API, and graphics hardware was expected to provide in interface to GPU operations as per MS's API spec

On the flip side, OpenGL being less centrally controlled,
instead graphics hardware provide their own API calls for new GPU operations, and provide this new API call to OpenGL via it's "extension" interface
and every so often, the OpenGL spec would be updated, with new GPU functions (currently using seperate, per-vendor extensions) would be standardised into a single implementation

Are developers really saying that OpenGL cannot do things DirectX can?
I thought as long as (say) Nvidia kept provided drivers, and software kept querying for the hardware's capabilities, DirectX & OpenGL were pretty much on a par with each other....

Can anyone provide a semi-layman's explanation?

Re:OpenGL falling down a pit

[Zygfryd]

If you're talking about forking OpenGL... how do you convince Nvidia, AMD, Intel, PowerVR, Apple, Microsoft and who knows how many other companies to implement your incompatible version of the API in their OpenGL stacks?

However if you're simply talking about GLX/Mesa then you'll be happy to know that it's being reimplemented in the Gallium3D project.

Re:OpenGL falling down a pit

[hr.wien]

You don't fork a spec. You create a new one and try to get it accepted by the industry (ATI, Nvidia and Intel in this case).

Good luck with that.

OpenGL is NOT only games

[janoc]

Folks, I do wonder when someone realizes that OpenGL is not only games. The only people really "furious" are some game developers in few posts on an OpenGL forum. However, please, do realize that games are typically sold for 6 months and supported for 1 year and 99% on a single platform (Win/XBox). Very few things are developed as cross-platform - and it is NOT because of OpenGL, more like commercial realities (cross-platform development is hard and doesn't make a lot of sense for ~2-3% of the market, especially for an app that will be sold for one season).

Professional apps (CAD/simulators/visualizations...) make up the majority of the OpenGL market and they have to be supported for decades (no, military or airlines do not buy a new training system every two years ...)

So breaking compatibility is deal breaker. This is exactly what OpenGL 3.0 is about. I am developing OpenGL applications for a decade now and all are still running and being used. How many 10 year old games can you actually get working today? God forbid - on Vista? That is the difference.

Also, the "newest features not supported by OpenGL" - how many "newest features" are your typical games actually using? Perhaps one or two and they are optional, because the game must run even on not bleeding-edge hardware (how many games are DX10-only? - commercial suicide ...)

So to wrap this up - the title is EXTREMELY misleading and making up a storm where one doesn't exist.

Re:The Chicken and the Egg

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of people are buying computers with Vista and switching to another OS, or downgrading to XP.

I wouldn't call it a downgrade.

Re:The Chicken and the Egg

[Assmasher]

Does that count the people who've pirated Vista and run it?

I've always found it sad that people have to bandwagon things like operating systems. I mean, take Irix for example. It's possibly the worst, most unstable operating system in history (through its lifetime) and I had to suffer with it for years, but you don't read about people bashing it because it's *nix. I don't care too much about Vista. I don't care too much about any flavor of *nix either. It's all a toolbox and people pretending otherwise have agendas that range from personal to political and monetary issues. Now I must admit I have a proclivity for laughing at Windows ME (how'd that ever get released? LOL)

Re:The Chicken and the Egg

[registrar]

I wouldn't call it a downgrade.

Perhaps a "retrograde to XP"? Sounds kinda hip.

Re:Not licenses - users

[Risen888]

The plural of anecdote is not data.

You know, I hear this a lot, but I think you're wrong, at least in this case. Or to put it more succinctly, the plural of anecdote may not be data, but the collective of anecdote is indeed data. If every user Enderandrew knows, and every user I know, and...

I mean, how many times do you have to hear the exact same story from how many different people before you admit it's the truth? I don't know one single person who is using Vista as their home OS. Zero. Nada. None. And I work in end-user support. I talk to lots of people. It's my job. And seriously, not one. I know some people who had it for a while, and ditched it for either XP or (yes, seriously) Ubuntu Linux.

I spend a fair bit of time in hipster coffee shops (don't judge me, it's part of my job), the patrons of which I take as a fairly good bellwether of consumer tech, if only because there's a decent amount of disposable income floating around and a majority of the machines in use at such places tend to be 1 year old (yeah, lots of Macs, but even so...) And there is no way I'm going to believe that Vista is at a 20% adaptation rate, at least not in this major Midwesten metropolitan area. Absolutely not.

-p.

PS: It's 3:00 AM central time, and I have been drinking. If something up there doesn't make sense or sounds stupid, please ask me to clarify rather than modding me down. I don't usually drink and post, officer, honest :)