OpenGL 4.0 Spec Released

tbcpp writes "The Khronos Group has announced the release of the OpenGL 4.0 specification. Among the new features: two new shader stages that enable the GPU to offload geometry tessellation from the CPU; per-sample fragment shaders and programmable fragment shader input positions; drawing of data generated by OpenGL, or external APIs such as OpenCL, without CPU intervention; shader subroutines for significantly increased programming flexibility; 64-bit, double-precision, floating-point shader operations and inputs/outputs for increased rendering accuracy and quality. Khronos has also released an OpenGL 3.3 specification, together with a set of ARB extensions, to enable as much OpenGL 4.0 functionality as possible on previous-generation GPU hardware."

Comments

Patent problems still there?

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

Any chance the patent problems of OpenGL 3 have been fixed?

Re:Patent problems still there?

[binarylarry]

It's not really a huge problem in practice.

All the major graphics IHV's provide that extension anyway. It would nice if it was in GL's core spec, but since it's included for any device that matters, it's not a practical concern.

OpenGL on par with Direct3D11

[Thunderbird2k]

To give an idea to non-OpenGL developers, OpenGL 4.0 closes the feature gap with Direct3D11. If you want to use OpenGL 4.0 you need to wait a couple of weeks before drivers will be out. In case of Nvidia, the drivers will be launched together with their new GTX4*0 GPUs which are the first Nvidia GPUs with Direct3D11/OpenGL 4.0 support. AMD might release new drivers before Nvidia since their hardware is Direct3D11 capable already.

Re:OpenGL on par with Direct3D11

[TheRaven64]

You seem to have misunderstood how OpenGL is meant to work. It is intended to standardise existing features; that's the entire point. Individual vendors add extensions, developers test them, and the useful ones are added to the next version of the spec.

Re:DOA for anything but pro gear

[Again]

DirectX won, because it does sound and HID input handling, and because its on every PC sold to every mouthbreathing, Best Buy shopping, banana eating customer.

I wouldn't be so quick to say that DirectX won. The xBox 360 is the only current generation console which uses DirectX.

Re:DOA for anything but pro gear

[aristotle-dude]

DirectX won, because it does sound and HID input handling, and because its on every PC sold to every mouthbreathing, Best Buy shopping, banana eating customer.

OpenGL is used on PS3, linux and OS X. It is also used on any game in windows that is cross platform compatible where they did not bother implementing a DirectX engine. Every platform now has HID handling and you can use OpenAL if you want to have the same sound effects engine on windows, OS X and possibly linux.

Now that Valve is porting Steam and related games to OS X and consequently OpenGL, expect to see more activity surrounding OpenGL.

Re:That's not was the Mesa devs say

[TheRaven64]

Mesa is used in a lot of X.org drivers. It provides the OpenGL state tracker for Gallium3D, so it will be used a lot more in future.

Re:DOA for anything but pro gear

[ultranova]

DirectX won, because it does sound and HID input handling, and because its on every PC sold to every mouthbreathing, Best Buy shopping, banana eating customer.

DirectX is indeed widely used on Windows, since it handles more things. OpenGL handles just graphics, but is cross-platform; with SDL it's close enough to DirectX that it's often used. And of course you could use OpenGL for graphics and DirectX for everything else.

I like the current situation where the two coexist and force each other to evolve to stay competitive. It's a bit like AMD forced Intel to get off its ass and make good and cost-effective processors again. We'll see if NVidia is able to respond to ATI/AMD's challenge too; but at least we won't see similar stagnation as with 3Dfx after initial Voodoo.

The only good thing about capitalism is that competition forces companies to get off their ass and evolve. A pity it doesn't work anywhere except the tech sector.

Re:That's not was the Mesa devs say

[malloc]

Yeah, but anyone using OpenGL with X is going to be using either the Nvidia proprietary drivers or ATI proprietary drivers.

The OSS offerings do not provide nearly the same level of performance, unfortunately.

So again, from a real world practical standpoint, Mesa isn't in use anyway.

Unless you meant to say "OpenGL 3.0" This is absolutely not accurate. Has your "real world" been isolated to workstation CAD and/or heavy gaming users? Those are the only groups where binary non-mesa drivers are used almost universally, but they are a minority. Intel, which has over half the graphics market only uses mesa. Your default Fedora and upcoming Ubuntu 10.4 installs use mesa for both amd and nvidia chips. AMD actively supports the open driver and is working to make that the main driver.

The continued development on gallium points to mesa gaining more traction. I think the trend is for binary drivers to become less and less common in the future.

-Malloc

Re:That's not was the Mesa devs say

[Kjella]

AMD actively supports the open driver and is working to make that the main driver.

They are working on an open driver yes, but they are not looking to replace the proprietary driver in the foreseeable future. For a number of reasons - not least of which is the tons of optimization work going into the main driver - they expect the open source 3D performance to top out at 60-70% of Catalyst by keeping a simple structure. That is much better than than the difference between accelerated and unaccelerated though which can be <1% of the performance.

Only 4.0!

[johno.ie]

DirectX goes all the way to 11.