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OpenGL 4.1 Specification Announced
WesternActor writes "The Khronos Group has announced full details for the OpenGL 4.1 specification. Among the new features of the spec, which comes just five months after the release of the 4.0 specification, is full support for OpenGL ES, which simplifies porting between mobile and desktop platforms. It'll be interesting to see what effect, if any, this new spec has on the graphics industry — more compatibility could change the way many embedded systems are designed. There are lots of other changes and additions in the spec, as well." Reader suraj.sun contributes insight from Ars, which brings OpenGL's competition into focus: "OpenGL 4.0 brought feature parity with Direct3D 11's new features — in particular, compute shaders and tessellation — and with 4.1, the Khronos Group claims that it is surpassing the functionality offered in Microsoft's 3D API. ... Whether this truly constitutes a leapfrogging of Direct3D 11 is not obvious."
But, how does this benefit porn viewing?
how long until we get drivers that support it, and how long until games that take advantage of it?
This is not meant as a troll, it's an honest question.
I mean, with the fiasco that happened with opengl3, I had thought pretty much everybody who was holding out hope for opengl gave up at that point and declared directx's 3d facilities the unequivocal victor.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why use pseudo-words like "leapfrogging" when real words like "surpassing" or "overtaking" work just fine?
Anyone following this enough to know if attempts were made to resolve the patent issues?
* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/OpenGL
Or did new issues surface? Any pointers would be appreciated, thanks.
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Currently we still don't have OpenGL 3.0 support! It is a real shame to be so far behind proprietary drivers. ;)
Okay, it's fine, I guess we can live with OpenGL 2.1, nobody needs OpenGL 4.1, right? ='(
I know, I know, patches welcome.
Or so Ars reports.
But games? Is anyone still doing games in OpenGL these days, apart from the rare port to Mac or Linux?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I don't know why but back in the day when I used Windows games (suppose they were id games) which could switch between OpenGL and DirectX ran noticeably smoother on OpenGL and also the texture filtering looked better. I suppose there is no way to make such comparison now as almost nobody writes games which can run both.
Nostalgia aside, from what I've been hearing from devs who had contact with DX and then picked up OGL, OGL API seems way more elegant and easier to deal with...
I don't want to start a flame war but haven't OGL almost always surpass DX in terms of features by the means of extensions?
Perhaps there would be better reception for all of these new OGL iterations if they saved up some worthwhile features before putting them into the spec, and just leave the new stuff as extensions until they have a nice upgrade to show.
If I'm not mistaken, they JUST updated to 3.3/4.0 in March or something at GDC, no? I can't imagine there's been too terribly much added in 6 months. I like OpenGL a hell of a lot better than DX but I couldn't give less of a rat's ass about this supposed "step up". Before trying to match DX11 you should see if there's anything in DX11 worth copying(there isn't).
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Now if we could only convince some of the top development studios to believe this.
DirectX is not just graphics; it's also sound and input. Programs that use OpenGL have to use something else for sound and input. One popular choice for these is SDL; another is Allegro. But since the introduction of PulseAudio, sound in Linux games has been a cluster[intercourse]. Specifically anything using the Allegro library lost sound, and Allegro games are still silent in (for example) Ubuntu 10.04.
The blending of OGL and OGL ES is huge - it essentially underscores that smart phones are now a major 3D gaming platform. I'm really surprised that most poeple here are talking about PC support rather then note the fact that essentially any PC game built for OGL can be ported far more easily to moble platforms now.
Additionally with Nokia's Meego and Google's Android being essentially modified Linux and both likely offering support for this, this may give us a renaissance of linux gaming. And by this I mean proper linux gaming and not "wine" gaming.
Is there any future in which it matters? Why would anybody work in that ghetto?
I suppose there is no way to make such comparison now as almost nobody writes games which can run both.
Most studios who develop for consoles can.... Once you've added DX9 / DX10 / DX11 code paths, adding GL & libGCM really isn't that hard.
Nostalgia aside, from what I've been hearing from devs who had contact with DX and then picked up OGL, OGL API seems way more elegant and easier to deal with...
GL4.1 is a lot cleaner than OpenGL before 3.2 (which was a horror!), that much is true. However DX probably still pips it in terms of API cleanliness.
You know, even if that was true, it would still be worth supporting it in order to prevent Direct3D being without competition.
Even if you're a hardcore Direct3D-only user, you still benefit from the competition between them.
Microsoft recommend a combination of XInput and WM_INPUT these days.
Then what are PC games supposed to use to read third-party gamepads that aren't for Xbox 360? From Wikipedia's article about DirectInput and XInput:
XInput supports only "next generation" controllers. This limits it basically to controllers for the Xbox 360 that also have Windows drivers. Legacy Windows controllers, joysticks and generalized force-feedback devices are not supported.
And suggesting a switch to WM_INPUT almost sounds like suggesting a switch from DirectDraw to GDI back in the 2D era.
I'm honestly curious as a games programmer why someone would choose not to use a cross-platform API specifically designed for games (eg. OpenAL).
Possibly because I learned Allegro Low LEvel Game ROutines back when it was for DOS, and DJGPP supported it while Visual Studio was still pay (VC++ Express hasn't been around forever) and MinGW hadn't matured yet.
I don't know why but back in the day when I used Windows games (suppose they were id games) which could switch between OpenGL and DirectX ran noticeably smoother on OpenGL and also the texture filtering looked better. I suppose there is no way to make such comparison now as almost nobody writes games which can run both.
This may be variation in the drivers, and it can happen both ways. I get annoyed by the poor support for OpenGL (both in terms of performance and odd/buggy behaviour) on Intel's GMA 950 chipset.
Nostalgia aside, from what I've been hearing from devs who had contact with DX and then picked up OGL, OGL API seems way more elegant and easier to deal with...
How long ago was this?
DirectX used to be a mess (versions 7 and earlier), but it's much better now (certainly I find DirectX 9 fine). And I'd argue it's more elegant, because they've cleaned out all of the legacy rubbish, and different hardware support are hidden beneath a single API (as opposed to OpenGL, where you have to cope with both vertex arrays and vertex buffer objects, for example). I believe one of the hopes of OpenGL 3 was to improve this; I've no idea how well OpenGL 4.1 actually manages this though.
With OpenCL you can code (optionally GPU-accelerated) boob physics while maintaining compatibility with a wide range of hardware and software platforms:
http://www.khronos.org/opencl/
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The way wine does it for Direct 3D is to use OpenGl. This is a 'generic' solution.
The way to get true performance is to write native DirectX 3D and whatever else actually needs top notch performance.
I'm surprised that someone hasn't done it yet, I'm not sure what licensing issues vendors have or if it's possible to create a 'template' Direct 3D driver or even do some semi-automatic porting of DRI - Open GL drivers on-top of a more generic Direct 3D framework (more bang for the buck approach) and then do the performance enhancing work afterwards.
This should certainly beat the performance of the Open GL / Alsa etc... wrapper approach quite quickly, due to a lesser requirement of converting structures.
It should also in theory be portable to windows and Max OS X etc... without too much effort, or maybe using some kind of generic kernel wapper for the more propritary OS market.
DirectX 10 (or more importantly 11), even if only a top 95% implementation should have a good market for Windows XP users and the like.
Are you honestly claiming Win95/98 was not capable of playing multiple sounds at the same time? Because... uh... that's not true. As in... made up. A falsehood. A lie.
Indeed. The default driver model inherited since ealier version the "WaveOut" - wasn't able to play multiple streams.
The only way to get simultaneous sound was to use DirectSound output. Which had to be supported in the application (WinAmp did, for example).
And that's the difference :
- In both situations (OSS/ALSA vs. WaveOut) you have a driver which can only play a single stream because that's what the hardware does (no Hardware mix on most sound chips).
- In both situations (ESD/Arts/PulseAudio vs. DirectSound) you need an additional layer to mix the multiple sound sources.
- In both situations the applications have to support it and...
With Windows and the closed source world, you're basically stuck (Although WinAmp is provided with DirectSound capability, your IM client probably only used WaveOut).
With Linux and the open source world, as the source is available software *could* be modified to use the newer system, and because the code re-use and the popularity of some library, covering most applications only require patching a few higher-level sound api libraries (adding the support to SDL/Allegro/libao/GStreamer). Thus distribution maker could integrate the needed support (So my apps supported multiple sound because libao had an Arts plugin).
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