You're splitting hairs. The entire of OpenGL 1.5 is ARB extensions. There are no new "core" features in OpenGL 1.5, however cards can only be said to support OpenGL 1.5 if they support the ARB extensions.
BTW, have you actually programmed for ATi's GLSL implementation lately? It's improved a lot over the last few months, and it's very usable at this point. I can't give details due to an NDA, but expect ATi's implementation to be at 1.0 very soon.
Actually that's not true. Currently new video cards have to support the features the latest version of DirectX (or more specifically Direct3D) if they want to be called DirectX 9.0 video cards. Because of the way Microsoft specifies the requirements and hardware vendors have to meet them, new releases of DirectX very much dictate the type of video card you need if you want to play the latest games.
New releases of OpenGL also require new video cards. If you want to play a game that requires OpenGL 1.4 or 1.5 then you'd better have an ATi 9500 or better. ARB_fragment_program, ARB_vertex_program and the new GLSL extensions aren't supported on anything older.
OpenGL 2.0 is not as exciting as the new major version number might indicate. Probably the most important new feature of OpenGL 2.0 was going to be the GLSL high level shader language. However, in order to speed up its support by hardware companies, this was instead put into OpenGL 1.5 spec when it was announced last year; GLSL already has implementations by 3DLabs, ATi and nVidia. OpenGL 2.0 will still add some useful new features, but it won't be the world-shattering event that 3DLabs promised in their original proposals.
Moderators, at least have a cursory R of TFA before modding this crap up. This guy is either trolling or he's smoking crack (or both). His post bears no resemblance to reality.
Actually, that probably wouldn't be very successful because Darl McBride's cranium is limited by the size of his skull cavity, which is approximately only 8 inches across. If there were any aliens there, they'd have to be very small. Also, using a network of radio telescopes to search it would probably be overkill. No, I think they're onto a better idea by searching outer space, which is very big indeed and therefore far more likely to contain aliens.
Using a standard API to access common features of graphics cards is not the same as giving away an engine. There is a lot more 3D graphics and games than than just chucking some triangles at the framebuffer. Even id Software, who GPLed the Quake and Quake 2 engines, don't give away their new technology. Doing so would be suicidal.
So the after years of engine development time, paying scores of programmers, companies should be just give their technology away for free to anyone who wants it. After all, technology has no value, right? You should tell that to Valve. I bet if they knew that instead of selling millions of copies of Half-life to counter-strike players they could just give the engine away to the developers of CS instead, they'd just jump at the chance. The magic fairy people could then pay valve software with mystical golden pennies, and we'd all live happily ever after in a beautiful open-source utopia.
So you're lying there, blissfully unaware of having your mouth gouged out with sharp pointy things, and then your fantasy world suddenly becomes a BSOD. That's not going to be a pleasant experience.
This is a perfect example of why a democratic moderation system doesn't work. I propose a meritocracy type system, whereby I deal out the points to worthy posters.
Each to their own I suppose. I admit I don't have much experience with Matlab (I'm planning on keeping it that way). As a college project, we were told to use matlab for a computer vision task. I tried everything to optimise it, followed all the guidelines on vectorising code and not using loops, and eventually found that the only way to do it was to write the critical code in C, as you suggest (this improved the speed by a factor of 100). In the end, there was almost no advantage from having used matlab and I would have been better to just write the whole thing in C.
What baffles me the most is that people use it for image processing, of all things. Surely if performance is important anywhere, it's here? It doesn't help that Matlab 6.5 runs on a Java back end.
The walking trees and flying "lizards" were pretty crucial to the plot of the book. I somehow doubt that Tolkien wrote about them to create some pretty CG effects in a film that would be released after his death.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps they're backed up by another insurance company. Can anyone confirm this? Otherwise, I agree.
Since when is Groklaw objective? Seriously, the site does a great job of presenting the facts, but it hardly does it without bias.
How much are the wands?
You're splitting hairs. The entire of OpenGL 1.5 is ARB extensions. There are no new "core" features in OpenGL 1.5, however cards can only be said to support OpenGL 1.5 if they support the ARB extensions.
BTW, have you actually programmed for ATi's GLSL implementation lately? It's improved a lot over the last few months, and it's very usable at this point. I can't give details due to an NDA, but expect ATi's implementation to be at 1.0 very soon.
Actually that's not true. Currently new video cards have to support the features the latest version of DirectX (or more specifically Direct3D) if they want to be called DirectX 9.0 video cards. Because of the way Microsoft specifies the requirements and hardware vendors have to meet them, new releases of DirectX very much dictate the type of video card you need if you want to play the latest games.
New releases of OpenGL also require new video cards. If you want to play a game that requires OpenGL 1.4 or 1.5 then you'd better have an ATi 9500 or better. ARB_fragment_program, ARB_vertex_program and the new GLSL extensions aren't supported on anything older.
OpenGL 2.0 is not as exciting as the new major version number might indicate. Probably the most important new feature of OpenGL 2.0 was going to be the GLSL high level shader language. However, in order to speed up its support by hardware companies, this was instead put into OpenGL 1.5 spec when it was announced last year; GLSL already has implementations by 3DLabs, ATi and nVidia. OpenGL 2.0 will still add some useful new features, but it won't be the world-shattering event that 3DLabs promised in their original proposals.
Wow, this survey will produce helpful results. For some reason I'm guessing it'll conclude that 100% of programmers would copy code. Genius.
I just say MWIAL (because my wife is a lawyer). I also tried IANALBMWIAL, but it was a bit of a mouthful.
Well, it's rising from the ashes of Lindows, so what about Phoenix? That has a pretty good ring to it I think.
Moderators, at least have a cursory R of TFA before modding this crap up. This guy is either trolling or he's smoking crack (or both). His post bears no resemblance to reality.
The bottom of the tunnel is France.
Actually, that probably wouldn't be very successful because Darl McBride's cranium is limited by the size of his skull cavity, which is approximately only 8 inches across. If there were any aliens there, they'd have to be very small. Also, using a network of radio telescopes to search it would probably be overkill. No, I think they're onto a better idea by searching outer space, which is very big indeed and therefore far more likely to contain aliens.
Using a standard API to access common features of graphics cards is not the same as giving away an engine. There is a lot more 3D graphics and games than than just chucking some triangles at the framebuffer. Even id Software, who GPLed the Quake and Quake 2 engines, don't give away their new technology. Doing so would be suicidal.
So the after years of engine development time, paying scores of programmers, companies should be just give their technology away for free to anyone who wants it. After all, technology has no value, right? You should tell that to Valve. I bet if they knew that instead of selling millions of copies of Half-life to counter-strike players they could just give the engine away to the developers of CS instead, they'd just jump at the chance. The magic fairy people could then pay valve software with mystical golden pennies, and we'd all live happily ever after in a beautiful open-source utopia.
If we're going to do this properly, we should really start at the beginning.
Aardvark:
A furry thing that eats insects.
So you're lying there, blissfully unaware of having your mouth gouged out with sharp pointy things, and then your fantasy world suddenly becomes a BSOD. That's not going to be a pleasant experience.
Here you go.
This is a perfect example of why a democratic moderation system doesn't work. I propose a meritocracy type system, whereby I deal out the points to worthy posters.
You might want to try Firebird/Thunderbird as an alternative. They're a lot less bloated than the mozilla suite and start up much quicker.
It's probably not the most efficient way to obtain pretty wallpaper for my 2048x1024 desktop, but it's appreciated none the less.
Brain the size of a planet, and they have me looking at stones.
Each to their own I suppose. I admit I don't have much experience with Matlab (I'm planning on keeping it that way). As a college project, we were told to use matlab for a computer vision task. I tried everything to optimise it, followed all the guidelines on vectorising code and not using loops, and eventually found that the only way to do it was to write the critical code in C, as you suggest (this improved the speed by a factor of 100). In the end, there was almost no advantage from having used matlab and I would have been better to just write the whole thing in C.
What baffles me the most is that people use it for image processing, of all things. Surely if performance is important anywhere, it's here? It doesn't help that Matlab 6.5 runs on a Java back end.
If you care about performance at all, why on earth are you using matlab?
Your opinion is wrong.
The walking trees and flying "lizards" were pretty crucial to the plot of the book. I somehow doubt that Tolkien wrote about them to create some pretty CG effects in a film that would be released after his death.