OpenGL 2.0 Released 353
berny@work writes "OpenGL has finally released version 2.0. The benefits include Programable Shaders, in particular: Shader Objects, Shader Programs, OpenGL Shading Language and changes to the Shader API. If you are interested take a look at the tutorials and the case studies that are linked to from the OpenGL site."
Weird. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:only through extensions... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Weird. (Score:5, Informative)
Direct 3D (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux games market (Score:2)
Massive linux gamers market? (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, thats no argument. There is NO linux gamers market worth mentioning, and there is NO massive linux market in the first place.
A better argument:
OpenGL is a long standing industry standard which give developers more control over the way stuff gets rendered. Its simple, straightforward and does not depend on a large, antropophagic competitor, platform owner like Microsoft.
And THATS why ID uses it. So the MS wont choke them by controlling that critical part of the API.
Not many developers have the muscle ID has to invest in remaking a lot of stuff DX already provides, but for some sizes, its worth it.
Re:Direct 3D (Score:2)
Thank tha lor' !!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank tha lor' !!! (Score:2)
Re:Thank tha lor' !!! (Score:2, Insightful)
tutorials? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you mean nvidia opengl? :) (Score:3, Informative)
Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2, Funny)
- OpenGL [bloodgate.com]
- Direct3D [scrontsoft.com]
I personally think Direct3D is a bit better, since it can apparently handle more than one separate object at a time.
Back to the drawing board, OpenGL dudes!
Learn from Microsoft next time.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:5, Informative)
D3D is a proprietary windows programming API owned by Microsoft and designed for games with some incredibly ugly and arduous API semantics, OpenGL is an open, extensible cross platform industry standard controlled by a board of interested industry specialists that anyone may join. The rendering and dispatch API semqantics have been optimized by the vendors in a standard way. If there was a need for any particular feature the vendors would add it as an extension either individually (something they can do and have done on their own) or they could collaborate on shared extensiosn for a common API. Red herring features that do not make any sense or map to real hardware have no place in a programming interface explicitly designed to sit close to the metal like OpenGL.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:3, Insightful)
The API is very C-centered, which is nice, if you develop in C; we however developed in other languages, which more suitable for enterprise apps where stability and floatingpoint correctes is AO.
I'm not fond of OOP, but it sure makes sense when you deal with visual objects, and OpenGL doesn't really feel OO. Dealing with OpenGL for Lisp or Python is easy, but sure as hell ain't pretty.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree OO has advantages in some situations with a low level graphics API I don't think that's the case the only real omission in OpenGL caused by the C interface is function overloading for the various argument types to a few functions. That would clean up a few things.
In 3D graphics OO really kicks into it's own when it comes to higher level APIs like scene graphs and there are numerous examples. These can and do benefit greatly from OO design but nobody has come up with a compelling low level hardware interface that justified OO. Sure you could wrap a few things in a class or two but there's no compelling architectural justification and attepmts to wrap OpenGL in a trivial namespace class and call it OO are horribly naive and misguided.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2)
I would be much more convinced with an argument that D3D "rejects old languages and does not compromise the interface in order to support them" which is a legitimate argument.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2)
wglGetProcAddress is pretty much it or you could use one of the popular extension wrappers, like teh wrangler.
Feel free to try to get every app that calls OpenGL on windows to distribute a new interface, after getting all the hardware vendors to agree on this of course as Microsoft tries to muscle people out of cooperating.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:3, Insightful)
OpenInventor, for example, was great, and it included things to easily open a window and get to work right away. In other words, it's a lot like Unix - it might seem more difficult because it's more flexible, and if you've written your own scene graph library, upgrading to the next OpenGL won't break it, unlike a lot of previous DX upgrades.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:3, Informative)
That would be something like Open Inventor.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:3, Informative)
Popularity breeds.... popularity (Score:2)
Now, even with a rather
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:3, Insightful)
Programming anything graphic-related on the PS2 is equally as arduous, but the system is the most successful in the world. Programming simplicity does not a success make (look at Java). I think you're letting your love for Open standards blind you from the fact that D3D is flat-out the winner, technology-wise.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2)
FWIW PS2 has no interface beyond a packet description and a DMA engine, it is popular because of th
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm talking about tech that D3D has and OpenGL is catching up to. Developers were using pixel shaders right out of the gate on Xbox. A lot of what's native to DirectX is (like you said) grafted onto OpenGL.
The point of a true "graphics library" is to give programmers as many high-level choices for manipulating graphics as possible. Cross-platform compatibility shouldn't be a goal. That should be handled by another layer entirely.
Also, if you're g
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:4, Informative)
The only reason D3D is the API on XBOX is a Microsoft business decision, technical merits have nothing to do with it.
Learn DX or D3D? You do know that D3D is discontinued and Avalon is the replacement so what will it look like? I personally suspect they'll clean up D3D and it may wind up looking a lot different. The graphics scheduling, and resource/context management will obviously be a major issue/headache.
As for OpenGL, OpenGL|ES will have way more volume than longhorn units shipped, it will be on every mobile device. So I could justifiably claim that if you don't learn OpenGL|ES now you will be left behind, but I'd never say anything so silly.
Cross platform compatability is often a major goal but it depends on your project and what you're developing. Let's be clear, the hardware details and graphics programming requirements tend not to change from platform to platform, so OpenGL suitability is not compromised by it's cross platform support, it just happens to be supported on many platforms. Hardware acceleration and consistent implementation are the primary design goals of OpenGL and it succeeds spectacularly well. Implying that because it is cross platform it is somehow compromised ignores the fact that the only reason D3D is single platform (or even exists for that matter) is Microsoft's proprietary control of the market.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the reason many people here are so fond of OpenGL is strictly because it's non-Microsoft and nothing more.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2)
And, like most things, when MS announced D3D, we all said "what the f*ck are they doing? There's already a well defined 3D api out there!" And we all knew already, back then, that they were specifically targetting the success of SGI instead of doing something that customers really wanted and forcing companies to "choose" si
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't cite a reference w.r.t OpenGL & Carmack, it is clearly FUD. The only dissatisfaction I've seen from Carmack was in the Cg vs glslang hardware abstraction, I won't explain it, it's too technical for you but basically Carmack was advocating the futureproof open aproach and in some respects he got his way, however Doom3 calls ARBfp and ARBvp shaders anyway.
Carmack has never waivered from his OpenGL support and the only issue he's taken a public stand on in the API was as I said, shaders where he expressed a dislike for Cg and Cg is very similar to HLSL in D3D so Carmack was taking a stand against a shader approach that is used in D3D.
OpenGL has been around longer than D3D, is a lot cleaner in design, it has a clear unambiguius specification and has conformance tests to ensure quality of implementation. OpenGL is also portable to non-Windows platforms. All of these are excellent reasons to use OpenGl that have nothing to do with being non-Microsoft.
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2)
C'mon, dorbie... I mostly agree with your sentiments, but I think you go overboard in a couple of places here.
The rendering and dispatch API semqantics have been optimized by the vendors in a standard way.
But there are important areas where the ARB has fumbled the ball spectacularly, render-to-texture being the most obvious.
Red herring features that do not make any sense or map to real hardware have no place in a programming interface explicitly designed to sit close to the metal like OpenGL
And
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2)
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2)
Re:Why no comparison with D3D? (Score:2)
I'm not sure why you say this.. However OpenGL is kind of a lower level
than DirectX, OpenGL have no "objects", you as the programmer are responsible for those.
Note yourself the fact that Direct3D can be implemented on top of OpenGL, as is the case done with winex/cedega.
Awesome! (Score:3, Funny)
Neverwinter Nights 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
The game is still early enough in development that they could still switch from DX and not have much impact in the release date
Re:Neverwinter Nights 2 (Score:2, Interesting)
Bioware? (Score:2)
Re:Neverwinter Nights 2 (Score:2, Informative)
<BioWare> Yeah, that's a great idea. Let's re-do a whole bunch of work, lengthen our dev cycle, have to re-do our schedule just so we can pander to 1.5% of the market.
Not to mention, the release of 2.0 is just formalizing support for these features. They all existed previously as extensions. Bioware could have developed using them a year or two ago if they wanted. I suspect they chose Direct3D because it is more convenient to develop with, has more driver support, and works excellently on their tar
Re:Neverwinter Nights 2 (Score:2)
Go, OpenGL ARB! (Score:4, Interesting)
Just different enough from existing GPU programming languages to be annoying, without any added functionality or ease of use!
No standard intermediate representation, requiring OpenGL drivers to contain full-blown compilers! Hello, latency!
OpenGL -- the best API and shading language a politics-laden commitee could design!
Seriously, if it weren't for Mr. Carmack, the dinosaur that is OpenGL would be deader than the dodo bird. Sad, as I spend half my day developing OpenGL apps, but true.
Re:Go, OpenGL ARB! (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I've used both D3D and OpenGL, and find D3D to be a horribly designed API, with massive changes in each revision. I'd much rather get OpenGL a year later, but designed right, than the D3D hack of the day.
Re:Go, OpenGL ARB! (Score:3, Informative)
While I agree with you about DirectX in general, I find HLSL/Cg to be an absolute joy to program for, so credit where credit's due - I don't see why we need a seperate, different and incompatable shader language when the one we already have been kicking around for the past couple of years is so well thought out.
Re:Go, OpenGL ARB! (Score:2, Informative)
Have you used D3D recently? It's generally perceived as being vastly improved over earlier incarnations (just like most of MS' products), and perfectly useable these days.
But you are right on one point -- linux, like Mr. Carmack, is indeed a factor contributing to OpenGL's lack of demise.
OpenGL, by the ARB's very nature, will always be playing catchup, and perhaps that's fine. Unfortunately, the ARB is increa
Re:Go, OpenGL ARB! (Score:2)
Re:Go, OpenGL ARB! (Score:2)
Plus, closed standards are not an option if your whole business relies on them. Even if OpenGL were "technically" inferior to D3D in some aspects, it would still be the safest choice, if your business is not games (developing, or playing [Anyway, specifically for gaming, even conso
Re:Go, OpenGL ARB! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Go, OpenGL ARB! (Score:2)
OGL 2 Compliant cards (Score:2, Insightful)
more tutorials? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:more tutorials? (Score:2, Insightful)
NeHe [gamedev.net] is one of the best for tutorials. GameDev [gamedev.net] and FlipCode [flipcode.com] are also good general sites.
Yeah but (Score:5, Funny)
Look, all I want to know is if I can shade something.
Too Little, Too Late (Score:5, Funny)
OpenGL will win at the end. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OpenGL will win at the end. (Score:3, Informative)
Also, your statement about more and more companies using OpenGL is false. More and more companies are using DirectX right now, even if you include all the Quake engine games.
Official Specifications (Score:3, Interesting)
Here [opengl.org] is the official specifications of the OpenGL 2.0 in PDF format.
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Long live the Kings of Death Match.
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:3, Insightful)
your argument would be better served by not listing games that are all from the same company
but not so much with
(or at least, using engines from the same company). There's a ton of games using those engines.
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
More than just id's Engine (Score:3, Informative)
"If the only popular games using OpenGL use the same engine, that tends to make me think that people are not fond of programming for OpenGL in general, just one person/company."
Yes, but as you say they may have just simply created a kick-ass engine, in which case if you wanted to leverage OpenGL (cross-platform titles come to mind) there's less reason for others to create from scratch.
Combine that with the OpenGL-friendly Torque game engine [garagegames.com] and you've got a good pair of heavyweight tools.
From their
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:3, Funny)
From the makers of Return to Castle Wolfenstein!
From the makers of Quake!
I sense a pattern...
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Makes you kind of wonder what kinds of decisions are going on at the graphics chip companies and the game makers, and whats going on between them.
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
That might have something to do w/why it's ranked 18th right now according to www.gamespy.com/stats.
Three things really. First of all, the game that is 18th is Tribes: Veangeance, which is neither Tribes 1 nor Tribes 2. Completely different game. Secondly, Gamespy is completely incompatable with T
Re:All id Software engine games (Score:2)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:5, Insightful)
One word: portability
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, that guy almost has kept OpenGL relevant in the gaming industry almost single-handedly.
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:5, Informative)
Can OpenGL ever match DX in popularity among developers?
Yes. id (quake, doom, etc) and I believe unreal both use it. Both are competitors, and as small of importance as portability to other operating systems such as Linux may seem to be, it is still somewhat important to them (although, I -still- haven't heard anything new about doom3 on linux)
Interest into porting to Linux is slowly becoming more popular between game makers, mostly because if you do it right for the windows port in the first place, it isn't as difficult as it might seem to port to Linux, and it helps open up a small new (starved?) market.
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Actually, Epic has it right: they released a UT2004 server for Linux first, then built the client primarily for Windows. Play to each of its strengths.
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Unreal used Glide and software only. There was no true "Open GL" option for Unreal. Unreal Tournament/2003/II may use it, I'm not sure. But the the original did not.
LK
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:3, Informative)
Some of the graphic effects (heat ripples etc.) require a DX9 video card so this is unlikely to work at all under Linux.
What are you talking about? The NVIDIA Linux drivers support the same OpenGL extensions as the Windows drivers, and they support the same set of GPUs - right up to the GeForce 6800. Why would an OpenGL-based game look any different between the two?
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously DirectX has such things as DirectSound which don't really have alternatives under Windows, though.
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way that it will match the popularity of DirectX is if someone produces an SDL on steroids. Something that matches DirectX feature for feature but in an open source and cross-platform manner.
Furthermore, I don't believe that Linux should not be the primary focus for this SDL on steroids - Win32, the XBox & PS2 should be. Why? Because obviously they're the
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
Re:Versus DX successor (Score:2)
You can use all the other DirectX stuff while using OpenGL for rendering - a number of games do this already.
There is no point to porting such a thing to Xbox because you're not going to get Microsoft to sign games that use it - it competes with XNA or whatever their new DX replacement is called. (New DirectX, same as the old DirectX.)
Pirates of XXI Century (Score:2)
Re:Does this work with older cards? (Score:5, Informative)
So (unless I missed something that wasn't previously an extension), you just need a new driver for your card and you'll be set.
Re:Does this work with older cards? (Score:2, Funny)
Shizzle is not a word. It's a flag. To the rest of the world that the speaker of said word is a fucking dumbass.
It ranks right up there with "bling-bling".
Seeing how you actually tried to use it in a serious sentence, I figured someone should tell you.
Re:Does this work with older cards? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Does this work with older cards? (Score:3, Funny)
I would, but not as much as the folks who modded that flamebait as "Insightful"!
Now, please excuse me, I have to take a shizzle and get back to earning my bling-bling.
Re:that's great but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Um, is this news item accurate? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Point Sprites? (Score:3, Informative)
Now, rather than just colored dots, you can use textures or sprites (little pictures). So instead of a cloud of brown dots coming from a dirt bikes rear tire, you could have little chunks of rocks and grass. Or rather than a cloud of red dots comi
Re:why not run it on the fastest PC ? (Score:2)
what OS/X does not have is a significant share of the pc gaming market or a compatible MacBox console platform to support the de
Re:Who the fuck cares (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Combine Linux with game on CD (Score:2)
Might not be too resource efficient though.
Re:Combine Linux with game on CD (Score:2)
Anyhow, I think it's a good idea... perhaps the game could come with a USB drive to save game data (and also act as a "dongle").
On the other hand, I probably wouldn't want to buy a game like that... 20 years ago I didn't mind, but now we multi-task. You know, iconify the game, check email, find a walkthrough on the web, go back to the game...
Three Short Plays about Boot CDs (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, here's an example of something you CAN'T do with a boot disk game:
Bob: "Hey, Joe, let's play some Return to Castle Wolfenstein."
Joe: "Cool. Wanna do the voicecomm?"
Bob: "Sure. Let's use Roger Wilco, my IP's 127.0.0.1"
Joe: "Rock, see you there."
(Or whatever those wacky kids are using these days for voicecomm in games.)
Here's another little skit:
Joe: "I just bought a new ATIVidia SuperCard that has 20 times the performance of older cards!"
Bob: "Awesome! Boot up 'Super Linux Brothers' and let's see how it runs!"
Joe inserts Linux CD that boots into game.
Joe: "Screen's just black."
Bob: "Shit, must be missing the driver..."
Joe: "How the hell do you put a driver on a already-burnt CD?!? This game sucks!"
And here's a third:
Joe: "Here, try my copy of 'Super Linux Brothers.'"
Bob: "Ok."
Bob runs game.
Bob: "These controls are really awkward."
Joe: "I know, it took me like three hours to get controls I liked... just use my control set."
Bob: "Where is it?"
Joe: "Shit, it's saved on my HD at home! I forgot to bring it! Goddamned."
I hope I've demonstrated that having a boot disk for a game is a BAD idea, and why nobody will buy a game distributed that way. There's a reason we haven't done that since the 80s, you know.
Re:Anyone know... (Score:2)
Re:Reading OpenGL tutorials is such a harsh remind (Score:5, Funny)
APIs are indeed most of the work. Learning a language completely is simple (unless it's perl, and no, that's not a flamebait), but it's the APIs that make you an effective coder. When I first started web-coding, I knew next to nothing. It took me a while to find my way around things in perl (the Camel book helped). I'm pretty sure if tomorrow I need to do a Java Enterprise project, I'll be messing about for a couple of weeks in finding my way. Unfortunatly this is a fact that many managers seem to forget.
When I first read the openGL API I wanted to run to the bookstore and get lots of books on the subject.
When I thought about it for a while, I wanted to run to the bookstore and get lots of math books teaching me the skills I need to do things.
When I got a girlfriend, I gave up on the "running to the bookstore for knowledge" and started thinking about other things.
When said girlfriend and I broke up, I was preparing for endterms.
When I got a job, I thought "I'll have time in the evenings to learn new stuff".
When I was working for 3 months I discovered that I really didn't want to code at home anymore.
When they fired me (yesterday) I thought "I wish I'd spent some time learning openGL."
Re:Reading OpenGL tutorials is such a harsh remind (Score:3, Informative)
If you want Java bindings for OpenGL, there's two major projects.
JOGL [java.net], which is the basis for the formal bindings in JSR 231.
LWJGL [lwjgl.org] which is a community driven project and somewhat akin to DirectX in that it also merges audio and input device APIs as well.
If