OpenGL 2.0 Released

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."

Whither directx?

[drsmack1]

Now that there are changes to the way that directx is being implemented; does this open the door for a greater acceptance of opengl for games? It is important for opengl to be used as it is much more likely that a game will be ported to Linux if it is used.

Direct 3D

[iMaple]

Lets hope that this will encourage more developers to switch to OpenGL. Yeah, I know the argument abt Direct3D being better (and I agree with it) but the new ver of OpenGL might just be good enough and arent the game developers always on the lookout for ways to get the massive linux gamers market

Re:Versus DX successor

[kusanagi374]

Can OpenGL ever match DX in popularity among developers?

One word: portability

Thank tha lor' !!!

[quantax]

All I know is that this has been a long time in the coming and is great news, especially as MS has just announced the discontinuement of DX past the current version. Finally some competition to DX in modern games, however I really hope this will help people such as myself who do 3D work in Maya and such. Maya has just included a new feature that lets the viewports do a realtime high-quality openGL render as you work on your model/scene, so this can only make that faster and better (though as of right now, realistically speaking it isnt usable nor stable for actual work). Now for ATI to include serious openGL support for its cards & drivers...

tutorials?

[FuzzieNorn]

None of the tutorials seem to have anything specific to OpenGL 2.0; they seem to just be 'teaching' basic OpenGL stuff from previous standards.

Re:Versus DX successor

[FuzzieNorn]

Game developers? Probably not any time soon. Developers of visualisation applications and the such? No-one seriously uses Direct3D for that.

Obviously DirectX has such things as DirectSound which don't really have alternatives under Windows, though.

Re:Versus DX successor

[DrXym]

OpenGL is just a 3D (and 2D) programming API. DirectX is 3D & 2D, screen management, sound, controllers, music, networking - the lot.

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 platforms that games come out first. Get the games companies to program to this portable layer and it increases the chances that the port to Linux will appear some time after.

OGL 2 Compliant cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia and ATi will just 'upgrade' the driver support to GL 2.0 like theyve been doing incrementally. My GF3/GF FX 5200 supports GL 1.5 in the drivers now. It didn't on launch. Same applies to my Radeons.

Re:Versus DX successor

[spectral]

While I love OpenGL far more than DX, your argument would be better served by not listing games that are all from the same company. (or at least, using engines from the same company)

Re:Go, OpenGL ARB!

[be-fan]

That's not even close to being a good comparison. Cg is a vendor-proprietory language not a cross-vendor language. You don't see Cg for ATI cards, no do you? DirectX is a platform-specific API, not a cross-platform API. On top of that, it's optimized for gaming, not professional applications. In any case, GLSL came out last year, so at worst, you can say that OpenGL was a year behind Direct3D in getting a high-level shading language.

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:Does this work with older cards?

[dave420]

No, shizzle is slang. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean the parent was a "fucking dumbass".

You're more likely to be considered a dumbass for pointing that out.

peace.

This is good

[Rubberpants.net]

IMHO OpenGL is a lot easier and more straightforward to program in.

Re:Versus DX successor

[LearnToSpell]

I'd generally agree with
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:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, MS is part of the OpenGL ARB that define the standard for OpenGL. And OpenGL is a lot older that DX: OGL dates back 1980's and IRIS 3D by Silicon Graphics.

And the note about objects.. There aren't any "objects" in either really, they're just a set of vertices that make polygons - that's it. How you handle those vertices is entirely different story.

For OGL I find it easier to make high-level libs that hide the complexities of actual vertex-level routines. DX is a bit more general than OGL but not as easily used and added to applications.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[FullMetalAlchemist]

Still, as a former OpenGL developer I must say that while OpenGL is nice it is far from perfect.
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:more tutorials?

[The Real Nem]

NeHe [gamedev.net] is one of the best for tutorials. GameDev [gamedev.net] and FlipCode [flipcode.com] are also good general sites.

Massive linux gamers market?

[alexborges]

Are you kidding?

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:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Hardware tends not to be very object oriented and C++ can quite happily call C.

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:Thank tha lor' !!!

[rd_syringe]

Microsoft never announced the "discontinuement of DX past the current version." DirectNext, as it is being called, is merged with the Avalon display technologies that will be the foundation for Longhorn (and an add-on package for Windows XP). The DirectX technologies are just existing in a different name and integrated more into the desktop.

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[SilentChris]

"D3D is a proprietary windows programming API owned by Microsoft and designed for games with some incredibly ugly and arduous API semantics"

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?

[rd_syringe]

Are you aware that Carmack was so frustrated with the interfaces of some OpenGL extensions that he almost switched over to Direct3D?

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?

[gfxguy]

I disagree... OpenGL is not supposed to be a high level API, there are other scene libraries that can do all that stuff for you.

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?

[SilentChris]

"Winner technology wise?!! What are you talking about."

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 going to compare "winners", Avalon for Windows Longhorn is likely going to be installed on some 10s of millions (if not over 100 million) machines. If you don't start learning (and liking) DX now, you're going to be left behind.

Reading OpenGL tutorials is such a harsh reminder

[zaqattack911]

To a web/enterprise programmer like myself (who lately has been using Java), reading opengL tutorials kind of reminds me that no matter how good a programmer, learning an API extensively is most of the work.

Fuck I'm just totally lost staring at openGL code :)

Anyone else feel inadquate ? :)

Love,
Zaq

P.S. I noticed the tutorial was using .NET C++. Does this mean I can easily use C#? or is that a whole other ballgame? C# does pointers/references "under the hood" like java correct?

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[Performer Guy]

Heh, spoken like someone who has never written a line of graphics code in their life. If you read Carmack's original OpenGL .plan you'll see that he was talking about how much cleaner OpenGL was to call.

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.

OpenGL will win at the end.

[master_p]

3D graphics is something that no sane developer would ever lock himself to a proprietary API like Direct3D. More and more companies use OpenGL for their games, and now with 2.0 even more will ever use it. Using OpenGL has the additional benefit of porting a game to architectures other than Windows. As for other parts of DirectX, there are various combinations that can do the job: OpenGL + SDL, OpenGL + AllegroGL + Allegro, etc.

Re:Versus DX successor

[RAruler]

Holy Shit!
Learn how to use 'you' and spell things correctly, you sack of shit.

Three Short Plays about Boot CDs

[Blakey Rat]

People always post this crap and it's never a good idea.

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:Great!

[The boojum]

Many of these features where present in some form in previous versions of the standard, albiet as extensions. The main change is that these features have been promoted from extensions to the core.

There are perhaps some other fairly minor differences as well, but by and large, I'd expect that for those cards that already supported those extensions, it's just a matter of the vendors updating the drivers.

IIRC, there have also been draft versions of the 2.0 spec for a while, or at least the various major pieces. And seeing as how all of the major hardware vendors have representatives on the ARB, none of the final 2.0 spec should be coming as a suprise to any of them.

Re:Massive linux gamers market?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a Apple market for game companies... Which, Apple uses latest OpenGL.

Those guys , aka apple guys buy software unlike PC ones who pirate...

Re:Why no comparison with D3D?

[be-fan]

Uber-buffers hasn't been thought-through all the way yet. They're trying to make sure that they can design something that lasts, and something that fits the new 3D-accelerated paradigm that seems imminent. I think the point is that they'd rather do it right by implementing uber-buffers properly, than just put render-to-texture in there for the sake of keeping up. This is especially true considering that you can already to render-to-texture using WGL_ARB_pbuffer and GL_SGIX_pbuffer, which are pretty well-supported.

Re:Three Short Plays about Boot CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Mainly you are saying that you can't save and load data.
Like config files, drivers and savegames.

Well, you can save on hd, floppy or usb thing.

I'd say the disadvantage is that it need to boot the whole os each time you wanna play the game, and that probably some hardawre wouldnt be detected.
Also, game makers dont wanna be responsible of updating or compiling drivers.