Re: The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 tod
This is a tricky thing. If you are officially acknowledged as a representative of your company or the Khronos OpenGL ARB WG more people want to be involved in what you say and how you say it.
Keeping the forums informal is the best way to keep information flowing and to get an idea of what individuals really think. In the end, I'd rather hear from the individual than get the party line from Khronos or a member company.
To that end, I would hope that Khronos, AMD, NVIDIA, Apple, etc would encourage open discussions. They don't commit anybody to any course, but they would allow developers to follow the logic of the current directions and to be more involved in the process by way of voicing concerns or making suggestions.
We still need regular official information dumps though - via newsletters and (even more desirable) meeting minutes that don't have all the interesting bits redacted.
Re: The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 tod
Quote:
Originally Posted by cass
To that end, I would hope that Khronos, AMD, NVIDIA, Apple, etc would encourage open discussions.
That's my wish, too. And I'm aware of the implications of this suggestion. But the point is, that I really want to speak to officials. It's fine to have informal discussions and I don't see why officials wouldn't be allowed to state their personal opinions.
To be honest, I'm currently checking if staying with OpenGL is a wise descision. From a technical point of view there's little concern. Despite some minor issues, GL3 looks good to me. It has introduced a feature that can bring a new level of "vitality" to the API: the deprecation model. But this feature heavily relies on discussion. See above, Rob and Michael are asking for feedback. That's good, but it looks like their efforts are based on personal commitment. Bringing the conversation to a more official level would possibly force some other ARB members to openly express their intentions. Which then would lead to some open discussion. Maybe. Wishful thinking?
CatDog
Re: The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 tod
Quote:
Originally Posted by modus
I can't imagine that there would be significant perf advantages to having more than 1 FBO on current hardware, not having tested.
Could having multiple FBOs could possibly provide a performance advantage if the FBO objects were left static after creation? Presumably the driver could have a compiled copy of the command buffer commands required to setup the FBO render state for future draw calls (effectively the point of immutable objects). Should also reduce the amount of error checking. Also if the hardware has multiple sets of hardware frame buffer states, using multiple FBOs might allow the driver to better match logical FBOs to those hardware states?
Re: The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 tod
Probably wishful thinking.
If you really want to be heard you are encouraged to join Khronos - even at the non-voting level you may participate in the debate and may influence the outcome. We really could use more ISV participation - there are a few now but increasing that number would increase the likelihood of a "representative sample".
As for tagging myself as an ARB representative - I think it would discourage me from posting, as I'm not authorized to speak on behalf of the group. Most people here know who I am, and I try to make clear from context when I am stating ARB policy and when I am stating personal opinion. I walk a fine line.
Re: The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 tod
Quote:
Originally Posted by Timothy Farrar
Could having multiple FBOs could possibly provide a performance advantage if the FBO objects were left static after creation? Presumably the driver could have a compiled copy of the command buffer commands required to setup the FBO render state for future draw calls (effectively the point of immutable objects). Should also reduce the amount of error checking. Also if the hardware has multiple sets of hardware frame buffer states, using multiple FBOs might allow the driver to better match logical FBOs to those hardware states?
In theory, keeping the FBO static can help. Unfortunately textures are mutable, so the implementation may need to check if any attached objects are dirty even if the container (FBO) itself is not. Worse, the spec is unclear when a change to e.g. a texture format becomes visible to a consumer of this object (think shared objects and async changes in another thread). This is why I continue to push for immutability - it eliminates this entire class of problems.
All else being equal, you're still better off leaving the FBO state static after setup.
Re: The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 tod
Since quite a few ARB members (e.g Rob, Michael or Cass) are reading and asking for input, why not centralizing this? Having a thread where both ARB people can ask questions (such as do you really want to have wide lines in GL3.x?), as well as developers (Gimme multi sampled textures already)
This thread would be updated maybe once a month or so by ARB members posting what the general impression of the ARB was with respect to feature this or rant that.
This way, it is not really formal such as meeting notes or newsletters, but would still allow some information flow in both directions.
However it would be important that this thread gets updated regularly and maintained properly, e.g. by creating a new one every month/quarter/whenever something happened.
Currently, people are asking questions and get answers spread all over the place.
A good start would be the list of possibly deprecated list of features gone in the next revision (Rob mentioned something like that in another thread). So posting this list, even if it is just for discussion, without any guarantees whatsoever would feel the pack at ease and give the ARB some input.
Re: The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 tod
Quote:
Having a thread where both ARB people can ask questions (such as do you really want to have wide lines in GL3.x?), as well as developers (Gimme multi sampled textures already)
The thing is, we have an entire forum dedicated to the possibility of that. If the ARB wanted to solicit advice from users, they could just create a thread in the "Suggestions for the next release of OpenGL" forum, and we'll respond.
We don't need a special thread for it. Besides, having everything in one thread is confusing.
Re: The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 tod
Quote:
Originally Posted by Korval
The thing is, we have an entire forum dedicated to the possibility of that.
That's true.
Michael, it's somewhat confusing me, that ARB members don't want to appear as ARB members in their own forum. I can't suppress the feeling, that you're still far from consensus. Well, I'd better shut up, because obviously I don't have a clue what's going on behind the scenes.
CatDog
Re: The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 tod
Whats wrong with what I suggested earlier,
once a month someone on the ARB eg Rob Barris, Michael Gold or whoever starts a topic here titled 'October 2008' and just summarizes whats happened over the last month.
Ok I can see arguments against this as its not the ARB sanctioned gospel, but perhaps the post can start with a disclaimer stating this.
Re: The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 tod
To ARB members, the prospect of ongoing obligations in community service is probably not an appealing one. That's just more work for them in the spotlight of public scrutiny (put yourself in their shoes). Leaving things on an opt-in basis seems fair to me.
I'd sure like to see the newsletter press reopened.