The ARB announced OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 today

[tsuraan]

You guys that are complaining a lot (like myself), just take an afternoon and play with the DX10 SDK examples. They're pretty good, and it does feel good to be a part of the "mainstream" or whatever you want to call it.

I'm curious, is there a way to view the DX SDKs (articles, tutorials, examples) online, without installing the DX10 SDK and Visual Studio? I've been curious for a while on what makes D3D9 (and 10) so much cleaner and nicer to use then OpenGL, but even the DX documentation seems to be packaged in a windows only installer, from what I've been able to find.

[Korval]

Obviously, GL3 made the job for at least one IHV easy.

Um, so what? And that's precisely one, not "at least one."

Until now they could. Now they *must*. That's exactly one of the things GL3 has changed.

No, they *must* not. The only "must" they have in their future is Starcraft II. Which would have been coming with or without GL 3.0. So either way, ATi would have to support something more.

And so when GL 3.1 comes around, what kind of support can we expect from ATi? Exactly and only what it takes to support existing games. Anything more than that, and you get nothing from them. So if Blizzard were to decide not to do anything for GL 3.1 support in SC2, ATi will also not support GL 3.1.

[obirsoy]

You can start reading the tutorials here, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb172485.aspx . But you have to download the SDK if you want to get the source code.
On my Win XP, I was able to extract "DXSDK_Jun08.exe" using 7z's file manager without installing the SDK. You might be able to the same, whatever your operating system is.

[knackered]

I've been curious for a while on what makes D3D9 (and 10) so much cleaner and nicer to use then OpenGL

it's not nicer, but it is cleaner and the drivers are solid for it. Personally I think d3d10 is pig ugly to use, but there's exactly one way to go about each task - which makes it better than opengl for both the developer and the driver writers (obviously...there's virtually no bugs in any implementations, unlike this 10 tonne charm bracelet we're all dragging around with us).

[tsuraan]

You can start reading the tutorials here, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb172485.aspx . But you have to download the SDK if you want to get the source code.
On my Win XP, I was able to extract "DXSDK_Jun08.exe" using 7z's file manager without installing the SDK. You might be able to the same, whatever your operating system is.

Wow, there are a crap-ton of files in the directx_aug2008_redist.exe file. I'll be up all night sorting through this stuff, but I haven't had any luck actually finding anything that's not a dll, inf, or xml file. Maybe the xml files are html... Anyhow, for any other *nix users out there, the p7zip package has a 7z program that can be used to extract MS CAB files (and the exe itself).

[Gauss]

No, they *must* not. The only "must" they have in their future is Starcraft II. Which would have been coming with or without GL 3.0. So either way, ATi would have to support something more.

And so when GL 3.1 comes around, what kind of support can we expect from ATi? Exactly and only what it takes to support existing games. Anything more than that, and you get nothing from them. So if Blizzard were to decide not to do anything for GL 3.1 support in SC2, ATi will also not support GL 3.1.

This might be true for the Gamer cards, but for their workstation brand i am pretty sure they always have to support the latest OpenGL core implementation because of marketing reasons. Of course this does not guaranty that this implementation will be error free or performant, but at least it will guaranty that an implementation will be part of the driver so this feature can be checked "is supported" for their sales persons.

[pudman]

The only "must" they have in their future is Starcraft II.

When did Blizzard say SC2 would be GL3.0? I would think that it would be too risky to develop for an API that won't even have any official drivers out from anyone for months, much less drivers from all major players.

[Gauss]

I only saw the one that emphasized the *new* stuff! There's a document with the *deprecated* stuff in another color? Where?

I was referring to the document that was pointed out by Barthold.
Your are right, it is emphasizing the new stuff and not the old stuff, so there isn't even a version around that i am aware of where the deprecated functionality is color coded. Sorry if i was not precise here ...

[Timothy Farrar]

GL3 exposes DX10 features (in particular on XP!). That's good, isn't it?

No, it is not. OpenGL has had that for years through extensions. That an extension is promoted to core is functionally meaningless; the functionality was already provided.

I'd suggest re-reading the GL3 spec and prior extensions. GL3 does add some very important updates to DX10 (and some pre-DX10) functionality. For example, FBO support for binding framebuffers of different formats and bit depths. Or GL_ARB_instanced_arrays for frequency stream divider functionality. Or MapBufferRange() which was previously Mac only. Etc.

[Korval]

When did Blizzard say SC2 would be GL3.0?

When ATi announced GL 3.0 support.

I would think that it would be too risky to develop for an API that won't even have any official drivers out from anyone for months, much less drivers from all major players.

1: There are only two major players, and one of them (ATi) released a press release about a partnership with Blizzard to make sure Blizzard games run well on ATi hardware.

2: SC2 is not coming out this year. If it were, it'd be in beta by now.

3: "Supporting" GL 3.0 requires very little actual effort from ISVs. It's mostly just looking for extensions, and using ARB_create_context if it is available.

4: It's Blizzard. They can require that IHVs have GL 3.0 drivers by telling them that this is what they will be shipping SC2 with.

For example, FBO support for binding framebuffers of different formats and bit depths. Or GL_ARB_instanced_arrays for frequency stream divider functionality. Or MapBufferRange() which was previously Mac only. Etc.

1: That should have been in FBO since day 1 (or at least not making it an incompleteness, so implementations could do it themselves). It was literally the first thing people said after reading the EXT_FBO spec. So the ARB was just being stupid then.

2: Not in GL 3.0. It's an extension.

3: That kind of mapping was supposed to be in Longs Peak. There was an entire article devoted to it in one of the newsletters. So I'm certainly not going to praise the ARB for doing what they said they were going to, especially since they failed to do virtually everything else about LP that they said they were going to.