Official feedback on OpenGL 3.1 thread

[Executor]

Up... Can somebody explain about anisotropy? Why not in gl3 core?

[dorbie]

* Can you please push HARD for decoupling vertex and fragment shaders, so that you don't need to explicitly link them together and can mix & match as needed, like with ARB_programs or in DX?

The driver cannot know what to optimize out of a vertex & fragment shader until they are linked. The linking & combination of shaders is an area of significant optimization in drivers.

You may be more careful about what you put in your shaders but some developers exploit link time optimization to reduce the shader code they have to write.

[HenriH]

I like the look of OpenGL 3.1 and where it is going to, but still one important thing is missing: the unified object model which was originally planned for.

[Brolingstanz]

I'm guessing they'll sneak the object model in at some point along the line, one piece at a time. Though probably not exactly the form originally planned for LP, it might just be a form we can live with.

I for one have no complaints at this point, besides - 3.1 is a heck of a nice API to use.

[HenriH]

Well yes, 3.1 is obviously an improvement from 3.0 but the API is not yet clean and streamlined as I would hope it to be. At the moment it is using multiple object paradigms -- glGenXXX and glCreateXXX along with many many entry points for setting up parameters. Also confusing is the method of binding objects to the state system before you can do things. The unified object model would clean things up but I guess it would break compatibility too much. It will be interesting to see how things evolve from this point on though.

[Brolingstanz]

Bind-to-edit is a bit of a sore spot, but it is something that can be hidden from view with a clever wrapper (e.g. DSA).

We're closing in on having all of SM4 in 3.2, which, aside from some hand waving and a bit of aesthetic ivory-towering, is what I'm all about these days.