Is still OpnGL the industry standard after version 2.1?
What game development companies are adopting GL?
What CAD companies are switching to D3D, or supporting both GL and D3D?
Who is the real enemy of GL and who is trying to kill it?
Is not GL design still targetting 10 year old CARDS?
1- If programmer want to create cross platform program openGL is the only choice.
You can check the list of programs the use openGL here
http://www.opengl.org/products/
2- Blizzard, ID software and all the mobile game developers.
3- Autodesk is the main directX fan. 3DStudio Max run faster on DX, but also support openGL. Maya and other Autodesk product use openGL.
4- Micro$oft?
5- No, 10 year old card don't support openGL 2.x and only geForce 8 / ATI 21xx support openGL 3.x. The power of openGL is the extension mechanism, if a 1946 video card have a support for geometry shaders they can use it, I don't see any other graphic library that allow this.
~ ~ I tell you, realtime 3D is made of blood, sweat and screams! ~ ~
1) The use of 'industry standard' could be considered misleading; in the main stream game development OpenGL is hardly used at all (even Blizzard with WoW ship on windows with a D3D renderer as default).
2) Blizzard but they default to D3D on windows and HAVE to use OpenGL else where. iD, but thats more legacy than anything else. Mobile platforms are OpenGL|ES, this is NOT OpenGL; the two APIs are significantly different.
3) I'll skip
4) Firstly saying "Micro$oft" makes you look a /. troll Rosario; it's a term used by idiots and people who can't deal with the idea that a company might want to make money. The real enemy of OpenGL is, imo, the ARB who have screwed the pooch so many times I've lost count and, to a lesser extent, ATI/AMD whos OpenGL implimentation still isn't up to par (and I say this as an ATI card user). MS on the other hand have no input into OpenGL and since they left the ARB have been happy to ignore it while D3D leaves it in the dust.. so, yeah, I guess if having a better API makes them an 'enemy' then yeah, MS are an enemy of OpenGL by producing a better product.
5) Right now, I've no ideas WHAT OpenGL is targetting. By my estimate in the wild, right now, you have a choice of;
- 2.1 + extensions
- 2.1 + ext + DSA
- 3.0 + ext
- 3.0 in forward compatible mode
- 3.1 + ext
- 3.1 + ext + ext which reenables all the deprecated functions (oh, how this made me laugh)
and I'm sure DSA mixes up in the 3.x line of things as well.
Does OpenGL have a future?
Yes, if only because outside of Windows there really is no alternative... right now however, imo, it's an ungainly mess of functionality and confusion; but hey, that's what the ARB seem to do best.
Every platform MUST provide their own OpenGL SDK, which works on top of a unified model driver which makes it easier for developer to focus on core driver rather than implementation. Khronos could have done this and have provided at least Linux and Apple their own installable SDKs. The GL context/windowing interface MUST be unified across all platforms, and extensible too.
Deprecated features should not be something to worry about, and it must be maintained by the SDK provider, not the core driver implementer (IHVs).
I agree that MS is not the real enemy, it's the ppl who are responsible for spec. I would not blame AMD at all, it has good support for GL, even it's not up to date with spec. Maybe because they realized already that the spec itself does not worth much attention at the moment...
Ok.. I'll remove my troll hat I'll try to make a more serious answer. :P
2) If he add the magic word "under windows" the only answer is "No under windows nobody that don't want get crazy with all the different driver behavior use DirectX". Blizzard from what I know want to extend is business in Mac world, so it's interested in openGL. Carmack (ID) was a great fan of openGL but recently it seem to loose interest. Also Mac is not widely used and not every company can make the effort to make an engine that run both in directX and openGL.
Oh.. BTW playstation 3 game also use a custom version of openGL(|ES).
4) I say Micro$oft (with the "$" and the "?") because I wasn't very sure (here the "?") of the answer because is a complex argument and we can discuss a lot of who is the worst antagonist of oGL.
I think Ms is in the top of my list, in the past they have tried in every way to stop people from developing in openGL under his platform. The main MS idea was to support openGL only in the NT platform and leave directX (or WinG) for entertainment.
It have worked well (that's why I used the "$").
Also a lot of ARB member as you say don't make openGL life easy. But maybe a problem of openGL is that want to run on every platform ("from games to virtual reality, mobile phones to supercomputers" the logo say) and it's difficult to make everybody happy.
Maybe we can add Creative. Creative bought 3DLabs, and remove every found on the developing of openGL.
But you can also add game industry in the list of the enemy. They always preferred Dx even when it was not so matured as today. Or Macintosh, because they don't sell enough computer.. or the people cause they don't buy enough Mac.. or the whole world because it's unfair. Oh damn.. you are right, I'm an idiot. :P
~ ~ I tell you, realtime 3D is made of blood, sweat and screams! ~ ~
No, the PS3 uses PSGL which is their own library, there is a GL|ES lib on the PS3 but, aside from iD using it for some things, no body really uses it beyond maybe prototyping simply because it is too slow. Everyone uses an engine and engines go to the metal. (On the 360 is is of course DX and the Wii has it's own library for doing things; I've had the... pleasure? of developing on the PS3 and the 360 and I'm now moving to the Wii)
Also, what you are talking about with OpenGL is history... practically pre-history in technology terms. OpenGL made it onto Win95 (iirc, maybe 98 so far back my memory is fuzzy) and this was before hardware acceleration. The reason for this probably made a degree of sense; OpenGL was targeted initally at workstations and NT was their workstation OS, the demand however caused it to happen otherwise.
Fair enough. Then would there be any chance to have lightweight DirectX version for handhelds and mobile phones?
There is a DX mobile in existance, however MS haven't really pushed it all that hard/at all and there is little support for it.
You won't get any arguement out of me that, in the mobile space, GL|ES is king of the 3D. Maybe MS aren't bothered about that market right now, or maybe they just don't have a good responce, who knows and I wouldn't like to try to predict the future; they could pull a 360 on us or they could pull a Zune.. or indeed neither.
If anything happens then I would suspect WinMobile 7 will be the turning point but that won't be until next year iirc and might still be targeted mostly at 'office' types who don't need 3D acceleration on their phones (honestly, it's not something I've missed; my features tend to be touch screen + hardware QWERTY keyboard)
Maybe it needs something like this:
glBeginEffect(effect_ref)
glBeginTechnique(0)
for(i = 0; i < technique[0].numPass; i++)
glBeginPass(i)
...drawing commands
glEndPass();
glEndTechnique();
glEndEffect();
Get rid of explicit state management
Get rid of binding mechanism
Everything has to be doe through the effect mechanism
I'll never understand the concept of playing a game on a phone.
Anyways, even with an effect system state has to be set explicitly at some point - if not by you then by someone else. Most seem to prefer to have control over this stuff themselves anyway.
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