Is there any GL driver out there supporting EXT_render_target ? Seems my Catalyst 4.11 doesn’t support this extension. Anything known about 4.12 ? What about ForceWare ?
Acually that extension is not out by now as far as I know. It’s a draft only. However, there was information about it being near to the finalization stage
It seems that the new name for this extension is EXT_framebuffer_object
<insert moan about waiting for the final spec and for the vendors to make it happen>
lol, this topic jumps out from nowhere every two weeks
No wonder. It’s one of the features many people (including me) are waiting for. And I guess this jumping is good, because it acts as a reminder for those in the ARB/ATI/NVIDIA. Unless, of course, they don’t browse this forum, but that would be… well strange.
Sorry for the post, but I am a human and when I saw the topic I just couldn’t resist.
Originally posted by Lurker_pas:
Sorry for the post, but I am a human and when I saw the topic I just couldn’t resist.
Me neither…
Me neither, except in the meantime I’ve changed to C# and managed DirectX 
. I wanted to learn both eventually anyway, and the continued stony silence by the ARB and my growing frustration were the catalyst. Even if the spec does get released before Christmas, it’ll depend on the vendors whether we get driver support or not. I’m guessing it’s still months off before we get decent support. It’s a shame. I love OpenGL and don’t really like DirectX at all.
and the continued stony silence by the ARB
not factually correct, insiders have posted a few times here
not factually correct, insiders have posted a few times here
Not recently. We might have had an ARB meeting in the last few days (I don’t know what the schedule was), but nothing has been said about it.
I’m slowly coming towards the belief that the ARB is abandoning OpenGL. Like the companies involved just don’t care about it anymore. I mean, how hard is it to write up meeting notes? That’s certainly not a 6-month job. And if they can’t cover little tasks like that, how can they cover the big ones?
Do we need to create a new graphics standard to circumvent the ARB?
What are they waiting for? Christmas?
sorry, couldn’t resist!
side note : Duke Nukem Forever might be released before we finally get the framebuffer_object spec 
Originally posted by zed:
insiders have posted a few times here
IIRC the last time was by Barthold in the “ARB_super_buffer extension” thread. In that thread he and idr implied the spec would be out soon. In fact, idr implied it might be out after the last ARB meeting, 3mths ago. Barthold said “there will be a specification soon” just over 2mths ago. Since then, nothing. Silence. What’s “soon” mean? The frustrating part (as I’ve mentioned in other threads) is that NVIDIA has the extension string and function stubs in most Forceware 65 drivers I’ve used. Obviously there’s enough of a spec out there somewhere for them to be bothered doing that. And despite the obvious problems with deriving a common spec, indications are that EXT_fbo is pretty much == EXT_render_target apart from some minor differences. Therefore I don’t understand why this is taking so long.
a crazy flamebait thought:
if the ARB is not moving as quickly as people would like, why don’t we petition to have the vendors release their GL drivers as open source? (lol…)
but seriously, wouldn’t you love to hack the driver to implement functionality you know the hardware can do but the ARB is moving too slow on adopting a spec for?
we all know software often aint done on time, eg take a game posted here recently halflife2, everyone gets all keyed up for a release + then its delayed, creating a lot of backlash, dates are dangerous. sure ild like to see render to texture, but until then im happy to use the backbuffer + copytexsubimage2d( 3billionpix/sec not exactly slow on my card) theres also pbuffers. ie workarounds do exist now, sure they mightnt be optimal but they are more than adaquit/adequite. reminds me of a story, about 15 years ago i went into a shop in auckland, “whatcha got in the way of plugins to make me sound like hendrix” (i was a crap guitarist at the time), sales assistant ‘well u need to buy the lot son’. which of course was bollux, hendrixs sound was all in his hands, where was i going with this, oh yeah, i wanna see once rendertotexture’s out to see a lot of demos/apps out within the week, cause everyones waiting on it right?. 
Originally posted by zed:
we all know software often aint done on time
But it’s not software, it’s a spec. And not just any spec, but one that’s very similar to EXT_render_target , which was dated 2004/04/16. Probably similar to parts of superbuffers too, although I’m not as familiar with any superbuffers prelim specs (I’ve read some of the pdfs available). Also, are you a NVIDIA reg dev? Search the third newest document on their reg site for “framebuffer_object”.
Another thing I find disconcerting - I often try out leaked drivers. The fbo strings have been missing from two recent ones - 70.90 and 71.20 - whereas they were present in pretty much all other 65 series drivers. I know that the driver numbers aren’t supposed to increase contiguously, which is why the missing string in 70.90 didn’t concern me, but now two recent drivers? Why was fbo in the other 65 drivers but not these (more recent?) ones? Why do I get worked up about this? Who knows?
But it’s not software, it’s a spec. And not just any spec, but one that’s very similar to EXT_render_target
i was gonna post about this in my original post knowing someone would bring it up,
so what goods the spec gonna do, from posts here, some ppl already know what the spec is gonna be (cause its so simple, IIRC someone mentioned 1/2 hour work, yadda yadda) so why do u need the spec? hows knowing the spec gonna alter your engine?
Why was fbo in the other 65 drivers but not these (more recent?) ones?
those cockteasers!
Well, the original question was:
Originally posted by NetSurfer:
Is there any GL driver out there supporting EXT_render_target ?
not “is there a spec”. Unfortunately we need a spec before vendors release driver support, even though it may be just a matter of a registry key.