this is surely not an advanced OpenGL topic, but I would like to ask you, the participators in the advanced forum, the following:
How many time do you spend for your OpenGL work, and why do you do it? Professional or just hobby? And if hobby, how many time do you spend on it? And what do you think about the efficieny of the time spent for OpenGL?
My “standard” job is writing market research software in delphi/java, which is quite straightforward and you get quite good results in not too much time spent. In comparison to that, my experience is that OpenGL programming is much more time consuming, more maths, more research work, searching in the internet, reading and posting here etc., you need far more time to achieve decent results. which is quite bad as it is not what I get paid for most of the time, but without any doubt is way more fun than market research software.
It’s a hobby for me, the rest of my time being taken up by classes. My time spent on OpenGL programming doesn’t add up to much, most of the time, but there’ll be times when I go on a blitz of spending every minute of spare time for a week or two just working on my engine. After that I’m quite burnt out, though, and really start slacking off, for a while.
It’s mainly a hobby for me too and the time spent on it greatly depends on the time available, which recently hasn’t been much. For work I currently make VRML models, altough in the next project we’ll need a custom engine, so I get to to do some graphics programming and even get payed for it.
The time spent on opengl projects is usually quite rewarding, and the experience comes to good use even when working in the arts section. It was also my key to getting nice work with zero previous work experience, so I’d call it time well spent.
openGL coding is a part my job.
but imho, the really funny things are the things that can be displayed using OpenGL not OpenGL itself (physics simulations for ie. waterwaves or animation systems, pathfinding & AI…)
so let’s say i spend 25% of my time with OpenGL coding/research (most of this time is spent for research - not the actual coding) and i spend the other time writing tools, SFX, animation systems and other game-related stuff.
Coding is just a hobby for me too. I do hope to do it for a living once I’m done with university etc. but I doubt I’ll get the chance to do anything serious. And like Adrian said coding doesn’t take up much of my time, as much as research and pondering about how to implement this and that.
(physics simulations for ie. waterwaves or animation systems, pathfinding & AI…)