I’ve only been programming in opengl for about 5 months now but I do understand that you guys are really trying to attract newbies like me away from easy directx eyecandy.
this is probibly big fat flame bait but this should at least be a free extention.
anywase. the first roadblock I encountered when bulding my first engine was building a complete mesh data-structure.
in my opinion this is exactly the thing opengl needs to entice beginers and get them programming visually pleasing things right off the bat. of course building up your own mesh should still be an option (although seemingly unnessesary).
what it should have:
*capable of importing the most popular mesh formats.
*easily accesable quadrics and 3d primitives
*each vertex should store linked lists to their polygons, textures (including real dynamic reflections as well as env maps), normal maps, and material properties.
*it should automatically optimize it in vertex arrays
*quadrics and other approximated surfaces’ should be dynamically rendered depending on priority
*easy access and modification of all components
*heirarchical structuring
*each object should have a linked list of shadows (one per light), maby computed using the perpsective shear warp algorithm by simply passing it a light’s location/properties?
this ended up sounding like a full graphical rendering api for ogl2.0 but if somthing similar was out there and it was part of opengl (or a free open extension), newbs like me would be able to bypass building up the standard features which users expect out of 2.0.
what kind of support will linux have anywase?
are you working with the GLUT dudes?
if gl2.0 ported to linux with no modifications you’d gain an imesuarable advantage over dx. I believe hardware acceleration and gl portability are 2 of the biggest things holding linux back on peoples home computers.
anywase I think if gl2.0 had even a few of these extentions it would jump past the head start that cG and dx already have.
this is just my perspective on how you could whip dx and cg without using cookie cutter eye candy like they do. if it’s improbible then too bad but I think it’s value would be worth the effort.