OpenGL 4.0 Spec Released 166
tbcpp writes "The Khronos Group has announced the release of the OpenGL 4.0 specification. Among the new features: two new shader stages that enable the GPU to offload geometry tessellation from the CPU; per-sample fragment shaders and programmable fragment shader input positions; drawing of data generated by OpenGL, or external APIs such as OpenCL, without CPU intervention; shader subroutines for significantly increased programming flexibility; 64-bit, double-precision, floating-point shader operations and inputs/outputs for increased rendering accuracy and quality. Khronos has also released an OpenGL 3.3 specification, together with a set of ARB extensions, to enable as much OpenGL 4.0 functionality as possible on previous-generation GPU hardware."
Patent problems still there? (Score:5, Interesting)
Any chance the patent problems of OpenGL 3 [swpat.org] have been fixed?
Re:Patent problems still there? (Score:1, Interesting)
what about the fact that software patents are not valid in EU? Cant Khronos just release the spec in EU and screw US?
Re:DOA for anything but pro gear (Score:5, Interesting)
DirectX won, because it does sound and HID input handling, and because its on every PC sold to every mouthbreathing, Best Buy shopping, banana eating customer.
OpenGL is used on PS3, linux and OS X. It is also used on any game in windows that is cross platform compatible where they did not bother implementing a DirectX engine. Every platform now has HID handling and you can use OpenAL if you want to have the same sound effects engine on windows, OS X and possibly linux.
Now that Valve is porting Steam and related games to OS X and consequently OpenGL, expect to see more activity surrounding OpenGL.
Re:DOA for anything but pro gear (Score:1, Interesting)
Heh, actually I wrote 80% of Direct3D for PS3 when I was porting a game across. It only took a couple of weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if others have done the same ... having the same API on all three major platforms is a boon.
Of course, my employer then decided to add an abstraction layer on top of that ... even though the abstraction layer was the same on all platforms ... go figure.
Re:DOA for anything but pro gear (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean other than the fact that what the PS3 and Wii run aren't really OpenGL but proprietary derivatives of OpenGL ES?
Re:Patent problems still there? (Score:1, Interesting)
Surely they could release the full spec in EU and the one without patent in US. Why cripple the whole world when it's just the US that cripples itself?
It should be enough for Khronos (not all of its participants) to move to EU and let the EU gov to do the fight like Airbus vs EADS (meaning lasting ages and without resolution).
Re:So.. (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenGL tutorial [lmgtfy.com]
Re:OpenGL on par with Direct3D11 (Score:3, Interesting)
Only a loser would make his goal to get on par with the competition. Because at the time when he would reach that goal, the competition would already have moved on.
I want them to put DirectX to shame! New! Revolutionary! Impressive! Putting MS in the position to catch up!
Because when MS is in that position, they are known to fuck up. (They make the same error of not trying to surpass the competition.) ^^
Design a spec, that is every graphics card designer’s, every game developer’s and every player’s wet dream!
It’s like car racing: If you concentrate on the car in front of you, you will fall back. If you stop caring for him, and concentrate on your own goals and the track in front of you, you’ll suddenly find yourself left of him, passing by. :)
(The same is true for concentrating on cars following you.)
change to stateless API abandoned? (Score:3, Interesting)
Having the API retain state is a fundamentally bad idea. As one overview [wpi.edu] points out, "Nearly all of OpenGL state may be queried". (emphasis added)
It would be much better if there were OpenGL context objects that encapsulated the state, and were explicitly passed into API calls. I was completely dumbfounded when I first looked at API and saw that it didn't work that way.
Re:That's not was the Mesa devs say (Score:3, Interesting)
But gallium and the open source drivers aren't really ready for prime time, they're theoretical. I'm talking about practicalities. Right now, the open source drivers only exist to keep X running long enough to get the proprietary drivers installed.
[emphasis mine]
Again, except for the majority of users! The default mesa drivers let you run Quake 3, composite your desktop, and do whatever 90% of desktop users want. It's only the "I want to play the latest game with max fps" and the "I'm rendering 100 million vertexes / frame in CAD" people that need to change to a binary driver.
No one is going to need S3TC compressed texture support for things like compiz anyway.
(FYI, the latest mesa actually supports S3TC this in the same way MP3 is. Too bad we have to wait till 2017 for patent expiry.)