AMD Launches Partnership With CAD Developer PTC 75
MojoKid writes "AMD is kicking off its weekend with news of a partnership between itself and CAD software developer PTC (Parametric Technology Corporation). PTC owns and develops the Creo software family. One of the programs at the heart of the company, Creo Element/Pro, was originally known as Pro/ENGINEER. It's not at all unusual for software developers in the CAD/CAM space to ally with hardware manufacturers, but it's typically Nvidia, not AMD, making such announcements. AMD claims that the upcoming Creo 2.0 product suite will be able to take advantage of the GPU in unprecedented ways that simultaneously improve performance and visual quality without compromising either. The company calls one such option Order Independent Transparency, or OIT. OIT is a rendering technology that allows for the partial display of wireframes and models inside a solid surface without creating artifacts or imprecise visualizations."
Re:Blatent slashvertisement, really? (Score:2, Insightful)
PTC sells one of the most widely used 3D parametric engineering software on the market and have not partnered with a specific hardware vendor since the early 90s. This is news.
Re:OpenGL (Score:5, Insightful)
CAD IS THE REASON LINUX GAMING DOES NOT EXIST.
Absolute nonsense. CAD is the engine that kept OpenGL going through the years of vicious attacks by Microsoft. Even though Microsoft achieved near absolute victory in the gaming space and played an instrumental role in bringing SGI to its knees, it failed to kill OpenGL entirely, in large part because of the entrenched high end CAD market. While most CAD vendors did port their systems from Unix to Windows in the late 90's, they had little interest in porting to Direct3D. Microsoft was therefore prevented from undermining OpenGL on Windows by their usual techniques such as playing games with the driver APIs. During this period, Linux took over Hollywood's render farms from Unix, and that was another base of support for OpenGL, but it might not have been sufficient if Microsoft had ever succeeded in dislodging the tenacious grip of OpenGL on Windows-based CAD. And then there was John Carmack's famous refusal to switch to Direct3D, but that came close to the brink. Not any more.
In my opinion, the greatest threat to OpenGL ever was the noisy faction of game developers pushing for a complete break with compatibility for OpenGL 3.0 (I doubt very much that John Carmack was ever one of those, despite his well founded criticisms). In retrospect it was proved that OpenGL could achieve parity with Direct3D and more, without breaking compatibility. And now OpenGL basically owns the entire gaming universe except for the steadily shrinking part over which Microsoft is able to exercise monopoly control.
Well, and Linux gaming does exist, just not at the level where we can throw away our consoles quite yet. But that day is coming.
One can fairly ask, why is the Linux game market, with millions of potential customers, not already well served by the likes of EA and Activision? I don't know the answer to that, and I don't think you do either. It very definitely has nothing to do with the influence of CAD vendors on OpenGL. I tend to suspect the hidden hand of Microsoft, however I do not have firm evidence of that. And furthermore I don't care, because it is the very failure of the big publishers to serve the Linux market that has accelerated the rise of a vibrant and rapidly growing community of free and open content developers on Linux. I sincerely hope the big publishers continue to keep their heads up their proverbial colons forever, because it does our community nothing but good in the long run.
Re:OpenGL (Score:2, Insightful)
I suspect that the lack of Linux games is that no one believes those millions of potential customers actually represent millions of customers.
A significant percentage of Linux users are freedom-only. They are out.
A significant percentage are the older unix-admin turned Linux user. Most of them fall outside the gaming generation.
A significant percentage are the experimental programmer types who are unlikely to have a stable system to target.
So for anything too complex for lowest-common hardware (software rendering won't cut it) or that isn't suitable for allowing the user to recompile themselves (anything with online or competitive play) the visible market is... small.
And the open source model doesn't really work for games. A 90% working beta program is potentialy useful. A 90% working beta game is something that crashes at the load screen and won't let you properly complete the first quest.
Re:OpenGL (Score:4, Insightful)
A significant percentage of Linux users are freedom-only. They are out.
What significant portion is that? I seriously doubt you can find anybody who has never run a proprietary binary on their Linux system. RMS perhaps, but that Is about it (and I would not have it any other way). While it is entirely correct for major Linux distributions to completely ignore or quarantine every bit of binary or non-free, nobody ever said that Linux should be a bad place to run binary distributions. Just ask the Opera folks about that.
A significant percentage are the older unix-admin turned Linux user. Most of them fall outside the gaming generation.
Then I wonder where all those Unix admins are when you try to hire them. I do believe you vastly overestimate the proportion of the Linux community that consists of sysadmins. The Linux developer community, yes, but the Linux user community is orders of magnitude bigger than the Linux developer community.
A significant percentage are the experimental programmer types who are unlikely to have a stable system to target.
I wish. Then we would be even further ahead technology wise. But I seriously doubt you will find any facts to support your claim.
Sorry, I'll have to call your post 100% FUD.