Scriptionary Blog

Here’s another amusing blog post about why one should use OpenGL instead of DirectX (not even Direct3D). Anyone who has been following my posts on OpenGL knows that ever since the release of 3.0, I have not been able to bring myself to support any of Khronos’ efforts.

Now that the 3.2 specification is out, the API seems to be headed in the right direction but I fear that it’s just too little too late. Whereas OpenGL 3.2 seems to have targeted D3D 10 feverishly, Microsoft was already working on a new iteration of Direct3D in the background. Direct3D 11 once again leaves OpenGL to play catch-up, which they will, but likely too late.

OpenGL has one thing going for it that Direct3D doesn’t: cross-platform compatibility. If you really have to develop for multiple platforms, use OpenGL. If you just develop for Windows/360, use Direct3D. It almost seems as if we’re at that great “games versus industrial application” API divide again. Any momentum that OpenGL might have gained with 2.1, it has lost with its release of 3.0.

Here’s a great article by Tom’s Hardware explaining the issues better than I ever could.

Oh and a happy new year, by the way…

Today Intel released it’s new issue of “Intel Visual Adrenaline” featuring a three page interview with Tom Forsyth about Intel’s upcoming Larrabee GPU, which is x86 based and fully programmable.

Click here to read the PDF, scroll down to page eight (8)

Larrabee will support a rasterization pipeline as well as raytracing but Forsyth mentions raytracing to be more of a technical feature than a mainstream implementation. Regardless of this, for graphics programmers this should be good as there will finally be a piece of hardware that actually supports realtime raytracing.

Direct3D as well as OpenGL will be supported in addition to the much anticipated programmable route, either through C++ or pure assembly, which should open up the card for people interested in parallel computing.

Sadly there’s no definitive answer from Forsyth on how many cores Larrabee will actually contain. I guess we’ll have to wait for that a bit longer.

PS, if anyone is at GDC listening to Abrash and Forsyth tomorrow, let me know what you got from it.

I haven’t been active at all in the OpenGL circles recently but apparently OpenGL 3.1 was released yesterday. Check out the specs by clicking here at Khronos.ORG.

I have been extremely skeptical about OpenGL 3.0 since it was more like an OpenGL 2.2 and did not implement any of the promised object oriented features that competing APIs like Direct3D implement. Thankfully, this release of OpenGL 3.1 seems to be better at first glance as it not only deprecates but removes the old functionality which has been in the way for so long.

It looks like Khronos has heard and listened to its outraged end-users and finally created a better specification. At least, upon first glance, that’s what it looks like.

With the release of OpenGL 3.1 also comes a new version of GLSL, version 1.40. Most excitingly, NVIDIA has released OpenGL 3.1 drivers immediately after the release of GL, showing that they’re way ahead in the game already (as opposed to AMD or Intel).

It is amazing to me that no major outlets such as Slashdot have picked up this this story and one has to find out about 3.1 by accident or RSS feeds.

Even though I prefer my web servers to run Linux, I just can’t seem to switch my personal computer to Linux just yet. From an end-user standpoint, Linux is still very rough around the edges, here’s my personal checklist (in no particular order) that I’d like to see fulfilled.

• The ability to install a piece of software without having to invoke a CLI.
• A full-featured development environment (that’s not Eclipse) that rivals Visual Studio in C++ development.
• A non-Unix-like file system.
• Better manual when you buy a distribution (SUSE manual: case and point).
• Better IHV driver support.
• Better native ISV software support without having to run Wine.
• And the coup de grâce: An OpenGL specification that can compete with Direct3D.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Linux itself, in fact much of my development time goes into LAMP related work. But for the desktop it just seems like a CLI-ridden nightmare at the moment.

Artistic License?

Once upon a time there was a little old API, struggling for its life amongst the giants of software. Little old OpenGL knew that in order to survive it had to adapt to a strange, bewildering and new environment; it was a strange new world indeed. For two years, rumors of old OpenGL’s struggles reached the user-groups and there was much rejoicing indeed. But on one faithful day, August the 11^th of 2008, OpenGL perished. Its age and idleness had (as with all things good and bad) caught up with him and slayed little old OpenGL in its path.

After reading the spec and looking desperately for the promised object model, I felt quite like a (self-censored) taking the newsletters seriously and writing about them so explicitly.

For those who haven’t read the specification yet, it’s OpenGL 2.1 plus and minus some stuff, hardly the fruition of two years labor. The anticipation that followed the initial announcement of OpenGL 3.0’s Object Model was tremendous. For the first time in a long time, people started noticing OpenGL again and maybe a place for it in modern multimedia applications such as PC games besides id Software’s titles.

Alas, it was not to be. Woe is me for my old API is truly dead. D3D, hello.

It’s here, (Edit: It’s official) haven’t read it yet but here it is:

The OpenGL ® Graphics System: A Specification (Version 3.0 – August 11, 2008)
Link to the registry containing the link

Let me know what you think of it, thanks nosmileface!

It’s been a while since I posted but this one will make up for it. A messy screenshot of NVIDIA’s 2008 timeline has emerged on Chilehardware (CHW) and reveals that OpenGL 3.0 drivers/implementation will be due in September of this year in a collection called Big Bang II (Big Bang I was SLI).

CHW member KaiserGerhardI has provided a deciphering of the screenshot which provides more information on the contents of the screenshot:

• First: Quad ?????? Release February
• Hybrid Shipped Spring
• Spring Notebook Cycle
• GT200 + ????
• Big Bang II-Fall Will Focus on
  • Now/WWW features
  • SLI connectivity features
  • Display connectivity
  • Quality improvements
  • Performance improvements
  • OpenGL 3.0

The words which could not be deciphered are marked with question marks. What this means for OpenGL enthusiasts and developers is that we won’t have to attend SIGGRAPH, NVISION or any other meeting for that matter, since this is basically a confirmation on its own.

Now, let’s hope that ATI will also provide an implementation this soon.

Some questions have come up in regards to my last post, The Ghost of OpenGL 3.0, and one of them keeps popping out on top: Why do we need OpenGL 3.0 and What’s wrong with OpenGL 2.1? This post will attempt to take you through the pre-published materials on the OpenGL API, version 3.0 and show you the major changes and differences. Or you could simple jump to the answer and conclusion without reading the features provided by OpenGL 3.0, if you don’t feel like getting informed.
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