Former AMD Developer: OpenGL Is Broken

[zanny]

Hey, if we're already in the process of "let's make a low level API for every platform!", can we just declare Gallium3D the official new Linux rendering API? It's extremely close to Direct3D10/11, so it shouldn't be a huge jump for existing Windows developers =P

What is the feasibility of programming to winsys / pipe drivers directly? This sounds interesting.

[mdias]

A little bit of shader source code? Modern graphical intensive games are easily 15+ Gigabyte...

Storage space is not the problem, it's the time it takes to read it. Sure, it's just text, but it would be smaller if it were bytecode.

I don't imagine it would take more than one isolated if block with a write to and a read from the config file and a loop... Maybe add a progress bar? Is this really significant in relation to everything else a modern game contains?

It is a lot more complicated than an if block... You will need to check if the user switched graphics card, or is running your software with another GPU. What if a new OpenGL implementation/patch was installed and generates different (faster? bug-fix?) binaries? Maybe you need to check the specific version of the driver now too... Which means; are you willing to make your user wait for another round of shader compiles every time he upgrades his drivers? What about realtime streaming content?

More exposed than now? You can already print their code as they are fed to the compiler:
MESA_GLSL=dump

Sure, you can also decompile .NET code. That doesn't mean people prefer to ship the source instead of the bytecode "executables". Plus, it will make it harder to read the code.

Yes, with a proper vendor independent redistributable binary format but until then...

Until then no one can say it's not a problem, because it is. Khronos membership is very expensive, I would suppose they have enough resouces to create an hardware independent bytecode format. It's not that hard...

[Ancurio]

Hey, if we're already in the process of "let's make a low level API for every platform!", can we just declare Gallium3D the official new Linux rendering API? It's extremely close to Direct3D10/11, so it shouldn't be a huge jump for existing Windows developers =P

[Anarchy]

Its limited to iPads, iPhones, and Apple TVs.

In the spirit of Apple quite possibly they will "port" it next year to osx devices and then they'll make it the default 2D(?)/3D API. Today, most of the stuff they announced required you to have not only a mac but also ios devices, so as long as you're in the Appleverse you're fine.

[johnc]

I already have a vision of how "gaming" is going to unfold for Linux.

Linux will be getting the crappy last-order port with not much concern for performance or correctness. PS4, Mantle, DX, etc. will be prioritized of course and with the leftover time they'll throw something together for Linux... maybe.

[johnc]

Its limited to iPads, iPhones, and Apple TVs.

* for now

[Ericg]

Well it looks like Apple is dumping OpenGL and has made their own rendering API so Linux will be on its own now.

Ohh, lovely. Just what developers need... ten different APIs to target.

Its limited to iPads, iPhones, and Apple TVs.

[89c51]

Semi-off topic.

Did apple just launched its own graphics API (something like mantle) or got it wrong??

[johnc]

Well it looks like Apple is dumping OpenGL and has made their own rendering API so Linux will be on its own now.

Ohh, lovely. Just what developers need... ten different APIs to target.

[Nille]

But you can't compile for all and every hardware (GPU) out there. If that would be the case we wouldn't need OpenGL nor DirectX, we would simply program the GPU directly.

Bytecode thats make it easier and faster do compile the shader.