Former AMD Developer: OpenGL Is Broken

[OneTimeShot]

Workman and his/her tools

Yawn... Whinging about stuff that other people have done is easy. We all know where Khronos is, so you can go there and help them work on OpenGL 5.0. If you want them to copy ideas from Mantle or DirectX, that's fine too. Deprecate old APIs, introduce new ones. Knock yourself out.

That's why it's called *OPEN* GL.

[Nille]

Linux is at 3.3, Windows usually doesn't work at all

Thats a lie. The Question is, which OpenGL Version comes with your Driver. And Windows has a Build-In OpenGL 1.4 Driver if you Hardware can only use D3D. On Both Systems each Vendor has to ship its Own OpenGL implementation and Environment.

[liamdawe]

There's also this AMD vs Nvidia benchmark: http://www.gamingonlinux.com/article...benchmark.3806

That benchmark was done by a Michael A. Marks the technical director for Aspyr Media who are porting games to Linux.

[Azrael5]

DirectX is much more than D3D... DirectX allows accelaration on video 3D, sound 3dsound, and 2D, input devices...

[johnc]

The problem is not what OGL 4.4 is capable of, but that nobody supports it. OSX is stuck at 4.2, Linux is at 3.3, Windows usually doesn't work at all because everyone is using DirectX anyway. Mobile is in just as a bad a spot, except most GLES3 features on Android don't work at all because those drivers are concentrated shit.

People like DirectX because they can ship two versions of a game - DirectX9 for old hardware, DirectX11 for new. Or just ignore old stuff and ship 11 alone. For OpenGL, there is a sliding scale of hardware support from 2.1 to 4.4 (and I'm talking about parts from the last 5 years!), every version in between, plus vendor extensions.

I'm wondering if there would be a way to mix llvmpipe and legacy hardware to provide 3.3 compliance with software codepaths for unsupported extensions? There would of course be huge performance penalties when code touched software rendering paths, but it seems like a compromise to just say "target 3.3, use 4 branch extensions where you can, don't worry about the rest" or even GLES3 + extensions so you can have a portable mobile engine.

This part of his criticism seemed the least valid. The situation in D3D land is not particularly different. A vast swath of Windows installs are still on XP. DirectX 11.2 is not available for Windows 7. And it's probably very likely that DX12 -- which he claims is going to be the big answer -- will require a new OS as well, or at least Window 8.x.

OGL is fragmented as well, but it targets a much greater variety of platforms.

Your train of thought seems guided by something else than just facts. There are very clear flaws present in GL - even in the most recent versions - that aren't present in D3D, and denying it is just silly.

All things have pros and cons. This guy went down and listed the cons of some aspects of GL. You're not getting a very accurate sense of the reality by reading something in that form.

[rikkinho]

microsoft again

M$ again buying people to put out this type of lies, if opengl is so bad why i all CAD programs use it? why apple use it? this AMD guys thinks mantle is the option? lol nothing is perfect but at least opengl is improving and not control by one company

[Nille]

M$ again buying people to put out this type of lies,

Of course.

if opengl is so bad why i all CAD programs use it?

They use D3D except the multiplattform Applications. And most CAD Applications don't use high feature Levels.

why apple use it?

There is nothing else and Apple doesn't has the adoption to force her own 3D API.

[rikkinho]

[QUOTE=Nille;420540]Of course.



They use D3D except the multiplattform Applications. And most CAD Applications don't use high feature Levels.


they use D3d? lol nice joke

[okias]

Good reflection here: http://www.joshbarczak.com/blog/?p=154

It could be possible linux distros uses directX?

Not whole DirectX probably, but we have d3d9 state tracker

It's main purpose it's now allow wine use D3D9 directly, rather translating it to OpenGL. This lead to saving cpu cycles spend on translation to OpenGL and sometimes using faster codepaths on GPU.

[computerquip]

A very serious statement.

I don't know much about the topic, (I think EGL is a subset of OpenGL) maybe someone could explain if that could apply to EGL too.

EGL is not a subset of OpenGL. It's an API covering the gap between the OS and OpenGL. It handles context creation and manipulates the context.

EDIT: Unless you're talking about GLES...?