Former AMD Developer: OpenGL Is Broken

[tomtomme]

Not exactly:

http://www.g-truc.net/doc/OpenGL%204%20Hardware%20Matrix%202014-05.pdf

Even their OpenGL 4.1 implementation isn't complete.

wow, good data! thank you!
There you have it! Cummulating the percentages over the openGL versions makes OSX really looking bad. Even MESA is ahead in openGL 4.x world. Only 4.0/1 is behind but 4.2/3/4 they are much ahead.

[_SXX_]

Nvidia's and AMD's OpenGL driver implementations are at a 100%, and even Intel's closed drivers are at almost a 100%.

I helping with support of OpenGL-only game which target GL 3.2 for about a year and have some experience about both Windows and OS X drivers.

Even Nvidia drivers have rough edges. For example Nvidia drivers older than Summer of 2013 have OpenGL 4.3 support "on paper", but in reality those old drivers can't run real GL 3.2 game and will cause crash on startup. So all those newest releases with 100% implementation is just marketing BS.

AMD drivers on Windows usually better when it's come to crashes. Even pretty old drivers from 2011 usually can run this game, but with tons of graphical glitches and corruption so recent drivers still required. And yeah their Windows legacy drivers have GPU lockups and it's not updated anymore.

And when it's come to Intel Windows drivers those are catastrophic. I feel like that guy from Valve was right and Intel Windows driver only implement GL features that actually used by some application and before it's not being used by someone it's most likely will be crash. So again GL compatibility is on paper, but not in real drivers.

OS X problem is pretty simple: you can't update drivers here. Got crash? Upgrade OS X. And what's worse it's looks like even Nvidia drivers on OS X Mavericks don't actually in sync with Windows drivers for some old GPUs (8XXX, 9XXX, 1XX).

PS: So yeah Mesa and Linux open drivers stack isn't perfect, but at least it's have predictable quality. When Mesa have 3.2 exposed it's mean somebody actually tried to test it and even if Piglit isn't perfect it's prove as good testing tool.

[Staffan]

If anything's broken it's AMD and their drivers! Sure, there are a couple of things that could be fixed with OpenGL but much of it has. AMD however doesn't seem to be able to create a working driver. I was fighting with Catalyst 14.4 trying to make it perform but it's just a complete pile of crap! Bugs all over the place, leaking memory, threading issues you name it. I've now reverted back to using my Ivy Bridge for my Linux desktop and then dual-booting into Windows for my gaming cravings but it sucks that I have to do that.
The Intel drivers are solid as a rock, too bad the hardware isn't very fast. Nvidia is good too but my Nvidia card is showing it's age by now.

[ua=42]

I wonder how many people actually read the blog post, some of the responses seem to be countering points he didn't make.

Points 1 & 2 of his blog involve saying the current state of the drivers is fairly spotty. But that would be fixed if there was more resources used at the different companies to actually implement Opengl. He doesn't really have a problem with these issues as they would be fixed if openGL became more popular. (Though it is kind of a chicken and the egg issue.)

Here is the list of things he think are fundamental problems with opengl.

• GLSL is inefficient. Compiles everytime you run the program... without trickery it will run multiple times. He suggests that opengl switch to having shaders pre-compiled.
• Threading.
• Texture data handling.
• Too many ways to do the same thing. Makes the api/tutorials/documentation confusing. Even in openGL 4.4 has multiple ways of doing one thing.
• Error handling.

[liamdawe]

Now a developer on the Unity3D game engine is speaking up about OpenGL too: http://www.gamingonlinux.com/article...ut-opengl.3818

I just want a good API people don't bitch and moan about as a gamer myself.

[BeardedGNUFreak]

D3D is garbage and a dead end API.

It's use is restricted to the dying desktop PC market and the dead Xbox platform.

Khronos has been absolutely kicking ass over the past five years or so. After the painful transition to the modern OpenGL APIs back in the 3.0 days the API is an absolute joy to work with.

When even long time hardcore Windows developers like Valve have the OpenGL version of their games running faster than their D3D version the Khronos guys are doing an amazing job keeping OpenGL the top graphics API in the world.

I don't know if this latest clown crying about OpenGL is the same guy from a week ago that turned out to be nothing more than some former Microsoft employee essentially babbling about how OpenGL wasn't D3D. Nor do I care.

As long as D3D lacks the amazing OpenGL type extension system it will continue to be joke of an API in comparison. It was a braindead design decision by Microsoft to have D3D 'levels' which results in bleeding edge user hardware features sitting wasted and unused until Microsoft craps out a new D3D version. Dumb but on par for the company also responsible for the Windows Registry, Active X, the Xbox RRoD,etc.

[Nille]

Now a developer on the Unity3D game engine is speaking up about OpenGL too: http://www.gamingonlinux.com/article...ut-opengl.3818

And Microsoft ships over Windows Update the Drivers from Intel, Nvidia and AMD. Even if you not a Gamer, you get a new Driver version for your GPU.


@BeardedGNUFreak

[Ancurio]

The author has posted a follow up (mostly replying to Timothy Lottes): http://www.joshbarczak.com/blog/?p=196

[_SXX_]

And Microsoft ships over Windows Update the Drivers from Intel, Nvidia and AMD. Even if you not a Gamer, you get a new Driver version for your GPU.

AMD legacy drivers shipped though Windows Update don't have OpenGL support and you can't easily replace them from official websites! Intel drivers shipped though Windows update are always outdated for 3-6 months and some versions also lack of OpenGL support.

I also listed number of other issues on @Liam's website...

[Kraut]

GLSL is inefficient. Compiles everytime you run the program... without trickery it will run multiple times. He suggests that opengl switch to having shaders pre-compiled.

Drivers cache compiled shaders and you also can do it yourself with ARB_get_program_binary. You only have to compile on the first start. The only disadvantages are that you can't control the threads that the compiler is using. And some developers don't like it to ship there shader source code in plain text.

Threading.

Agree here! This seems to be one of the biggest advantage of mantle that does not run any background threads what so ever.

Texture data handling.

Don't know enough about that to comment.

Too many ways to do the same thing. Makes the api/tutorials/documentation confusing. Even in openGL 4.4 has multiple ways of doing one thing.

This is actual several problems you mention here: First the documentation is shitty. Its hard to read diff files. And I often find corner cases that are not covered by the documentation/api.
That's why mesa developers are doing: "If it is not documented we look what nvidia drivers are doing and do that, too!"

And also the loved "there are multiple ways to do X. You have to guess what way has more performance. And to make it more interesting some ways may even outright kill your performance! Also its different on each vendor!"

Error handling.

I would like to write about that but this forum thread does not own a active OpenGL context and therefore the standard forbids me to comment at all.