The Most Important Project Since Mesa 1.0?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Most Important Project Since Mesa 1.0?

The Direct3D 9 state tracker could prove to be the most important project since the original release of the Mesa graphics library...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQxNDc

[benjamin545]

the real power of the direct 3d frontend for mesa has nothing to do with linux. its makes the open source driver stack much more enticing for gpu veondors to use as the primary default driver for both linux and windows. gallium3d was designed to be easily cross platformed, that not only means linux, unix, but also windows or mac.

imagin a world where amd didnt have the catlylist driver anymore, it was just the mesa+gallium+rX00g stack. both for windows and linux, and the mesa part would have an opengl, opencl, openvg, opengl es, directx 9, directx 10/11, and video decode/encode state trackers.

thats actualy how vmware was billing gallium3d at the begining, as a easy way to develop cross platform gpu drivers with multiple 3d library front ends., thats how we has the initial directx 10/11 driver and the initial intel drivers, they were like demonstrations of its capability.

[gigaplex]

the real power of the direct 3d frontend for mesa has nothing to do with linux. its makes the open source driver stack much more enticing for gpu veondors to use as the primary default driver for both linux and windows. gallium3d was designed to be easily cross platformed, that not only means linux, unix, but also windows or mac.

imagin a world where amd didnt have the catlylist driver anymore, it was just the mesa+gallium+rX00g stack. both for windows and linux, and the mesa part would have an opengl, opencl, openvg, opengl es, directx 9, directx 10/11, and video decode/encode state trackers.

thats actualy how vmware was billing gallium3d at the begining, as a easy way to develop cross platform gpu drivers with multiple 3d library front ends., thats how we has the initial directx 10/11 driver and the initial intel drivers, they were like demonstrations of its capability.

It's extremely unlikely that NVIDIA, AMD and Intel are going to abandon their existing Windows drivers and move to an open source Gallium3D driver just to make use of a 3rd party DirectX 9 reimplementation - they already work with the official version. Besides, DirectX 9 is now legacy. With XP reaching official EOL in less than a year, expect to see a lot more DirectX 10+ specific titles.

And as for the DirectX 10/11 state tracker and initial Intel drivers as demos of capability? The demos weren't very capable. Gallium3D is capable of much, much more.

[DMJC]

Insanity

This is the height of insanity. By abandoning OpenGL and adopting DirectX you are basically making Microsoft the sole determiner of the future of graphics on Linux. This is stupid to allow to happen. This is coming right at the moment when Linux gaming is really taking off, with more native ports coming out than ever before thanks to Steam and Valve. This will basically guarantee that Linux remains a second rate platform always trailing behind DirectX revisions. If you think it's hard to implement GL driver support in Mesa, wait til we're trying to chase DirectX 10, 11, 12 and more. The only stuff that even works with DirectX 9 is games that already ran in wine. You still have .NET compatibility to fight, DirectPlay, the rest of the DirectX stack, DirectSound etc.

This year we have Blizzard, Valve, and many third party vendors all announcing Linux support. We have all the major Indie games projects, Star Citizen, Planetary Annihilation, etc announcing Linux support. The reality is we don't need DirectX and we shouldn't want it. Right now we are rapidly killing Microsoft's stranglehold on the industry. A jump to DirectX would basically be admitting defeat and would kill off a lot of the hard work to get good IDEs and good engine ports made. Gallium doesn't support a LOT of hardware right now. This will basically exclude all high-end gaming from Linux. An NVIDIA Titan card might run under OpenGL and Linux native drivers perfectly, but good luck running that same card on Nouveau with anything resembling 3d acceleration.

Why is Linux jumping the shark when it's finally on the cusp of winning? Adding tablet GUI's as forced options on Desktop environments, when users and businesses are running screaming from Windows 8? And why are we abandoning OpenGL right now when it's finally taking off. Whoever is making these decisions is a moron, and I'm happy to be on record calling the entire gnome and Ubuntu teams morons. The biggest advantage Linux has is that it is customisable and it lets you choose whichever window manager you want. There should just be a tickbox at install. Tablet mode/non tablet mode. This isn't rocket science. OpenGL getting a Crysis engine port should have made it pretty clear that OpenGL is fine.

[Ericg]

This is the height of insanity. By abandoning OpenGL and adopting DirectX you are basically making Microsoft the sole determiner of the future of graphics on Linux. This is stupid to allow to happen. This is coming right at the moment when Linux gaming is really taking off, with more native ports coming out than ever before thanks to Steam and Valve. This will basically guarantee that Linux remains a second rate platform always trailing behind DirectX revisions. If you think it's hard to implement GL driver support in Mesa, wait til we're trying to chase DirectX 10, 11, 12 and more.

You are LITERALLY insane if you think they are "abandoning" OpenGL. This is a pet project that came about from a failed project (DirectX10/11). We may as well get some use of it.

[doom_Oo7]

This is the height of insanity. By abandoning OpenGL and adopting DirectX you are basically making Microsoft the sole determiner of the future of graphics on Linux. This is stupid to allow to happen. This is coming right at the moment when Linux gaming is really taking off, with more native ports coming out than ever before thanks to Steam and Valve. This will basically guarantee that Linux remains a second rate platform always trailing behind DirectX revisions. If you think it's hard to implement GL driver support in Mesa, wait til we're trying to chase DirectX 10, 11, 12 and more.

First I didnt see any mention of abandoning OpenGL anywhere ?
The thing is, I think that most people use Wine to run slightly old games, that won't ever be ported to GL because for instance the company has collapsed, like THQ. Should they be ignoring these people ? I think that Linux is more about omni-compatibility than being at the very bleeding edge (even if it is ).

And I don't know why a sane developer would rather try to make a linux port using Wine and an open-source D3D implementation than using native capabilities, unless the manager's orders are "piss on our customers face".

Finally, I have some friend in game dev that learnt both OpenGL and D3D, and most of them say that D3D is a joy to use in comparison to OpenGL when you understood the concepts.
So what I hope for very much (but isn't going to happen) is that one day Microsoft makes DirectX API and doc completely open and patent-free, and gives it in charge to a consortium so that it could become an open standard.

[mike4]

It's to late if not to say useless. Even today I run MS FSX without
FPS problems in Wine 1.6.

DX10/11 would be interesting, but without MS support we should simply forget it.

[Ibidem]

First I didnt see any mention of abandoning OpenGL anywhere ?

It's a joke quoted in the article.

Do we need the horrible OpenGL anymore? Haha, just kidding.

[cynical]

I look forward to playing neverwinter nights 2 with decent performance. The fact that this is will be happening on top of the performance improving dpm changes for radeon is pretty sweet. I've been smoothly running my system on intel graphics but I may go back to my radeon soon.

[tomato]

the real power of the direct 3d frontend for mesa has nothing to do with linux. its makes the open source driver stack much more enticing for gpu veondors to use as the primary default driver for both linux and windows. gallium3d was designed to be easily cross platformed, that not only means linux, unix, but also windows or mac.

imagin a world where amd didnt have the catlylist driver anymore, it was just the mesa+gallium+rX00g stack. both for windows and linux, and the mesa part would have an opengl, opencl, openvg, opengl es, directx 9, directx 10/11, and video decode/encode state trackers.

thats actualy how vmware was billing gallium3d at the begining, as a easy way to develop cross platform gpu drivers with multiple 3d library front ends., thats how we has the initial directx 10/11 driver and the initial intel drivers, they were like demonstrations of its capability.

The Microsoft driver SDK EULA does not allow for that. So, until MS gets a clue (hahahahah), it won't happen.