Gallium3D Gets Support For ARB_sample_shading

[chrisf]

This is the most important programming feature for OpenGL programmers in OpenGL 4.0!
My favourite, please give implementing it priority over some other features, e.g. tessellation.

Could you explain a bit why you consider ARB_shader_subroutine so important?

My understanding was that it was a bit of a nuisance feature, so it hasn't been high on my list of priorities.

[Ericg]

Could you explain a bit why you consider ARB_shader_subroutine so important?

My understanding was that it was a bit of a nuisance feature, so it hasn't been high on my list of priorities.

Not original poster, just curious. Would, what comes down to, a function-pointer inside a shader not be important? "One shader to rule them all" and at runtime it switches codepaths depending on the case?

[plonoma]

Could you explain a bit why you consider ARB_shader_subroutine so important?

Of course.
Not being able to have subroutines would lead to Uber shaders.
Uber shaders difficult to work with, error prone, hard to maintain when dealing with complex application code.

[smitty3268]

Not original poster, just curious. Would, what comes down to, a function-pointer inside a shader not be important? "One shader to rule them all" and at runtime it switches codepaths depending on the case?

Well, i think people for a long time have simply worked around not having this feature by creating uber-shaders.

Uber-shaders are annoying, but they mostly work - which is why he called this a nuisance-feature, as in, getting rid of the nuisance of uber-shaders.

But i think most devs see that as less important than brand new features, that can't be so simply worked around.

[majod]

I don't understand this much and I'm just curious, does implementing various OpenGL features also improve performance? Thanks

[_SXX_]

I don't understand this much and I'm just curious, does implementing various OpenGL features also improve performance?

If applications you using take advantages of extension that allow more efficient rendering then implementation of such extensions will improve performance for you. Otherwise newly implemented extensions doesn't affect performance.