CodeWeavers Joins The Khronos Group Along With IKEA

[bridgman]

If someone doesn't do a IKEA meme out of this I'll be disappointed.

I haven't worked up a meme myself yet (particularly not a Khronos + IKEA meme) but here's a start...

[Sonadow]

But they use proprietary fasteners

Bah, nothing a decent flathead screwdriver or a sturdy metal ruler can't fix.

[Tomin]

I haven't worked up a meme myself yet (particularly not a Khronos + IKEA meme) but here's a start...

There should be a recipe. And it should use pictures instead of writing to support all regions.

[ravyne]

And why are the CAD requirements so special that they need a separate API? Just because their meshes are more static? I don't see a justification for that... I have the feeling they just want to save development costs by sticking to one ancient never changing API.

its a lot having to with what you say: not wanting to go along with new things if if it upset their applecart -- but the history of CAD and GL were quite intertwined in that the CAD vendors enjoyed outsize influence over GL's evolution for a long time. The CAD vendors' reluctance to get behind anything that didn't benefit their use-cases, and the weight this carried has been cited by many GL board members through the years as being what held GL back.

It's not so much that the CAD vendors need a different API, what they actually used, historically, was a happy little subset -- but instead of just simply stewerding that subset as part of a broader ecosystem, they acted like a little hermit kingdom that was suspicious of it's neighbors and the changing times. Their influence was such that they didn't have to vehemently oppose things, just their lack of actively supporting something made it a challenge to get things passed. GL board members grow frustrated, and GL stagnated until until Khronos/WebGL (which the CAD vendors weren't interested in, and didn't gain influence over) showed a way forward that eventually came full-circle in Desktop GL 4 (GL3 began showing this influence).

The CAD vendors *do* alternatively care or not care about many things the rest of the industry felt the opposite way about. Only the CAD vendors care about line drawing performance, or drawing lines with sub-pixel accuracy, or about the irregular clipping/depth test features they used to reveal cutaways of models in their software -- mind you, all of these things except perhaps the line performance can be implemented in shaders, they we're just being selfishly conservative. Conversely, they didn't care at all for geometry instancing because they don't really deal in multiple instances of anything in the same viewport, but this is a huge need for games. They didn't care for shaders, even though they're objectively more flexible, because the old ways already supported what they needed to do. Their lack of reciprocol spirit left a lot of board members pretty chafed. I believe they're onboard now, but as I understand they were all but barred from the clubhouse in the early days of Vulkan, which had itself grown substantially out of AMD's Mantle API, on which the CAD vendors were't consulted at all --
That grew initially from the game developers exclusively.

[starshipeleven]

And why are the CAD requirements so special that they need a separate API? Just because their meshes are more static? I don't see a justification for that... I have the feeling they just want to save development costs by sticking to one ancient never changing API.

That's correct, the professional software does not have the fire-and-forget model of games, they don't want to rewrite the backend often, if ever.

Which is why I think they should get their own API. Theoretically they should remain on OpenGL compat profiles forever, as that's what they have been doing in the last decades.

[starshipeleven]

But they use proprietary fasteners

What proprietary fasteners? They need normal allen keys (aka hex wrench), usual Philips (cross) screws and so on.

Hmm, maybe they use metric allen keys (as that's what we use in EU and the rest of the world) and you have only imperial allen keys, but that's your own issue.

If you want to see proprietary screws, just look at Apple stuff. They have their own screws that look like Torx but have only 5 holes instead of 6, because fuck everyone trying to open it.

[bridgman]

What proprietary fasteners? They need normal allen keys (aka hex wrench), usual Philips (cross) screws and so on.

Just the fasteners themselves are often proprietary, although I am starting to see aftermarket copies of some of the simpler fasteners appear on eBay. Just picked up another bag of 50 of those little pins that hold up shelves on the older Billy bookcases.

Anyone frequenting Ikea quickly adds a set of metric allen keys to their toolset. The T-handle wrenches save a lot of time if, like me, you become the designated Ikea-furniture-builder in your family.