Unigine Heaven Update Coming With OpenGL Tessellation

[Svartalf]

This seems like a good time to remind that the OpenGL/OpenCL stack in the Linux Catalyst driver (aka fglrx) is the *same* as the one in the Windows Catalyst driver. The OS-specific glue is different, of course, but the core code (>95%) is common - that's the main reason binary drivers exist in the first place.

It's my understanding that much of the issues are in the OS-specific code in the first place, John. A good portion of the issues I know about are more due to that than the main codebase. The bulk of things wouldn't work very well in Windows if it was in the main code base- and we wouldn't be having this discussion because you'd be out of a yob because AMD would be out of the graphics business at that point.

I think the people that're complaining are asking for AMD to put a little more love into getting the 5-10% that's the cause for much of the consternation here straightened out- or at least moreso than it is now.

[Svartalf]

Also, AMD's drivers are typically best used when you stick to the opengl spec as strictly as possible, which many people don't do (even I've been caught out by it sometimes). AMD isn't always to blame; sometimes the developers need to fix their code instead.

I'd actually say that it's about 60% or so of the time it's the developer that oopsed something in their code- like you said, many don't apply a strict interpretation of the meanings in the spec docs. It's a source of recurring gotchas within many titles. They didn't get a shader coded right and missed a key value which NVidia supplies, but AMD doesn't. They didn't pay attention to the "may" in the spec doc and presumed it was a possibility- but it wasn't going to happen to them. That sort of thing.

[n0nsense]

Unfortunately, the only choice available to Linux user is Nvidia if this user wants fully functional GPU.
You want ALL features working ? buy Nvidia
You want video acceleration today ? buy Nvidia
You want stable 3D performance for gaming ? buy Nvidia
I don't like this situation as I own ATI card. Just looking to replace it. Under Linux this HD4850 is still useless as desktop card.
It's not important what I can do as far as there much more then one thing that I can't.
And don't say open ... The open source drivers are even less useful.
I like the idea, and wish them luck, but as far as hardware acceleration for video will not be there, they are useless on AVERAGE DESKTOP.
I hope that somehow Google's VP8 release as open source will allow AMD to release HW acceleration documentation for this format.

[mirv]

A lot of information comes from phoronix - but very few actual links to sources of information. Sometimes it's an opinion of phoronix, not actual current information. So until I read a direct quote from unigine, I will take any phoronix story with a grain of salt (just like semiaccurate articles).

[energyman]

and how does that fit with the phoronix stories?

[mirv]

Here we go, post #18:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22423&page=2

[mirv]

well, then we have it:

unigine is talking bullshit. Who is surprised?

Not unigine - I've never actually seen any official word from them. Well I'll correct that; someone did ask (I'll have to dig back a while to find a link) and unigine replied that it was not amd's drivers holding things up.

[energyman]

It worked fine last time I tried, which was with Catalyst 10.3 I believe.

well, then we have it:

unigine is talking bullshit. Who is surprised?

[Hans]

yeah, well remember catalyst receive 99% of the love from amd, fglrx on the other side is heavily bugged to begin with, and 1 thing have fglrx proved in all this years, if it works at least decently on windows already on fglrx will take a hell of releases to even get close. so if direct2d follow the same path that 2d accel, xvba, stream/opencl, wine, etc have follow, well the first releases woud be havoc if you activate "direct2d" until several releases later

well ok unigine demos for now are only eyecandy i give you that, but remember some games from that engine are coming for linux too, so eventually would be peachy to have full support for that engine.

well wine working fine with fglrx is not going to happen any time soon, even the foss drivers are more compliant now than fglrx(ok slower, but the stuff render as it should or at least load the apps without sigsegv's, r700 still miss gl 2.1 support for now)

well remember opengl4 is not a different library or something else, opengl unlike directx doesnt need to have different library or api every version. aka

opengl4 use a lot if not most of opengl 3.3 and opengl2.1 and opengl 2.0 and ok you get the point.

so opengl4 is only a subset of additional functions that call a certain number of registries supported only in a specific set of hardware, in fact you can run tessalation on a non evergreen hardware for example having an opencl fallback (ok wouldnt be that cool as the supported hardware but it can improve the image quality in previous generation if you wanna bother in doing it). so even if you claim wine doesnt support opengl4(wich is only a limited set of function inside the gl library btw) , wine support gl3.3, so ok you miss the goodies of evergreen and some new shaders functions in glsl, but you are using most the gl implementation in fglrx wich is proved again and again to be buggy not only in wine.

so even if you had wine+gl4 support today probably all your games would be equally bugged as they are today

dunno i would just prefered that fglrx team forget for a time gl4 and focus on debug the most of their current libgl implementation, so they can later focus on get a superb gl4 now with a working 3d system, but well

I have to ask you this. Do you own an ATI card? Or are you just a nvidia fand bashing ATI?

[Melcar]

well, has someone tried unigine on windows with opengl on ati?
If yes, and it works, we know that unigine is bullshitting around.

It worked fine last time I tried, which was with Catalyst 10.3 I believe.