OpenGL 1.3 Spec Released

JigSaw writes "The OpenGL Architecture Review Board announced the new OpenGL 1.3 specification (1.8 MB pdf). In OpenGL 1.3, several additional features and functions have been ratified and brought into the API's core functionality. New features include Cube map texturing, multisampling, new texture modes that provide more powerful ways of applying textures to rendered objects, compressed texture framework etc. Let's all hope that GL can catch up with Direct3D now, as with the latest DirectX8, Direct3D has done some big steps towards feature-set, speed and even non-bloatiness when it comes to coding for it, while OpenGL 1.2 was released more than 2 years ago and it did not offer as much."

No one can.

[BradleyUffner]

Ummm. no one can. 32 bit color and 24 bit color both use 8 bits for red, green, and blue. The extra 8 bits are used for alphablening or just to align the color to something the computer can copy faster. With 3d cards the bit depth is important because of the way colors are combined with textures and all kinds of funky stuff, but after all the rendering is done 24 bit and 32 bit are exactly the same.

Re:The funny bit...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no visual difference between 24 and 32 bit colour. Zip. zilch. 32-bit mode is faster, and 24-bit mode uses less memory, but that's *it*.

A little bit offtopic but...

[stikves]

Some people claim the death of opengl, while others want the community to keep it alive.

But the "evil" API Direct3D is already (mostly) available for Linux. Haven't you heard of trasgaming (http://www.transgaming.com/ [transgaming.com])?

They are currenly working on D3D port to WINE [wineqh.com].

(If you don't know, their license is not fully "free", but they will make it "free" when they get enough "support".)

[ By the way, I don't think opengl will die anytime soon. Because "serious" graphics work is not only "games". have you used SGI? they do not support D3D or whatsoever ]

Um...

[Penrif]

Give OpenGL some credit here. In some ways, it's D3D that has to catch up. Here's how it was discribed to be by a Very Smart Person [uiuc.edu] who works with nVidia a lot. nVidia comes to Microsoft saying "we want these features", Microsoft says "Okay, do it this way". The engineers at nVidia get frustrated about being limited by Microsoft's model and implement new features anyway and put them in OpenGL extensions. So, D3D has a better spec (arguably), but OpenGL has access to all the features.

Re:The funny bit...

[YeeHarr]

Actually the extra 8 bits are used for alpha.

Alpha is one way to do the smoke/fog effects.

Alpha is the transparency of a material/texture.

drooool...

[TechnoVooDooDaddy]

DX8 was nice and feature rich to be certain, but that still didn't stop companies like NVidia from putting extensions into OpenGL to accomplish the same things..

NVidia OpenGL bad-ass extenstions [nvidia.com]

NVidia DX8 SDK [nvidia.com]

both contain very similar stuff you'll find i think, and I've always found OpenGL to be a better interface anyway. DX8 is night and day better than DX7 or before, but still carries a bit of the bloat around the middle that DirectX is famous for...

Re:OpenGL Death: This is not such a sad thing

[UnknownSoldier]

> This is not a bad thing.
Yes it is. Instead of just writing directly to [OpenGL] api for all 3 platforms (Win32,Mac,Linux), I now have to use a wrapper (assuming you don't support consoles, which not ever game developer can/does.)

Of course most PC game developers are just using DX so this doesn't effect them AT ALL.

> it does mean good things for the majority of the game playing market
Gamers don't care which (graphics) API a game uses.

> However, todays hardware is written with Direct3D in mind,
That's not true. The GeForce cards expose more of their functionality under OpenGL then D3D.

I believe you mean "the majority of today's PC hardware have better support on D3D then OpenGL." And, yes, you are right.

The point is, though, that even if OpenGL was vanquished tomorrow, us game developers STILL have to support at LEAST *3* API's: One on PC (X-Box), PS2, and Gamecube. (X-Box is basically DX8, but I won't know 100% for sure until we get our dev boxes.)

Look at that list...

[lowe0]

2 of those are Carmack games. He loves GL (can't remember what pissed him off about D3D, maybe he'd like to tell us?)

Tribes2 is multi-API. So are some other biggies (Unreal Tournament comes to mind.)

like deja vu all over again

[Proud Geek]

Thanks for the info [slashdot.org] . That's very informative. Please do tell, though, what's the difference between a "spec" and a "specification" that makes it worth repeating?

Re:OpenGL was, is, and will be here.

[spectecjr]

Then, there's this very nice company called EpicGames. It created Unreal and Unreal Tournament (while trying to push Glide) and are now doing Unreal Warfare. These guys provide nice competition to ID Software and YES, they use Direct3D. Now take a modern computer with an NVIDIA card (chances are you already have one anyways) and play some Quake2 and Quake3...See the framerates ? OK... Now start up Unreal/UT, select D3D as the renderer and...do I really have to tell you how low will your FPS go ?

The fact is, the renderer in UT produces much better looking results than in Quake, and is designed for larger maps too. It also handles mirrors, etc. much better. It even has procedural texturing built in. So this isn't a valid comparison; UT runs slower because it does MORE. (And looks better for it)

Start-up Half-Life, the most popular online 3D FPS game at the moment (due to CS), try switching back and forth between the OpenGL and D3D renderers and compare the framerates. I know some of you are going to scream that HL is based on the Quake engine, etc, but just to let you know, only 20% of the HL engine code come from Quake.

Clue; most of that 20% is the RENDERING CODE, which is still largely OpenGL based. They have a wrapper layer between OpenGL and DirectX for the DirectX output. That's where the slowdown comes in. (For example, surfaces don't have to be decomposed into triangles in OpenGl; in DirectX they have to be... and in HalfLife, none of the surfaces are decomposed into triangles by preprocessing the data - which is why it's slower; OpenGL drivers are optimized for this kind of work... but they're doing the conversion themselves).

Simon