Programming OpenGL Articles 89
An anonymous reader wrote in to say: "The O'Reilly Network has posted a bunch of articles about OpenGL
programming under Linux. There's an introduction
to OpenGL, and then two
related
articles detailing how to create a OpenGL application. They've even
included a demo program
which is released as PD.
Hopefully this will inspire more programmers out there to use OpenGL
in their applications."
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
Gingko
Re:OpenGL (Score:4)
OpenGL isn't dying. At least, it won't from id.
Re:So that we all know what we're talking about... (Score:3)
The OpenGL ARB is a lot slower in aporoving proposed extensions. The reason for this is that OpenGL was not designed with games in mind, and they have a lot to consider before adding an extension, so not to contaminate the OpenGL standard by mistake.
Direct3D is another story - MS accepts a lot of extensions propsed by cardmakers really quickly, primarily because it is designed for games, and for game developments, more features == better eye candies.
The result is, D3D now incorporates a lot of features that OpenGL doesn't. Hardware shadow, Texture compression, Bump mapping, Anisotropic filtering, Video texture are the most important ones.
On a driver level, the two are similar. However feature-wise, there are some capabilities of a video card that can be made use by D3D but not OGL, unless you add your propriety extensions, which I don't recall a lot of games use.
Maybe more companies like id can change the minds of the OGL ARB...
Re:OpenGL (Score:1)
Gingko
Re:OpenGL (Score:1)
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
I don't like their advertising practices. I've tried their products before, and their claims about "better stability" are so much bullshit. If you want to buy their products, fine, be my guest; however, if I was going to go for a commercial Xserver (which I'm not, I like XFree just fine, thanks), I'd go for MetroX first - they support the free software community, instead of slamming it and (seemingly) trying to generate ill will.
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:5)
The X-Box specs put it as a larger leap over PSX2 than PSX2 is over Dreamcast, but anyone with sense can see that by the time it ships, the hardcore gaming PC will already be a generation ahead of it in raw power.
The X-Box should be able to keep up for a while, because you can usually expect to get about twice the performance out of a fixed platform as you would when shooting for the broad PC space, just because you can code much more specifically.
I don't have much of a personal stake in it, but I am pulling for the X-Box. If you need to pick a feudal lord in the console market, I would take microsoft over sony/sega/nintendo any day.
John Carmack
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
Re:AN OpenGL - No Chit!! (Score:1)
I thought the rules were:
- AN if the first letter of the next word is a vowel.
- A if the first letter of the next word is a consenant.
Score: 2 (Informative)Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:2)
yeah, there's a poster of that (Score:1)
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
Take for example DX8. There are many new features close to nVidia's hardware (because nVidia currently has the best hardware features and nVidia is in close co-operation with MS). Now if MS doesn't like ATI and opts to not include API for vertex blending (supported by ATI hardware) then game developers won't use vertex blending and there is no advantage for ATI cards to include that feature. No matter how much faster/better looking games could be if it was supported by DX.
_________________________
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
Have you ever written anything in DirectX? It's every bit as fucked up as MS's other API's. Besides that, it's tied to Wintel only, while OpenGL works on pretty much every platform worth a damn.
Besides that, OpenGL has a much more active and rabid community around it. There are OpenGL tutorials all over the web, and books on it, and a hall of a lot more games with OpenGL support.
It's entirely possible that DirectX will someday be able to do more than OpenGL can. But it will always be a pain in the ass to code in.
Some Toon Rendering stuff here (Score:1)
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
I think that Sony will keep the PS2 as a fixed platform, perhaps with the exception of some peripherals. This is what I want in a console! Something that I don't have to worry about upgrading to play x game on it.
Refrag
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
OpenGL pretty good (Score:1)
portion is completely built
on Mesa/OpenGL and there are plenty of good
reasons to use it.
1)Completely open in terms of API
2)Supported by GNU/Linux, Unix(through
Mesa) and Microsoft(included in MSVC++).
3)Books are pretty good.
I was able to even build a crude button system
with the GLUT library, and porting to Windows only
took 1 day.
There are some limitations, but overall, the
design is pretty logical and relatively easy
to learn.
San Le
slffea AT juno.com
slffea.com
Re:Real Inovation (Score:1)
The problem is that X is basically inferior to direct rendering subsytems (like GDI on Windows.)
It is good enough for most desktop apps where flicker doesn't matter that much but for gameres every bit of additional power counts.
Even for 2d games like AOK there is support in DirectX for page flipping which saves one huge screen blit. Where is that support in XFree (3 or 4.)?
Console Development with OpenGL (Score:5)
As I understand it, right now licensed developers can use Sega's built in OS for low-level stuff on the DC, or they can use WinCE + DirectX. I've read that there is OpenGL support for the PowerVR2 that powers the Dreamcast, but whether or not that's available to developers now, I have no idea.
Instead of WinCE and DirectX, we could finish the port of Linux and add OpenGL. Linux would handle all MM, networking, input devices, and the framebuffer (which is 8MB on the DC). Then we could also port SDL [libsdl.org] because I see it as the most full-featured and cross-platform (7 different platforms) open source multimedia library in existence. For example, this would allow a port of QuakeForge much simpler than a full native DC port.
Finally, OpenGL (which can be accessed through SDL) would be ported (still fuzzy on this) and you would have a full development system for the DC that was fully open source and useable by anyone with a DC (without a GD-ROM).
DC software developers would be able to choose which kernel features and libraries they want distributed with their final project. Even Sega would win with something like this, only problem is, finding concrete specs on the Dreamcast is next to impossible. Hopefully this could be started without waiting on the DC to be "opened" by Sega.
Right now I'm trying to determine how the CDX demo CD fooled the DC into thinking it was a valid DC app. This DC development site [mangakai.org]has info on how to build a serial cable to interface to the PC. If software can be burned that accesses the serial port, then we can do cheap development on the DC. I've also e-mailed the guy who put up the DDH page (for more info + schematics), but I haven't got a response yet. If anyone out there has any low-level info at all on the DC please let me know.
Marcus
Re:OpenGL pretty good (Score:1)
Gingko
Porting to Win32 (Score:1)
_Adam Poulos;
Re:Farenheit, Microsoft and stagnation (Score:1)
-E
Re:OpenGL pretty good (Score:1)
>a day to port some GLUT code to Windows? I
>thought that GLUT code compiles out of the
>box on Windows and on Linux and on Mac and
>on...
You are mostly right. The reason it takes me
so long is partly due to my ignorance of MSVC++
( Also, I need to change all file names to the
8.3 name restriction under Windows 95) and
a few quirks of MSVC++(you need #include
windows.h), and some variable
names aren't allowed, but otherwise, it is
very straighforward.
Re:OpenGL (Score:1)
What is Carmack saying about OGL vs. DirectX?
Re:Open GL vs. 3dfx (Score:3)
Because it is a CLEAN and ORTHOGONAL API design. You probably don't remember Execute Buffers back in Direct3D 3.0 It only took MS _4_ versions to get a graphics API straightened out.
not true (Score:1)
D3D on the other hand always supplies you with a software emulation for a certain feature. Besides that, MS picks up new features very quickly and for example with the D3D 8, now in betatesting, D3D will have more features than OpenGL.
I'm an OpenGL programmer, I love the api, but please, don't drag the old OpenGL vs D3D debate into this thread. There is no 'BETTER' or 'WORSE'. There is just: 'this api works on windows' and 'this api works on more than just windows'. Take your pick.
--
Erm.. (Score:1)
To which features are you refering? When I look at the specs for the vertex and pixel shaders for d3d 8, I can't imagine what kind of 'revolutionairy' feature won't be able to build with that. Sure, perhaps hardware voxels or NURBS tessalation in hw is an option that is not included, but are these features already announced by vendors? most cards are hardly able to render the shaders in hardware, do T&L etc. When the majority of consumers are using hardware that is able to do all that, we will be a year from now, and D3D 9 will be at the horizon.
Still liked your shader implementation a lot though :) cheers.
--
Re:Farenheit, Microsoft and stagnation (Score:1)
As far as the scare about OpenGL in Win2K, it's true that it was blown somewhat out of proportion. OpenGL sits along side DX7 in Win2K, and both sides seem to be happy...for now. The one thing I did take away from the whole "statement" from MS was that (obviously) their efforts for the future would be concentrated on DX. Well, duh...
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
Granted id is focused more on PC games, but at least from a mass-market viewport, consoles seem to be in the lead. When you say portability, the Linux and OSX markets seem pretty small compared with the 1-out-of-4 household PSX market.
Quake III Arena rules, btw.
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
Chris
cfreas@multisoft.com
Semi-on topic post (Score:1)
I would really appreciate anything, especially code examples...
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:5)
After GLQuake and other OpenGL game titles began shipping, 3D accelerator manufacturers saw the business sense in supporting OpenGL, and Microsoft was not in a position anymore to stop them -- although some manufacturers were still very edgy about putting too much support into OpenGL. At least they could post OGL drivers on their driver support Web pages without too much fear.
By mid-late 1998, there was a serious leadership vacuum in the OpenGL space. The 3D accelerator vendors didn't have strong leadership anymore because SGI was busy dealing with its own set of issues. This caused a very fractured OpenGL strategy to develop on the PC -- basically, OpenGL was considered a necessary API for support, but each vendor sort of went their own way when it came to extensions, stability, and optimization.
By early 1999, those 3D chip vendors that were not NVidia realized they were at a very significant disadvantage when it came to API support under Windows. 3Dfx had Glide, sure, but Glide was already singing its swan song as developers started moving to more standardized APIs. At this point, NVidia also began exposing strong OpenGL extensions so that developers could begin using their cool features before DX8 shipped. This has set a precedent of exposing pretty core features of a chip set in OpenGL before DirectX N+1 ships. Hopefully other vendors -- specifically ATI and 3Dfx -- will get their respective acts together and start shipping chips and drivers competitive with NVidia's.
The key now is to watch how multiple vendors resolve their disparate extensions without a single strong leader that everyone trusts. If they can't manage to come up with a set of universal extensions and a consistent, predictable path to rolling these capabilities into future OpenGL base specifications, then things could get very touch and go until a strong leader emerges in the OpenGL space.
Brian Hook
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
One Microsoft Way
Re:C++ Comment Style (Score:1)
OpenGL and DirectX: the magic of learning curves (Score:1)
Re:OpenGL and DirectX: the magic of learning curve (Score:1)
-bart
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
farenheit (Score:1)
kicking some CAD is a good thing [cadfu.com]
Here's an idea.. (Score:1)
Real Inovation (Score:2)
Re:Open GL vs. 3dfx (Score:3)
Open GL support (Score:1)
In same cases the price is only $29 !
Worth checking out.
Re:farenheit (Score:1)
Re:Open GL vs. 3dfx (Score:1)
do you mean the Glide or D3D with the 3dfx drivers. Colors being messed up is uesly a problem with the drivers gamma correction not the API. I have not tryed it but I have heared that the OpenGL implmation in the 3dfx driver is not that good?
OpenGL (Score:1)
Bur with the advent of DirectX 7.0 and the specs of the Xbox, I don't see OpenGL havng much of as life anymore. Look what Carmack's even saying about DirectX vs OpenGL, look at the Microsoft/Bungie combo, look at what the Xbox provides compared to OpenGL...and you my friend will be looking at the end of OpenGL within the year.
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
What's this? The back side of Linux Journal? If you haven't tried it lately, the Utah drivers are awesome and stable (modulo the NVidia ones). Then there's PI's DRI drivers, which are also spectacular (or at least the G400 ones, the card I have, and it looks the 3dfx ones are also quite good), but take longer to build ;-), and if you chose to buy an NVidia card, there's their drivers, too.
For those of you that don't understand the LJ reference, go dig a LJ from January or something close. If you haven't got one, it's not really that important, you are only missing some fud...
Moderators: please think twice before marking something as "interesting" without doing some research first.
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
And how many portable games have YOU worked on?
Carmack uses OpenGL because DirectX ISN'T available on *Nix, or Macs. So much for Direct X "being superior"
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
Hmmm... I bought XiG's accelerated server for ATI Rage128 cards. Constant lockups anytime I tried to run a GL app. Precision Insight's drivers, however, never gave me that problem.
Adam
Fahrenheit (Score:3)
gives SGIs take on why they no longer support Fahrenheit.
Gingko
Re:OpenGL, DirectX and such (Score:1)
Standards are a _GOOD_ thing.
> there havn't been any changes to it sense 1.2 back in 95ish.
Better to have extensions that can be implemented any hardware vendor, and then re-evaluated to see if it should be moved into the core idea, instead of some half-baked idea. Do you remember execute buffers from D3D 3.0 ? How many versions has DX been through? Probably because MS can't get it RIGhT the FIRST time.
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
I own one, and would love to see hardware acceleration in action.
Any good tutorials to near-beginner in OpenGL? (Score:1)
Re:OpenGL (Score:4)
1. The moral issue: Direct3d is a closed Microsoft technology. Unless you're sitting in front of a WinX box or using some of the nifty Wine emulation, you probably won't be able to use Direct3d. This means, effectively, that Direct3d at this point can't be used by anyone seriously developing software (like CAD/3d design apps or even games) that hopes to be cross-platform. Writing Direct3d apps means you're aiding and working for the man. Do you only want to develop for Microsoft products?
2. OpenGL can always add features/extensions from competing API's. Maybe the standards process isn't as fast as it should be (look at all those GL_NV extensions), but there is clearly an open, active industry wide process to add new functionality to the API. Just as Direct3d has cloned OpenGL over the past few years, OpenGL can always effectively clone Direct3d.
3. Some of the new Direct3d features that I've seen (like shaders and skinning) are pretty highlevel. Shouldn't these be done in a higher level API? Even if these new features are germaine to a fairly low-level 3d api, by the time these extensions are adapted well enough by 3d cards to actually be usable in a mainstream graphics engine, the OpenGL standards body will probably have added them.
"look at the Microsoft/Bungie combo"
4. Bungie is a really good company, and it's a smart move of Microsoft's to pick them up, and I'm anticipating Halo just as much as the next guy, but I really don't see what this has to do with a graphics API.
"look at what the X-Box provides compared to OpenGL"
5. The X-Box is a console. OpenGL is a graphics API. This is comparable to saying, "look at what Linux provides compared to C." Also, the X-Box, according to the specifications, will support OpenGL (as does the PS2 and Dreamcast) and probably plenty of other API's, so I don't really see what your point is here.
Simply because OpenGL finally has some real competition (unlike glide *cough* *cough*), I fail to see how it's going to die.
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
If you have an AGP card, support is pretty good. PCI cards are not supported as well (PI will be writing PCI Gart support for the linux kernel to improve performance for PCI cards). However, Rage128 cards are the least supported of the cards, having the newest drivers.
Adam
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
One Microsoft Way
Re:Any good tutorials to near-beginner in OpenGL? (Score:4)
The ISBN number is 0-201-60458-2
--
OpenGL Love/Hate relation ship. (Score:2)
- Great performance.
- Rock solid stability (On NT anyway
- It support BeOS (oh yea, and Linux too.)
Things I hate about OpenGL:
- Dumb extansibility model. C'mon, do we need NV_COMBINE_REGISTERS, ARB_COMBINE_REGISTERS, and ATI_COMBINE_REGISTERS? There should be more central control. (What the hell is the ARB doing).
- Slow pace of feature add-ons. With a game market moving at this pace, and nVidia incorporating dozens of cool (usefull!) features every 6 months, OpenGL just can't seem to keep up with DirectX. I think Direct3D 8 already outguns OpenGL for standard features.
- It still only really usable in Windows, Suns, and SGIs.
Argg, what to do! Of course, there is no way in hell I'm going to learn Direct3D, because frankly, the designers were on crack. They have a beautiful extendible model (a set of COM objects) and then they fuck the API to look like this! (Of course you'll have to pry my dead body of DirectDraw, hard to program or not!)
Re:farenheit (Score:1)
Borland C++Builder is excellent for openGL programming, for example. Easy to whip up nice fancy shit.
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
XFree is actually good enough if you settle for that. The biggest problem I have with their stuff is crappy mouse support. It is very annoying having cursor freeze during any larger screen update.
Re:Real Inovation (Score:1)
"The only problem with Linux gaming is getting the games and apps themselves ported. "
No , not really. There are tons of other issues like proper support for various controlers, unified and fully hardware based sound support.
Linux is not great gaming machine by any means.
Actually, what you said fits better BeOS than Linux since BeOS has really great standarized support for these features but lacks anybody who would be willing to use it.
What about the Khronos Group SIG? (Score:1)
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:2)
If you're developing new graphics technology and Microsoft opts not to support your new features in their next API, the effect would be chilling on your product's competitiveness. This is something that's always in the back of the mind of a hardware developer as they decide how vocal they wish to be about Direct3D and its shortcomings.
Brian Hook
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
Re:Some Toon Rendering stuff here (Score:1)
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:1)
OpenGL, DirectX and such (Score:1)
DirectX may be a bitch to code in and it may be windows only but at least it is still being updated with new features.
OpenGL otoh is simplicty in its self to code in.
And ill take GL anyday over DirectX
Sanchi
Makefile note (Score:2)
Re:Love that sig . . (Score:1)
___
Re:Open GL support (Score:1)
All I am saying is that xig drivers are painless alternative which works very well and "out of the box"
And no I have no links to xig beside using their products.
Cleary, as of now, xig solution is much better than anything else for Linux.
Prove to me that xig solution is not superior to alternative before flaming away !
It costs money but so do almost all good things in life.
So that we all know what we're talking about... (Score:5)
-- 3dfx vs. OpenGL. This is like comparing apples to pigs. OpenGL is a crossplatform 3D API for a variety of cards and systems. 3dfx is a card manufacturer. Possibly what the individual who wrote this post was thinking about is Glide, which is 3dfx's own semi-proprietary (now open, actually, if memory serves) API for programming their video cards. The Linux XFree86 3.3.x OpenGL drivers nestle on top of Glide. So do the XFree86 4.0 ones, although to a far lesser degree.
-- OpenGL HAS been changing since 1995. It is an "open" format, ergo the name "OpenGL". Anybody who has an OpenGL implementation can write extensions to it. Examples of these include some of the proprietary extensions developed by NVidia for their cards, like GL_REGISTER_COMBINE_NV. While the base implementation of OpenGL hasn't changed much, the extensions have. A variety of the more "popular extensions", such as the compiled vertex arrays extension, have made it into most OpenGL compliant libraries.
A body exists known as the OpenGL Architectural Review Board who approves these extensions and gives them an ARB approval rating, thereby formalising them as extensions which people should support. An example of which is the GL_MULTITEXTURE_ARB extension.
The primary difference to a hardware vendor between OpenGL and Direct3D is that Direct3D is controlled solely by Microsoft. (What a surprise). Therefore, if a company like NVidia, Matrox, 3Dfx, or ATI wants to develop some nifty new function on their cards, like... hardware mesh deformation, for instance... they would want to support both OpenGL and Direct3D. Now, with Direct3D, they need to pester Microsoft to add it to the official implementation, and that could take forever, and cost them lots of money. For OpenGL, since they write the OpenGL compliant libraries themselves (although often based on code by and licensed by SGI), they can do it immediately.
That's why OpenGL is IMO better: it's an Open API that can expand a lot quicker, and which better reflects the "I want it, I'll add it" philosophy which lets good stuff grow quickly. A company can add whatever they want to their OpenGL compliant libraries without having to suck up to SGI, whereas they DO have to suck up a lot to Microsoft to get anything done.
Nicholas
Re:Any good tutorials to near-beginner in OpenGL? (Score:3)
The Red Book is available online here [srk.fer.hr]
Some good tutorials are here
For general information, plus a lot of good links, www.opengl.org [opengl.org] is the place to look.
Gingko
Re:Any good tutorials to near-beginner in OpenGL? (Score:4)
- NeHe productions [gamedev.net] has over 20 OpenGL tutorials online, starting at the absolute beginning.
- The OpenGL Challenge [dhs.org] is a weekly OpenGL compo that requires entries to be opensource. Has some *really* cool stuff.
- Romka Graphics [madli.ut.ee] has loads of misc OpenGL stuff, worth checking out.
- The OpenGL FAQ and troubleshooting guide [frii.com] is another overload in OpenGL-related material.
And besides that, I also run my own daily news site located at www.demoscene.org [demoscene.org] and is all about multimedia development, so a couple of OpenGL-related links turn up every week. Hope this helps...
Re:Any good tutorials to near-beginner in OpenGL? (Score:1)
OpenGL and Open* are the way to go! (Score:1)
My experince with OpenGl was VERY posative, so I am excited about OpenAL and OpenGUI...
Just a thought...
Re:Open GL support (Score:2)
Ok, how's this? XFree86 is the only X server for Linux which supports DGA - hence, no other X server will run the majority of fullscreen Linux games.
--
Re:It's Too Late For OpenGL (Score:5)
Over the last year or two, it was amazing the amount of panic among hardware companies that Sony caused with the PlayStation 2. Engineers that really should have known better were walking around with a paniced look, thinking "my god, they are going to crush us, we need to rethink everything!". It was disturbing to see PR effect technical people that much.
PS2 is unquestionably the most powerfull console, but it is a straightforward evolutionary step in power, not the "unprecedented leap forward" that it was billed (and perceived) as. People generally realize that now.
Microsoft seems to have captured much of the same sense of technical inevitability with DX8.
DX8 is good. Microsoft has a long history of shipping an initially crappy product (DX3), then aggressively improving it until it is competative or superior to everything else. Many people underestimate the quality of microsoft's products by only forming opinions on early versions, and never revising them.
The crucial advances of DX8 are the vertex and pixel shaders. I think that the basic concepts are strong, and they will give real benefits.
I expect that that functionality will be exposed through OpenGL extensions by the time I need it.
For one thing, DX8 is modeled pretty closely on Nvidia's hardware, and Nvidia's hardware is already fully exposed through their register combiner extension, even somewhat moreso than under DX.
The issue will be finding consensus between the other hardware vendors.
The upside is that not all hardware designs are exactly in line with DX8, and some usefull and interesting features exist that DX8 doesn't expose. It is looking like several hardware vendors are making moves to expose ALL of their functionality through OpenGL extensions to be available when the product ships, rather than at the next DX cycle.
The other issue is still portability. I am 100% committed to delivering our next title on linux and MacOSX (NOT MaxOS-9), in an effectively simultanious timeframe. That would be more troublesome if I was gung-ho for DX8.
I'm happy that microsoft is doing a better job, but I don't feel that I will be in a disadvantaged position continuing to work with OpenGL.
John Carmack
Re:Real Inovation (Score:3)
Xfree86 4.0 has direct rendering, and Utah-GLX has been able to do direct rendering with XF86 3.3 for about a year now.
With OpenGL page flipping is handled by the driver if it is handled at all. Some drivers do it, but many don't because in practice it is a very small performance improvement. A large blit is nothing compared to drawing all of the polys required for a complex scene. As I recall from reading the utah-glx-dev list, the difference is somewhere around 2%. Hardly the killer feature you make it out to be.
Really, 3D drivers in Linux are not that bad right now. Nv and 3dfx are clearly on-board, and they are probably the two biggest players in consumer 3d hardware. The situation is only going to improve, and at an increasing rate.
The only problem with Linux gaming is getting the games and apps themselves ported. Hopefully that will improve now that the drivers are available.
If you're a hardcore gamer you'll probably continue dual-booting for now, but if that's the only reason you use ms-windows then you've probably paid your last MS-tax.
Re:OpenGL pretty good (Score:1)
8.3 restriction under win95? er... that's DOS's restriction, not Win95's.
Re:farenheit (Score:1)
Yes, its a crappy implementation, but its not THAT crappy. If you must have software OpenGL, then use Silicon Graphic's [opengl.org] replacement or use Mesa. [mesa3d.org]
Re:OpenGL pretty good (Score:1)
>8.3 restriction under win95? er...
>that's DOS's restriction, not Win95's.
A subtle point to be sure, but Win95 only
hides the fact that it only allows for 8.3
filenames, unlike Win98 which I think reformats
your HD to 32 bit, so filenames can actually
be larger.
I consider whatever I see when I open up a shell
as the operating system's filename limitation,
and if Win95 is limited by DOS, then it is a limit
of Win95 as well.
Now if you are able to truly have larger filenames
for your installation of Win95, then that's
another story.
Re:C++ Comment Style (Score:1)
certainly be upgraded to meet the standard.
Re:OpenGL pretty good (Score:1)
Of course, this whole thing is a hack (looking at the fat table with a disk editor isn't fun... fat32 filenames go like this:
lmnopqrs.tuv
abcdefgh.ijk
and windows reads this as "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv".
Anyway, that convinces me that win95 has true long filenames (altho it IS really just a gigantic hack).
Re:Open GL vs. 3dfx (Score:1)
Farenheit, Microsoft and stagnation (Score:3)
Farenheit was supposed to be a joint initiative between Microsoft and SGI in an attempt to unify the diverse graphics APIs. It was thought by many that this was an attempt by Microsoft to appease the developers, coming at around the time when major developers were petitioning Microsoft to continue with OpenGL support in Windows9x - most particularly to do with Microsoft's removal of the MCD model, forcing IHVs to write complete implementations of OpenGL - a non trivial task.
Bits of Farenheit were supposed to appear in DirectX 7. I didn't see them. I read a white paper on the scene graph technology they were talking about - looked interesting. I believe the Farenheit project was eventually 'put on the back burner' a little while ago now.
There was a scare around Christmas when it was reported that OpenGL wasn't making its way into Windows2000 releases. This turned out to be a rumour and nothing more.
On the subject of stagnation of the API: Don't forget that vendors can expose extensions to OpenGL through a well documented and standardised extensions mechanism. This is what happened with multitexture - in GL 1.1 multitexture was exposed via an extension, many vendors implemented it and thus in 1.2 the feature was standardised. It's a very different model to DirectX's 'lets throw everything we can think of in this year and give em another interface to play with' development. The point is that OpenGL was designed properly in the first place.
Gingko
Re:Real Inovation (Score:1)
Here we have another example of Linux making huge leaps forward in technology that's already outdated. Let's all be happy for our retarded stepchild operating system, shall we?
OpenGL is not as fast as the other graphics solutions out there. Sure, some of them may be proprietary but this just shows what the problems of an open source, free operating system *are*.
It's not something that's going to get fixed in the short term. The simple fact is Linux will always be slower in 3d graphics. If you're a gamer, do not install Linux. I can not stress this enough.
Do not let the "selection" of a few big name games trick you into wasting your time. Most of the games for Linux suck and they're slower than their windows counterparts.
Unless you're a bigfan of the linux-only games like xlander. Some of you may remember lander as that game you used to play from some shareware pack on your windows 3.1 box. Well if you've been wanting to play that again, no worries! It comes with most Linux distributions.
That's right, one of the games most linux distributors bundle with their software is a crappy, flickery version of a game that uses technology available from long before Windows 3.1.
Let's be honest here: Do you really care that some kid hacking in his basement is learning opengl? When's the last time you spent a long time playing a game some kid made in his basement over the weekend? Real games take a lot of money, time, dedication and skill to develop. Your average high schooler does not have any of these.
In closing, an example: I know so many linux fans that just love the game civilization: call to power. I bought it because several of my friends love playing games on Linux (because it's the only thing they run). I wish I could return the game. It's a boring, annoying piece of crap. It's much less fun than the earlier 16 color civilizations you're probably familiar with. But they'll play it day and night.
There's a reason behind this madness. See, it's because they want so badly to like Linux, to be cool that they're willing to settle for something much less fun than what's available out there in our big world of games. It's really pretty sad.
Thank you.
-lb