OpenGL 4.1 Specification Announced

WesternActor writes "The Khronos Group has announced full details for the OpenGL 4.1 specification. Among the new features of the spec, which comes just five months after the release of the 4.0 specification, is full support for OpenGL ES, which simplifies porting between mobile and desktop platforms. It'll be interesting to see what effect, if any, this new spec has on the graphics industry — more compatibility could change the way many embedded systems are designed. There are lots of other changes and additions in the spec, as well." Reader suraj.sun contributes insight from Ars, which brings OpenGL's competition into focus: "OpenGL 4.0 brought feature parity with Direct3D 11's new features — in particular, compute shaders and tessellation — and with 4.1, the Khronos Group claims that it is surpassing the functionality offered in Microsoft's 3D API. ... Whether this truly constitutes a leapfrogging of Direct3D 11 is not obvious."

Re:Is opengl relevant anymore?

[cosm]

Linux is still a large OpenGL platform, and although you can use wine to get DirectX functionality, I would say OpenGL is still relevant, especially in the OSS side of things.

Re:Buzz-speak

[Speare]

Why use pseudo-words like "leapfrogging" when real words like "surpassing" or "overtaking" work just fine?

Leapfrog is a very old and well-known children's game which involves people continually taking the lead by surpassing (jumping over) their playmate. It has a connotation of an endless arms race or continual exchange of leadership in the marketplace. I think the use of the word "leapfrogging" here is perfectly apt. Idiom is a part of the language, and when properly used, gives another layer of nuance to the communication.

Re:That's all great

[pinkeen]

Check out Illusion's [wikipedia.org] games, boob physics as good as it gets

Re:Wednesday

[elfprince13]

You are aware of Valve and Blizzard, right?

Re:Wednesday

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Any 3D iDevice game is being done in OpenGL ES, which counts for a fair few(albeit mostly small and casual) games. Android likely accounts for fewer; but doesn't exactly do directx either.

Re:Wednesday

[the linux geek]

Source Engine is DirectX on Windows.

Re:Wednesday

[Beelzebud]

But they've ported it to Mac, and that version does use Open GL. Same for WoW, but Blizzard actually let's you enable OpenGL in windows by a config file. Although the last time I tried it, it didn't seem as stable as the DX client.

Re:Is opengl relevant anymore?

[Grey Ninja]

I work in video games. That's the most retarded thing I've ever heard. This is obvious trolling, so I won't bother with a deep response, but porting from D3D to OpenGL (or vice versa), is fairly straightforward. A much bigger problem is different CPU and memory architecture that makes porting a pain in the ass, as well as different first party requirements.

Re:Is opengl relevant anymore?

[shaitand]

"The embedded platforms you mentioned run opengl ES, which is not the same thing."

It is now. You need to work on reading comprehension.

Re:Wednesday

[bonch]

Um, yes? OpenGL ES is the standard 3D API on mobile devices as well as the PS3. Even the Wii has an OpenGL-like API.

Re:Is opengl relevant anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware that WINE uses OpenGL right?? And that some of the main features of DX11 (tesslation for example) where ports from OpenGL extensions that are years old ... OpenGL is good because its open. It doesnt take much to get a valid extension approved, infact you can write one yourself. It's not geared for gaming, nor does it have any features that a Graphics API shouldn't have. But its good and I dont want to see it gone anytime soon.

Re:Just maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

The fast iterations are all backwards compatible - so it does no harm to get them out quickly - developers can adopt new features at their own rate.

Plus some of the features like robustness against exploits (for WebGL), binary shaders, OpenGL ES 2.0 functionality and event sharing with OpenCL are worthwhile I would say

Re:Is opengl relevant anymore?

[TheTurtlesMoves]

A huge amount of the 3d computer market is not games. We have all nivida/linux machines in the lab (about 200 machine in the department) for protein structure visualizations. Another company i worked with had a huge investment for CAD/CAD hardware. Its all opengl.

Re:Sound

[Anonymous Coward]

Then came ESD, which worked on top of OSS but allowed multiple applications to play sounds at the same time. I actually fell from my chair the first time that happened. I had never heard that before. It didn't happen on Windows at the time, despite Windows being king then.

What complete and utter FUD. Funny how the Linux crowd here decries FUD and shouts loudly about marketing based on facts, until it's their turn to make up some random piece of absolute horseshit to make Windows look bad, and then suddenly it's +4 interesting.

If ESD dated back to the Win3.1 days I might have believed you, but I just looked at the ESD changelog, the initial version is given as April 1998. Are you honestly claiming Win95/98 was not capable of playing multiple sounds at the same time? Because... uh... that's not true. As in... made up. A falsehood. A lie.

Re:

[robthebloke]

I suppose there is no way to make such comparison now as almost nobody writes games which can run both.

Most studios who develop for consoles can.... Once you've added DX9 / DX10 / DX11 code paths, adding GL & libGCM really isn't that hard.

Nostalgia aside, from what I've been hearing from devs who had contact with DX and then picked up OGL, OGL API seems way more elegant and easier to deal with...

GL4.1 is a lot cleaner than OpenGL before 3.2 (which was a horror!), that much is true. However DX probably still pips it in terms of API cleanliness.