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?

[haruchai]

Hey, if you get your act together, you can always make a comeback. Apple did it; Linux helped make Unix relevant again outside of big iron.
But, you have to be able to sell it and to deliver.

Re:That's all great

[AlphaWolf_HK]

But unless they can fully simulate boob physics proper, it's all for nothing.

Re:Is opengl relevant anymore?

[mark-t]

That fuss, as I understand it, culminated in a lot of former opengl developers giving up on opengl and moving to directx, even though it meant being windows only... I was asking because with that mass exodus, does opengl still have a critical mass to sustain itself in the mainstream?

Re:Is opengl relevant anymore?

[zach_the_lizard]

It's all you get on many embedded platforms, such as the iPhone, Android, and friends, plus it's all you get on Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, etc. etc. So long as there are 3d applications on those platforms (and others), and no new spec is created, OpenGL will have a critical mass to survive. Whether it will ever take over the Windows game development market again remains to be seen, however.

Re:Is opengl relevant anymore?

[Mad Merlin]

Is this modded troll because someone doesn't like the truth? What he stated here is a fact. Xbox360's success has ensured that most mainstream developers are using DirectX. You and I may not like it, but it's a fact.

Yeah, and then you can just port it straight to the PS3! Oh, wait...

Re:Is opengl relevant anymore?

[Beelzebud]

Have you ever tried playing modern games in Wine? It's a crap-shoot on weather or not they look correct. OpenGL is still very relevant for Linux and Mac gaming. Besides, how do you think Wine accelerates games? It's still using OpenGL even if it's a Direct X game.

Sound

[tepples]

Now if we could only convince some of the top development studios to believe this.

DirectX is not just graphics; it's also sound and input. Programs that use OpenGL have to use something else for sound and input. One popular choice for these is SDL; another is Allegro. But since the introduction of PulseAudio, sound in Linux games has been a cluster[intercourse]. Specifically anything using the Allegro library lost sound, and Allegro games are still silent in (for example) Ubuntu 10.04.

Re:Will we live to see open source catching up?

[meteficha]

Yes, Mesa has a software implementation, but Mesa is a *lot* more than that. Most, if not all, open source drivers use Mesa/Gallium3D infrastructure, including nvidia/ati/intel open source drivers.
So yes, it is a problem even if you got the best graphics card on the market unless you use proprietary software. But staying open means staying with OpenGL 2.1 right now.

Re:Is opengl relevant anymore?

[Beelzebud]

Not trying to troll at all, and I concede your point. I know Valve has even stated that the reason Source isn't on the PS3 (it will be for portal 2) was because of the cell processor in the PS3. It wasn't because of OpenGL. I stand corrected on this point.

Re:Buzz-speak

[cas2000]

why use the made up word "pseudo-words" when the real phrase "made up words" works just fine?

and why use the word "fine" when there are dozens of synonyms or near-synonyms that work just as well?

Fusion of mobile and desktop platforms

[Luckyo]

The blending of OGL and OGL ES is huge - it essentially underscores that smart phones are now a major 3D gaming platform. I'm really surprised that most poeple here are talking about PC support rather then note the fact that essentially any PC game built for OGL can be ported far more easily to moble platforms now.

Additionally with Nokia's Meego and Google's Android being essentially modified Linux and both likely offering support for this, this may give us a renaissance of linux gaming. And by this I mean proper linux gaming and not "wine" gaming.

Re:Wednesday

[Chaos Incarnate]

OpenGL works well... for the features it provides. Direct3D still has a larger feature set, as well as the added bonus of the other DirectX APIs.

There are cases where OpenGL makes sense, but if your target is Windows and you want features like Tesselation, it doesn't make any sense to cripple yourself for the sake of possible ports down the road.

Re:Just maybe...

[RAMMS+EIN]

``Perhaps there would be better reception for all of these new OGL iterations if they saved up some worthwhile features before putting them into the spec, and just leave the new stuff as extensions until they have a nice upgrade to show.''

My understanding is that they used to do that, but got overtaken by Direct3D because people thought OpenGL was stagnant.

I agree with you, though. As long as it can be put in extensions, that is a nice way of advancing the capabilities of your system without polluting the core standard with things that, perhaps, nobody will be using anymore 10 years from now. On the other hand, if a bump in version number makes the world happy, then why not? You can always cook up a new standard to get rid of the bloat (as exemplified by OpenGL ES).