What do you think about the specification for the new OpenGL 3? Will it be the death of OpenGL as many people on the opengl.org boards think?
The announcement: http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=243193&fpart=1
I’m not well-grounded in this subject but I guess the lack of good drivers for OpenGL will continue…
Anyone knows what the object model was about that many developers say should have been in OpenGL 3 but was removed?
The object model is already in. It's in the extension "direct state access". What many people hoped (but didn't happen) is that OGL3 wouldn't have all of the legacy functions it had since version 1.0.
I read the discussion, but i don't know, what they are complaining about. But if they are right, and the direction of OpenGL moves away from gaming, then we have a real big problem. Just imagine for a second, what would happen, if OpenGL vanishes.
There will be only one 3D graphics library available: Direct3D
That would mean, the graphics card manufactures would only support D3D, because gaming maret is big.
Game developers (EA, Blizzard and all the other big players) would only produce games with D3D. This would mean the end to games for other platforms than windows.
Yes, for any platform, even Sonys PS3 and Nintendos Wii. At least for the multiplatform titles this would mean, no PS3 or Wii anymore, only Windows and Xbox.
For Linux this would also mean no more 3D games (ok, we dont lose that much…), even for wine, because D3D 10 is out of reach, i think (not to mention D3D 11)
And for Java gaming this would be the death of platform independence in the gaming area.
If those fears get true, than this would be bad news for Apples Mac OS X too.
But we are not at that stage yet, i hope. It would be interesting to see, what sony or Nintento have to say about OpenGL 3. At least Sony is a member of Khronos, right?
And what about Google? They have Android, and i'm sure they want to see some games for their mobile OS. Ah, thats OpenGL ES, maybe this will be the future of platform independent gaming.
if Opengl vanishes (which won't happen), there would soon be another library who would take its place.
Sounds more like a communication issue to me. Most people there seem very upset that they weren't told anything for a long while by Khronos on what OpenGL 3.0 would be. It seems in the meanwhile they have let their imagination run wild on what would come out, and now they're dissappointed.
OpenGLs problem is that not gaming companies are in charge of it but a bunch of crappy CAD vendors who just don't want to have to change their software.
You guys are jumping to conclusions too quickly… OGL cannot die as many applications depend on it. The consoles dont use OGL (only PS3, has GLES interface, but nobody uses it).
1- OpenGL is not going anywhere.
2- If it does, use a software renderer or Glide
Consider also that Apple's iPhone and the Android platform both use OpenGL ES heavily.
If these people are so keen on using objects maybe they should give jME a try 
A software renderer would work on the IPhone I think.
lol.
Well in all seriousness, some people in the industry seem to think that with stuff like Larabee and CUDA, both Direct X and OpenGL will no longer be used for the AAA titles, and there will be a return to people writing their own renderers, since these graphics cards are now almost completely programmable.
I liked the voxel rendering in Outcast so a return of it would be nice. 
But I don't know if the todays GPU architecture allows such rendering in an efficient way.
I would like OpenGL to grow so big that it could compete with directx as the main choice for games on the windows platform but with OpenGL 3, it feels like it's behind DirectX10. Mainly because of the deprecated stuff that was not removed (the fixed function pipeline).
I admit completely not looking into it, but it seems from that thread most fixed pipeline stuff IS deprecated and you can create a context that doesn't support any deprecated methods… (so in our terms, LWJGL might get a GL3 class without any of these fixed function things in it).
I haven't looked so much in it either, but yes I too got the impression that you can create a context without the deprecated stuff like you said. But the problem with that is that the graphics card driver developers still have to support the deprecated stuff, so they will have less time optimize the stuff that we game developers use.
Except they already support the deprecated stuff, and that's all in OpenGL 1 and 2 anyway. (Just like for DirectX drivers still have to support DirectX 1 to 9 as well)
Yes, I guess you're right.
llama said:
Except they already support the deprecated stuff, and that's all in OpenGL 1 and 2 anyway. (Just like for DirectX drivers still have to support DirectX 1 to 9 as well)
DirectX is not backwards compatible further back than 6 - 7 as far as I can recall..
Well dunno about Vista to be honest, but on XP I could still play Total Annihilation , which afaik is DirectX 5. Considering Vista contains more or less the same DirectX 9 as XP I wouldn't be surprised if it still works there too.
I think DX8 is the very first 3D DirectX. Also, one reason while DX is so popular is because it is not far from being an engine itself. It supports alot of things, and with DX having everything from graphics to sound to model loading, it is alot easier to use. Actually, a lot of games could be built using DX10 alone(although there are a few things- physics for example, that DX doesn't have). I can program all of these APIs, it's pretty cool.