I wonder if all these posts and suggestions are read by THE APPROPIATE ogl persons in the ARB or whatever or, on the other hand, just by common ppl… I never see responses from ATI/NVIDIA or moderators…
Originally posted by santyhammer:
I wonder if all these posts and suggestions are read by THE APPROPIATE ogl persons in the ARB or whatever
Not to my knowledge, no. In 5 or so years of lurking I don’t recall ever seeing a suggestion on this forum get anywhere.
Part of the reason is probably the low signal to noise ratio hereabouts - many, possibly most posts here don’t seem to understand what OpenGL is, and as such are not going to be taken seriously by the ARB. Maybe aggressive moderation would help, maybe not.
The perception within the ARB (as mentioned in meeting notes) is that these boards are mainly used by hobbyists, rather than by professional developers. That’s increasingly untrue of the Advanced forum, IMHO, but it’s true of this one.
These forums are an excellent place to test the waters for extension writers. If enough support for a new feature is found here, and nobody points out any glaring flaws, then one could choose to propose an official extension to the appropriate people. In some ways, this is an excellent form of peer review.
never see responses from ATI/NVIDIA or moderators
As of this writing this is an unmoderated forum. The companies ATI/NVIDIA probably can’t respond for legal reasons, but persons from the companies that make up the ARB do and have posted(in a capacity not representative of the views of the company). Also, company members often use these forums as a reference. Often, the question needing resolving has already been asked.
The Math/Algorithms forum probably has the widest range of users/contributors. Novices, Hobbyists, Professionals, Officials, Educators, Dilletantes.
Well… I think the “appropiate” nvidia/ati /arb cometee should see almost this ogl 2x suggstions… there are VERY interesting questions in this forum, and they should listen us 8(
Some ARB representitives do read these forums. The problem is that, like MikeC pointed out, most of the suggestions here either aren’t appropriate for core GL or aren’t problems that actually need solving. Most of the other suggestions are covered by things the ARB is already considering, so ARB members can’t discuss them openly.
There should be a cometee from the ARB that reads everything here and then filters out all the crap people write.
Then at the ARB meetings they shoud discuss all the relevant stuff.
Among all the crackpot ideas people get, there is bound to be some great ideas.
Is there anyone from the ARB that can say if such a thing is being done?
[This message has been edited by lc_overlord (edited 03-03-2004).]
Originally posted by lc_overlord:
Is there anyone from the ARB that can say if such a thing is being done?
It is not being done by the ARB as a group, in general, although some of us look in from time to time and some companies use the forums to raise specific issues. Mostly it’s because ARB representatives are very busy people. Partly it’s because of concerns about accidentally getting encumbered IP into OpenGL. Partly it’s because developers do not speak with a unified voice.
The ARB members would like to see more ISV engagment. We are open to signing up ISVs as ARB Participants, if they will actually commit some employee time to helping the ARB on an ongoing basis - but this rarely happens, because the ISVs are equally busy.
So most of the ISV feedback happens via one-on-one ISV:IHV contacts and is filtered to the ARB by those IHVs. But we do have a few ISVs who have been part of the group for a long time and have made major contributions, and we’d like to find more.
How would one become more engaged with the ARB? As far as I’ve been able to find, reading the ARB transcripts, approved specifications, and browsing these forums is the closest I can find.
I’m essentially an independent person with ideas and questions, so technically I probably shouldn’t be talking to the ARB. How would ISV’s or even independent people be able to be involved then? What kind of time commitment/work are you referring to?
Also, does anyone know where the 3DLabs OGL2 original specs went? I think they might have been taken down…
EDIT: Nevermind, I found them… I’m an idiot. Speaking of 3DLabs though, what exactly is the timeline for shifting to Pure OGL 2.0? Seems like it’s going REALLY slow at the moment.
Originally posted by Adruab:
EDIT: Nevermind, I found them… I’m an idiot. Speaking of 3DLabs though, what exactly is the timeline for shifting to Pure OGL 2.0? Seems like it’s going REALLY slow at the moment.
It seems that the whole ‘pure’ OpenGL thing went down the drain and OpenGL 2.0 will just be an evolution of the current spec.
How would one become more engaged with the ARB?
Check the Join the ARB as a non-voting member page. Or is that what you were saying you found?
Well they were initially suggesting a progression from legacy+new stuff to like half and half and then finally pure. But I haven’t heard anything about a time table… perhaps it has disappeared sigh. I was soooo looking forward to the pure version. The object orientation, memory stuff, all looked like it would be a way better method of organizing things. Things like having glObjects and memory pinning would be really nice.
Heh, No, I found the original SGI whitepapers (under the whitepapers section… 
). Thanks for the link.