Originally posted by HasrihnTokini: SGI hasn’t released the source to their implementation of OpenGL have they?
I don’t think so… which pisses me off in a way…
SGI has in fact released the entire source to their OpenGL sample implementation (plus GLU and GLUT
Even if they hadn’t, there’s a 3rd-party open-source implementation of OpenGL available (Mesa).
Even if neither of the above were available, that’s no reason to be pissed off; SGI is a commercial company and they don’t owe you anything.
If it were open sourced and had one official site where new versions are compiled, then it would progress much better, as everyone who had a mind to would go make modifications to the API and submit these modifications, and if they were good, usefull, and clean, then they could be added to it…
Nope, hasn’t happened yet. Although it has been frequently mentioned as a useful way of evaluating and generating interest in new features, it seems that the trouble involved in downloading Mesa or the SI, getting it to build and then implementing a mod is too much trouble.
Integrated into Microsoft. And anytime they realize their design is no good, they do it all over and you have to learn their new mistakes again, and again, and again, …
…Though OpenGL really has to move a little faster. Otherwise the OpenGL community will end up using large amounts of extensions, which will make the software “incompatible” again. This is not what OpenGL is supposed to be used for. Maybe picking up some more useful extensions into the spec would “unite” the OpenGL hardware/driver manufacturers and will make development less restrictive and unnecessarily complicated.
I am an ex directx programmer. I work doing 3D development for a retail organization. What we did’nt like about directx is that its changing all the time and not necessarily upwardly compatable. It does not function properly under windows NT and has a specification which does not need be supported by HEL or HAL to be certified directx compliant??? Pathetic. To us OPENGL is fantastic. Yes there may be a little more leg work required in certain areas to get the desired result, but the result is better. The platform is stable. Its more flexible and implements into MS windows cleaner. There are great books and manuals describing it in detail. The biggest bonus however is that I don’t have to talk to the MS directx bozo’s who will say anything they think that you want to hear. You would think they were running in an election.
My only concern with OPENGL is :
1 - that it will make a knee jerk reaction and add to much functionality to fast
2 - in a multi viewed app there seems to be no way of determining if another application is running and using a particular ICD with the graphics accelerator, which will cause any view becoming active that uses the same ICD to hang.
Smile, be glad OPENGL exists and that you are using it and not DirectX. Alternatively switch to directx, be depressed, and hope america does not elect another member of the bush clan.
As far as speed is concerned, I have a PII 350 with 320 MB of RAM and a Matrox Millenium G200 8 MB AGP card with the lastest w2k drivers (I use w2k).
When I played the Descent III demo in DirectX mode, my settings were 640x480x16 with a 16-bit zbuffer. The FPS was around 25. When I ran in OpenGL mode (which the game did not recommend), my settings were 1280x1024x32 with a 32-bit zbuffer. The FPS stayed between 20 and 40. Image quality was slightly improved in OpenGL mode.
Now, if I’m not mistaken, doesn’t that mean OpenGL is just a little bit faster than DirectX 7 on my system?
Other than vague or misleading nonsense in the press, OpenGL is not actually behind as far as I can see. So, please what specific features or in what areas do you see OpenGL as lagging behind DirectX?
I noticed one feature lacking, but only one: no support for rendering directly to a memory pointer (neither system nor video memory). I would prefer to completely bypass the Windows GDI bitmap functions and simply allocate a block of memory and use a single function call to tell OpenGL to render to it. DirectX DirectDrawSurface objects are basically blocks of video or system memory that can be read to or written to directly. Direct3D renders directly to these memory blocks, so you don’t have to mess with the GDI.
