Originally posted by skynet: Sad but true. As developer you never get any feedback from ATI about the status of reported bugs, if you don´t explictely ask for it. The only thing you can do is to download new drivers, see if the bug is still present or not. I many cases the bugs are in the drivers for months (see gl_TextureMatrix bug, introduced in pre 4.6 betas in MAY!).
I usually reply back to the guy reporting the problem when I get notified that a bug I filed got fixed. If you want to query status at a later point, just ask to get the EPR number when you report the bug. With an EPR number it takes me 10 seconds to look up the status of the bug.
As for bugs taking months to get fixed, this is much due to the length of the pipeline. Even if a bug is fixed the day after it got reported, it can still take two months before it reaches the public depending on how it times with the release schedule, testing and WHQL.
The gl_TextureMatrix bug may have appeared in a May driver, but wasn’t reported in May. I’m at home now so I can’t check, but I think I got the report in perhaps September. We can’t fix bugs we don’t know of.
Originally posted by execom_rt: They probably had to rewrite a lot of OpenGL code, breaking many things that were fixed in the past, focusing on the game’s performances rather than compatibility. (I hope I’m wrong about that )
There has recently been a large push on the OpenGL side for performance and stability. Which in a way is a good thing, but unfortunately also has meant that GLSL became secondary priority for a while. I don’t know the exact focus at the moment, but I’ve noticed that my list of bugs are getting attention again so I assume focus is shifting back.
Originally posted by relmas: Talking about drivers and GLSL, it would be good some linux drivers with proper GLSL support could come out quickly, because more and more people rely on linux for clustered computing and HW accelerated rendering.
Soon™. Honestly.
Originally posted by execom_rt: 64-bit OpenGL
Coming as well. Don’t know the exact status though.
As for Linux support in general. There’s a lot of work being done in this area at the moment. I’ve personally worked close with the Linux team to improve things, nail down bugs, updated the SDK framework to work in Linux and work together with automated testing suites. So for the next SDK release all OpenGL samples should work in Linux as well, and the next driver release should be pretty much up to date with the Windows version with features.
Thanks Humus for clarifying the situation, I know you guys are working hard at improving things everyday. Sure also is that ATI’s radeon line is targeted at the gaming market rather than volume rendering or GPGPU, so that, logically, the interface between ATI and the world is gaming oriented.
But could you try to give us some predictions as when GLSL will be stable on ATI hardware?
ATI bought FireGL a while back, so they must surely have a non-gaming-oriented interface to the world. You just have to mention the right kind of card to the right kind of people, using the right kind of secret handshake or something
Yes, FireGLs would nice to play with, but unfortunately I’m a poor CompSci head in a small lab with no money, forced to use cheapo hardware and to make do with it… If only we could all afford the best…
Originally posted by relmas: But could you try to give us some predictions as when GLSL will be stable on ATI hardware?
Depends on your definition of stable. I would say it’s stable now and has been for quite a while. Bugs are still around, but that’s the case for instance for ARB_fp too. It will never be bugfree.
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Honestly.