Korval,
I’m not sure how to respond. You seem to have both misread me, and you have a really pesemistic attitude.
You don’t even seem to agree in principle that nVidia should be more open about what sort of application specific optimizations are done.
My post was not a design document, just an idea. I’d have more to say, but because did not really address what I wrote, I’d just be repeating myself.
You don’t even seem to agree in principle that nVidia should be more open about what sort of application specific optimizations are done.
Not to the level that you’re suggesting, no.
I’m of the belief that any optimization should work for any application, and that no one should put app-specific optimizations in at all. However, given that no driver writers today accept this policy, I’m perfectly willing to accept that some software goes faster than others, even if they do virtually the exact same thing. I don’t need to know how they optimized it or that it can be turned off; the time has already been spent/wasted, so I’m not interested in the particulars of the results.
My post was not a design document, just an idea.
A bad idea, as I pointed out.
That makes it much more clear to me now Korval. I was confused, because it seemed to me as if your argument was like an anti-abortionist arguing about how abortions should be done. I mean, if you don’t think application specific optimizations should be done at all, then why tell me that a control panel which lists optimizations would be non-user friendly? It clearly doesn’t matter to you how user friendly it is, because you don’t even believe it should exist.
Another way to put it, what if I promised that it would be so user friendly that your grandmother could use it (even if she is dead). It wouldn’t change your mind, so why bother.
What if I could guarantee that no one would ever sue nVidia for a specific optimization? You don’t care, so why bother?
Enough of that. If nVidia is going to create application specific optimizations, they should be open about it. The actual truth or falseness at the moment of the first part of that implication does not falsify the entire implication.
I mean, if you don’t think application specific optimizations should be done at all, then why tell me that a control panel which lists optimizations would be non-user friendly?
Because it’s true?
The veracity of my previous statements are not in question. That particular section of the control panel would be full of huge, very technical, descriptions of a number of optimizations/etc that 99.9% of graphics card users don’t care about one bit (if they understood it at all). And, of the 0.1% who would understand them, only about 1% of them would ever even consider turning any of them off. The section in question would be useful to only 0.001% of the graphics card user populace, which is hardly reasonable for them to add. Also, I seriously doubt you could design a user-friendly way to turn on and off highly complicated features.
It clearly doesn’t matter to you how user friendly it is, because you don’t even believe it should exist.
However, I happen to recognize that I live in a world where not everything is as I decide it to be. I can still have opinions on subjects that I don’t agree with having around. And, therefore, given that drivers include app-specific optimizations, I think it is a bad idea to have a driver interface to view and turn on/off these optimizations, for the various reasons I mentioned before.
What if I could guarantee that no one would ever sue nVidia for a specific optimization?
You can’t, so the point is moot.
If nVidia is going to create application specific optimizations, they should be open about it.
Why do you need to know precisely what is being optimized? Why do you need that in-depth knowledge of how their drivers and GL implementations work (which is propriatery, and therefore, isn’t going to be given out)?
Originally posted by Korval:
Remember, normal people have to use this dialog too; you can’t flood them with 1001 useless options. And detailing what these optimizations are can get very lengthy.
Why do normal people have to use this dialog box?
It would be nice to know what set of optimizations have been made when your app breaks on driver revisions. Less head scratching and finger pointing.
Things can be done in the way OC is hidden in CP. Install coolbits.reg & VOILA, you have all the stuff you need, but if you’re hummer, then ther’s nothing that makes your head hurt 
I got an unexpected performance dropdown on my FX5600 with the new driver, althought image quality looks a bit improved(on Quality tab setting 
- a Performance setting makes everything to look disgusting). I hoped they whould do some optimisations on ARB_fragment_program… well…
BTW - sorry for same stupid question - does someone know when we will be able to use glslang? Is GL1.5 ready by now? There should be experimental support for glslang if I’m not mistaken.
How can the fact that I used a rhetorical question make my point moot? (<-- not a rhetorical question)
My point was that the reasons you are against nVidia having a more open policy on optimizations actually have nothing to do with one company suing another or with how user friendly such openness would be.
I refuse to argue with a person who presents points that make no difference to them! If you say “Somebody might sue nVidia!”, and I say “Well, what if they didn’t”, and then you say “Umm, well, it still makes no difference to me”, then why should I bother to give you a real reason to think nobody would sue? It would be a waste of time because you don’t care. If you don’t care, why do you even bother to argue that point? That is called a red herring and I consider that a dirty trick.
That is why I proposed that rhetorical question, because I wanted to gauge if you were serious.
I think we should just continue to disagree. I’m not interested in a discussion where I have to explain the simplest rhetorical devices or be baited into arguing points that don’t make any difference.