Opengl on game consoles, such as Playstation2?

OpenGL OpenGL: Advanced Coding
21

Originally posted by kaber0111:
And I’m guessing your not familiar with the petition many game developers signed and sent into Microsoft…

I’m quite familiar with it. I supported that effort at the time.

the OpenGL-ADVOCACY list

I don’t really have time to subscribe to yet more mailing lists. Is there an archive?

I know Michael, I work in the same group that he does. I think it’s safe to say that the folks in our group stopped caring about the OGL/D3D “war” a long, long time ago.

Right now MS has achieved this, there is enough critical mass of Direct3D where OpenGL really does not pose a threat.

Does MS prefer D3D to OGL? Yes, of course. I don’t blame them for it.

Does MS also have some very good reasons to support OGL? Yes, definitely. They will keep supporting it for a long time.

Do I think MS is currently taking any action to “sabotage” OGL? No, definitely not.

Do I think that MS was justified in wanting to create D3D? Yes, absolutely. At the time, D3D’s goals were very different from OGL’s goals, and MS saw that the best and quickest way to get 3D on Windows was to create its own API.

There is not a war going on between OGL and D3D! There are simply some people who still feel “grievances” and want to perpetuate them to eternity.

  • Matt
22

I totally agree - this topic has gone on for so long now, and i recently read and replied to a similar thread on another forum about the same issue. What you say is true I beleive - that the goals of each API were/are to a certain extent different. For example: The main backbone of 3d content creation; Alias|Wavefront, Softimage, etc, are they EVER going to use D3D in there apps? - well i doubt it tbh. Although yes 3dsmax has DX as an option within it - i see no real advantage to use it - and i doubt that having realtime effects in the viewport under DX8 is going to make all the other big names move to DX. So that is, IMO one of the key factors to M$ supporting OpenGL - because of the workstation market - they dont want people moving over to other OS’s instead of NT/Win2k. M$ NEEDS OpenGL - whether they like it or not.

I recently attended Milia 2001 in Cannes - where i spoke to many games developers about X-box, Ps2 etc. As I am teaching myself OpenGL for my own projects i asked a few people whether they thought X-Box would be supporting OpenGL. The main response was that they would be stupid not to. - I for one think that as a Newbie to the whole console situation, M$ want to be keeping as many options open to them as possible.

Then on the other hand - i dont KNOW first hand whether they will be doing this - and for as i can gather there are a few people from NV who post here who might know the full story but not be under authority to disclose info.

Well this is probably the longest post i have written to this forum as my modest yet ambitious programming skills lie in the shadow of all others here, and this has kindof turned in to a very long winded way of saying ‘er yeah i agree with what the other guy said’

BTW, if anyone could perhaps answer a question i have:

Are there ANY advantages in using DX8 over OpenGL? - or is it just everyone is going on about it because of the hype machine generated by Microsoft?

23

>the folks in our group stopped caring about
>the OGL/D3D “war” a long, long time ago.
ofcourse.
but there was a “war” and it was “not silly”.

>Does MS also have some very good reasons to
>support OGL? Yes, definitely. They will
>keep supporting it for a long time.
then please enlighten me why MS has not yet released a OpenGL driver to xbox developers?

-akbar A.

[This message has been edited by kaber0111 (edited 03-10-2001).]

24

Have you actual positive proof that they aren’t going to do that?

25

MS may or may not release OGL for XBox; after all, a game would really just have to link in a different driver to use it.

I do not know of any current plans for OGL on XBox, though, and since MS is responsible for all the XBox software, we aren’t going to put out an OGL driver on our own.

Here are some very good reasons why MS might not want to put out OGL support:

  • OGL is a big, bloated API. It’s hard to trim down OGL to the point where it works well for a console without gutting the API completely.
  • It would take away resources from getting the product out the door.
  • It would take away resources from supporting developers for the existing XBox API.
  • MS hasn’t seen strong demands from developers that OGL be supported. (or maybe they have, I wouldn’t know)
  • MS wants to control the API and doesn’t want to be bound by some of the design decisions made in OGL.

Please, folks, you’re looking too hard to find conspiracies where they don’t exist. MS is not a conspiracy. They’re a company. If you want to predict any company’s behavior, ask yourself, “what would they do to maximize their profits?” If you apply that standard to MS, or for that matter to any other successful company, you will find that everything makes sense.

There is no “war”, there is no “conspiracy”. All that there is is a company, MS, trying to build successful and profitable products, be it Windows or the XBox.

  • Matt
26

>Do I think MS is currently taking any
>action to “sabotage” OGL?

You’ve got be kidding me.

What makes an OS?
It’s applications, features, virtual memory swap code, driver design, file io, network stack implementation, gui, API’s, SDK’s,
etc…

Today to consumers an OS is not the features it has, it’s if it has PowerPoint, Word, Outlook, Adobe, Flash, VC6, and if it does those cool dissolve effects on the task bar,
that’s the OS to your average consumer…

At it’s lowest roots, what do most graphics application end up realying on most?
The Graphics API.

What makes us want to purchase an OS and stick with it even if it faults memory, locks up, etc…
The applications.

I think your seeing a trend here.

If all applications where cross platform, then it becomes a contest of who really has a better OS, better marketing scheme, better colors, nicer looking box, etc…

Personally if VC6, Outlook, all games (should be using OpenGL) where ported to linux or mac(os10) I’d never use Windows

Yamauchi of Nintendo had an interview a few days ago about developers who released there games on multiple consoles…
He talks about why Nintendo only sells there games on nintendo.
And why this is very beneficial to Nintendo and there hardware sales.

You can relate the same business model to what MS does with it’s API’s.
MS indirectly controls which OS space your app can go into…
And porting is good and all, but there should be no reason for porting if there is an “Open” API.
some stuff will always have to be ported though…

As for the archives of the OPENGL-ADVOCACY list, I couldn’t find them, but if you want
me to I can zip up the files and post them somewhere…

-akbar A.

27

>If you want to predict any company’s >behavior, ask yourself, “what would they do
>to maximize their profits?”
EXACTLY.

you asked the right question.
and the right answer is
“anything”.

btw,
you got to be kidding about why MS would not
want to release the driver to developers.

bbtw, you know developer’s and sdk teams really can’t end up costing that much.
I’m guessing probably a high salary would be 90k a year.

Say you have 10 people sdk team which seems pretty big, that’s not a lot of money.
Give them each a Ferrari, Awesome medical,
etc…

ferrari’s are probably around 210k for your top end ones?
210,000*10 = 2.1 mill

and that 210,000 is probably with luxary
tax…
if you add in the salaries it comes out to around 2.1 mill(once for cars) + 900,000 for salaries (annualy)

that still ends up being close to nothing when you consider the fact that ms is pumping half a billion dollars into the marketing on the XBOX.

Here let’s do a quick percentage drop…
500 million (half a billion) to 2.1 million (once) + 900,000 (annually)

i don’t think i need to do the math here,
but the diff is big

btw, if i got some calculations wrong,…
i really could care less, but I hope you see that money is not an issue…

-akbar A.

>- OGL is a big, bloated API. It’s hard to
>trim down OGL to the point where it works
>well for a console without gutting the API
>completely.
Gamecube’s API is very, very similiar to OpenGL.

[This message has been edited by kaber0111 (edited 03-10-2001).]

28

kbaer 0111 posted:
“Right now MS has achieved this, there is enough critical mass of Direct3D where OpenGL really does not pose a threat.”

You might be right if you are just refering to the games industry but if you look into the higher end 3d market you’ll see that OpenGL is the API to support. In high end CAD and content creation programs, D3D is even less often supported than GraPHIGS. MS will support OpenGL for this reason and would be stupid not too.

mcraighead posted:
“MS saw that the best and quickest way to get 3D on Windows was to create its own API.”

As with everything else it seems, MS bought up D3D in its infancy, I’m pretty sure, although the motive behind the action would be the same. I’m not sure if I agree with the statement that it was the best and easist way to get 3D on windows, though, since it had a lot of maturing to do.

Funk.

29

>In high end CAD and content creation
>programs

Last time I remember at a few engineering companies I went to, the CAD machines where running high end SGI boxes.

But for parts modeling at engineering companies your seeing a bunch of Pro/ENGINEER people…

30

exactly…
SGI boxes implies the use of OpenGL doesn’t it?

ProEngineer, Katia, AutoCAD, Alias, etc. …all of these high end programs, (until recently for some of them) don’t use D3D.

I was just trying to illustrate that OpenGL is still very much alive and almost unchallenged in certain parts of the industry.

Funk.

31

Totally, AFAIK 3dsmax is the only proper app that has an ‘option’ to use D3D - there arent any that use it exclusively. All the big names swear by OpenGL.

I spoke to the the Guy Demo-ing 3dsmax 4 at Milia - he said there are problems inherent in D3D that slow it down immenseley at anything more than 100,000 polys per frame - something Opengl doesnt seem to have a problem with.

Also, from what ive heard, the API for Ps2 is also very similar to OpenGL.

And i agree that there is no MS conspiracy to stifle OGL - i just think they’d rather people use there own, so of course they are going to be supporting that more than anything else right now. This, however doesnt mean that they will NEVER sort OGL for the X-BOX, It would be comparitavely easy to do im sure - and i bet thery want id to make games for the machine - and as we all know JC is an OGL fan - so who knows?

32

Originally posted by Auto:
and i bet thery want id to make games for the machine - and as we all know JC is an OGL fan - so who knows?

But the question is, will MS cave and give XBOX OpenGL so they can have id games, or will JC cave and port to D3D. Lets just ignore the third option…

33

Matt Craighead: Does MS also have some very good reasons to support OGL? Yes, definitely. They will keep supporting it for a long time.

Depends on what you mean by “support.” They haven’t actively disabled OpenGL on the PC platform, but they’re a couple of revisions behind on supporting the core API, don’t provide any recent extensions, failed to support multimonitor systems for a long time (maybe still do, I haven’t checked lately), never provided integration with DirectDraw for device enumeration and mode switching, and much more. Allegedly they have no plans to support OpenGL on XBox.

On the whole, the evidence suggests “freeze” and “neglect” rather than “support.”

Do I think MS is currently taking any action to “sabotage” OGL? No, definitely not.

They certainly have done so in the past. As for the present, D3D is so well established that they no longer regard OpenGL as a threat, so it’s possible that you’re correct.

Do I think that MS was justified in wanting to create D3D? Yes, absolutely. At the time, D3D’s goals were very different from OGL’s goals, and MS saw that the best and quickest way to get 3D on Windows was to create its own API.

The history indicates otherwise, and Microsoft’s business model explains why. But as this has been debated extensively elsewhere, there’s no need to go over it again here.

There is not a war going on between OGL and D3D! There are simply some people who still feel “grievances” and want to perpetuate them to eternity.

Presumably I’m one of the people you have in mind, which is why I’m prompted to reply to your note. With all due respect, I’d say that there are simply some people who are naive about the consequences of the way Microsoft does business, and therefore might not realize the importance of maintaining a viable alternative. Perhaps there’s not a “war” between OpenGL and D3D, but there is competition; many of us think that’s unavoidable and might even be necessary.

It’s been a while since I dropped in to see Michael for lunch. If you’d like to join us sometime, let him know and we’ll get together.

Allen

34

Allen,

With all due respect, I’d say that there are simply some people who are naive about the consequences of the way Microsoft does business, and therefore might not realize the importance of maintaining a viable alternative.

As people go, I’m strongly pro-Microsoft. I am not tied to OpenGL for the sake of OpenGL. It happens to be my job, but I am not religious about it, and if MS decided one day to kill it, I would say, “oh well”.

MS, just like every other company, has every right to choose the way it does business. If I don’t happen to like the way they do business, that’s my problem, not theirs.

I really stopped caring about OGL vs. D3D as of about DX5.

It’s been a while since I dropped in to see Michael for lunch. If you’d like to join us sometime, let him know and we’ll get together.

Sorry, I’m on the wrong side of the country…

  • Matt
35

>Also, from what ive heard, the API for Ps2
>is also very similar to OpenGL
umm not really.

so matt, your not working with the driver team in santa clara?

I was presuming you where working with mark kilgard and viet in that group…

-akbar A.

36

Originally posted by kaber0111:
so matt, your not working with the driver team in santa clara?

You could check my profile…

Also, Mark recently moved. He’s in Texas now.

  • Matt
37

>You could check my profile…
picky, picky.
heh

>Also, Mark recently moved. He’s in Texas now
cool. If it’s in Austin or Houston that’d be pretty cool…
that’s where i’m situated at.

laterz,
-akbar A.

38

Originally posted by LordKronos:
But the question is, will MS cave and give XBOX OpenGL so they can have id games, or will JC cave and port to D3D. Lets just ignore the third option…

hmm… Isn’t there plenty of games out there in the development that are based on Quake III engine, and which are supposed to appear on Xbox as well (I guess in the beginning PC is the primary platform)? and because Quake III is OpenGL-based, shouldn’t there be opengl-libraries on xbox then? (win2k drivers modified by Nvidia or MS?) Or would it be viable solution to ship the openGL drivers/wrappers with the game itself?!

Without JC from id, OpenGL wouldn’t be this popular among PC game developers / in PC in general. I think he belongs to the group of people (Linus Torvalds et al.) that have made a significant contribution to the information technology.

off-opengl topic: As we know xbox being pc-based and this fact being the strongest benefit of xbox (huge pool of developers), isn’t it also a weakness if we consider software piratism? Shouldn’t it be rather straightforward to implement xbox emulator on PC/hack the xbox PC development environment? (done by some underground people). if developers were to publish their games solely on xbox, wouldn’t it be easy to copy and run them on win2k/whistler pc as well? It will a heck harder to play GameCube games on PC (BTW: I don’t favor software piratism at all, I just see that this phenomenom has been and will be present, even if only as an insignificant activity)

-Jyrki.

39

Originally posted by mcraighead:
MS, just like every other company, has every right to choose the way it does business. If I don’t happen to like the way they do business, that’s my problem, not theirs.

That’s not strictly true of course – there are legal constraints on the behavior of corporations (for much the same reason there are legal constraints on the behavior of individuals, governments, and religious institutions). Currently MS stands convicted of violating some of those constraints. But I understand your point of view, and I agree that in most situations it’s the right one. In the case of MS you may find that your opinion changes over the years, as mine has.

Allen

40

>It will a heck harder to play GameCube
>games on PC

yes, very diffucult.
just starting with that disk has anti-piracy
all over it…

About people planning on writing an xbox emulator…
yes, your not going to have to write a dynarec or anything of that nature since it
uses the same intel x86 instruction set…

but aside from not needign to code a dynarec, it’s still a very complicated problem…

-akbar A.

[This message has been edited by kaber0111 (edited 03-11-2001).]