Anybody read/link this yet? => http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/UserFiles/en-us/File/larrabee_manycore.pdf
Yeah, I am learning about the Larabee stuff. There’s supposed to be a dev kit out soon from Intel. I’m very interested in this. My gut says it won’t work out, but I hope it does. I want to see DirectX and OpenGL get wiped out.
I will add my 2 cents as well. Nothing that has not been voiced already, just had to reinforce the message myself as well. OpenGL3 is an utter failure. Plain and simple. There is no excuse. They could have opted to better support GL2.1 with extensions(All DX10 extensions are only available on NVIDIA chipsets). It would be the same thing, and everyone would be happy. Really, GL 3.0 is nothing new compared to what we already had. So, please ARB, it’s not too late, apologize to people, start communicating again and give what you promised. All this ‘fanfare for nothing’ at the main site is only making people more disappointed at how underrated their (the people’s, not the ARB’s) intelligence is. I am but an amateur game programmer but it is plain simple that anyone serious about that will switch to Direct3D sooner rather than later. so, hurry ARB…you may still have some eggs unbroken in the end.
Oh and one more thing that really unnerved me. I really appreciate, given the current state of the API that people still work on it. If people could refrain from calling efforts like GL_EXT_direct_state_access a joke it would make things easier for people who are making the effort. I,for sure, despise it when my work is discarded as useless just like that…it just extinguishes any incentive.
It’s ok to criticize GL3.0 but not GL_EXT_direct_state_access? Weird.
It’s ok to criticize GL3.0 but not GL_EXT_direct_state_access? Weird.
That could be because DSA goes farther than GL 3.0 in providing what Longs Peak promised.
Longs Peak aimed to solve the “bind to edit” issue in OpenGL, by eliminating “edit” - and providing only immutable objects. If you can’t edit objects, yep, no worries about bind to edit any more.
DSA aims to solve “bind to edit” by removing the need to bind an object to the state vector (context) before altering it.
it’s nvidia’s last gasp attempt at forcing an object model on OpenGL. Like, ok you won’t let us have LP so we’re going to copy and paste some kind of object model from the existing API. It’s appreciated, but really highlighted what a joke 3.0 itself became. I feel sorry for nvidia.
Seems pretty clear to me that anyone serious, or at least a bit curious, would have / should have / could have tested the API greenness on the other side some time ago. For the rest of the graphics development community, I’d say things turned out pretty darn good, as GL3 turned out pretty much the way they, the majority, wanted it to - to the possibly chagrin of some, the minority, game coders.
Clearly the big question right now is when do we get stable drivers from the “big 3”, and to a lesser extent how this deprecation/profile model will play out in practice. This first question is the only interesting one to me, since whether or not vendors want to drop functionality is entirely up to them… no skin off my nose either way.
I wonder who this ‘majority’ are, because from my understanding this wasn’t a mass ‘no to 3.0’ vote but a case of ‘we aren’t getting it done on time, lets release 2.2, oh hi mr Khronos PR, what’s that? call it 3.0? ok…’.
Not quite true Rob. State could not be edited - but data could. For example if you want to read or write buffer data, GL2 requires that you bind it first. LP did not.
Perhaps they did yield to an irresistible sense of inevitability 
Longs Peak aimed to solve the “bind to edit” issue in OpenGL, by eliminating “edit” - and providing only immutable objects. If you can’t edit objects, yep, no worries about bind to edit any more.
DSA aims to solve “bind to edit” by removing the need to bind an object to the state vector (context) before altering it.
Right. And GL 3.0 takes no steps towards the LP method in any way compared to 2.1. So like I said, DSA goes farther than 3.0 in achieving what LP was trying to do.
Just for clarity, we set a constraint for 3.0 in that virtually all functionality being integrated into core for the Aug 08 release already had to exist as a well defined extension or implementation.
At the time that course was set, there was no DSA extension available. (Now it is, and so now we can have a discussion about whether it would make sense to use it, or a 3.x-savvy derivative of DSA, in the next release.)
This isn’t to say that the constraint for inclusion will stay as high as it is indefinitely, but it was in effect for the 3.0 release in order to meet schedule commitments.
It’s up to the vendors to drop features? Nah, I don’t think so. Khronos should decide. There are a bunch of things marked depricated so I guess in the future if you create a 3.1 context, the depricated stuff won’t work.
Sure… Khronos as a body determines the deprecation policy, but it’s ultimately up to the vendors to remove the code from their drivers… and as I understand it they can continue to expose deprecated/removed API by way of extensions.
I don’t think the vendors will need a fire lit under them before they hot-foot it on down to the deprecation/removal office with a donation But they do have some options…
Agreed.
I’ve been lying on a beach for two weeks now, with no internet at all. What a good decision! In the meantime, around 150 pages of (mostly) rant have been produced. Wow!
No object model? It looked like a nice idea, but obviously it didn’t work out. Shi t happens. I like the fine tuned buffer mapping. And I like the deprecation model. The latter is the key for evolution of the API, not just bloating like before. What I like the most is, that it opens up the possibility to shift smoothly from 2.1 to 3.0 (and up). Backwards compatibility was always one of the main features of GL, especially compared to DX.
The only thing that really bugs me is, why on earth hasn’t this been done a year ago? I hope, it’s not too late. Now everything solely depends on the IHVs, the quality of their drivers and the will to push things forward. Things are prepared.
CatDog
Thank you very much…
The only thing that bothers me is that DSA still uses object identifiers instead of the object pointers(if I remember this correctly) that were supposed to enter GL3 initially. I still don’t see how the deprecation model will manage to introduce such drastic changes by itself…well, we’ll see how this turns out.
Y-tension, the object identifiers are sorta pointers now, since you must use glGen to get them, you cannot make your own, like in past (that is part of GL 3.0 already)
Yep,I know, it’s just that having actual pointers was supposed to be faster…OK,OK I quit whining…
No object model? It looked like a nice idea, but obviously it didn’t work out.
Yes, but one should ask WHY it didn’t “work out”. For two years the ARB cranked on LP. Then they decided, we’re not moving GL forward AT ALL let’s restart and slap extensions into the core and add a deprecation model. So in 3 years (assuming non-beta drivers from nvidia AND AMD by Q1 '09) GL as an API has barely progressed in terms of usability and efficiency.
The issues are that 3.0 did nothing for API bloat, did not simplify driver writing, and delivered none of it’s promises.
Also, 3.0 is not strictly backwards-compatible. It requires DX10 level hardware. LP did not have this restriction.
I’d also like to emphasize that the deprecation model does nothing for API bloat in 3.0. There’s a possibility that future versions will trim the deprecated features. 3.0 leaves it all in there so the end effect is a LARGER API given that extensions were added to it.
If someone was new to OpenGL as of July and got familiar with 2.1, then 3.0 would seem like an improvement. But with knowledge of the historical actions taken (and especially not taken) by the ARB as well as the promises, timescale of those promises, and the incredible Silence, you’d be pissed too.
No one has yet commented on it here so I’ll just point out that the SIGGRAPH BoF did not address the Great Silence. (No surprise, guess it will become the Great Mystery.)