According to what I heard monthes ago, sometime soon (how soon I don''t know) an official standard should be released (what you saw from 3dlabs was more or less a draft). A couple monthes after that OpenGL 2.0 compliant drivers should start showing up. I have no idea if Microsoft will implement a MCD for OpenGL 2.0 or upgrade their current OpenGL MCD to be OpenGL 2.0 compliant, so Windows users/developers may be out of luck in that regard and have to fallback on extensions to expose everything like they do now (of course, other implementations will probably show OpenGL 2.0 the same support they''ve shown to other OpenGL versions).

even if M$ dont do an MCD I dont see that there is anything to stop someone else coming up with one and implmenting it.

Hopefull either M$ will do us one or someone else will step into the fray and do it... I dont think M$ will do one personaly, as they will probably be hoping that a non-MCD version of OGL2.0 will make devs switch to D3D so they dont have to deal with extension to get at the stuff, thus silently killing OGL for Windows and making D3D the completely dominate 3D API for the market.

I would say We will almost certainly see teh same level of driver support we have enjoyed thus far from the chip makers however, I cant speak for ATI based cards, but i''ve been very impressed by Nvidia''s OGL support over the years

Isnt the ATI9700 ment to be OGL2.0 hardware compatible btw?
Personaly, i''ve been looking forward to OGL2.0 ever since it was announced and now we are getting closer to a bopefull release date (I''d be surprised if OGL2.0 drives didnt appear around the same time as the GeForceFX card) I''m looking forward to it more, i think this next year could be a very intresting time for the GFX and computer hardware market in general

i doubt OGL2.0 will not have any extensions (althougth I have to say thats a part of the spec i''ve not looked at/for), but an MCD will make it easier to access the core OGL2.0 functionality rather than just adding all the OGL2.0 stuff as extension to OGL1.4.

I think they will need to include support because of the wide need for many professional programs and games need it to run and if they can''t use it then tons of games that did require it will then be with out a home if they wheren''t released on other OS''s. Any way around it if they don''t include it then Games and Professional tools that need it will either Die, or move to other systems and loyal users to them are likely to switch, Of course not of all of them but is a large number that microsoft will lose out on. The number of games for other OS''s will definalty incease that and more and more programmers who like OpenGL will switch if they want OGL2 I belive that they won''t take the chance to lose out on it.

I just wonder what microsoft wants to acomplish by pressing DX so much its not like you pay to use it Its Free!!!

its free NOW....

quote:Original post by niyaw
so... opengl 2.0 doesn''t have any extensions? interesting.

It''ll have extensions eventually, but most things that are extensions now will be core functionality.