Quote:Original post by Yann L

Quote:
The other option ofcourse is that even loading a display driver with an ICD switches off Aeroglass, which would pressure people like ATI and NV to drop the OGL ICD as people will complain about it killing the performance/look & feel of the desktop.

That's the danger I see.

I thought over all this. Now, I don't know the internals of Aeroglass, but I don't see why it shouldn't be possible to lock a certain virtual surface exclusively to an OpenGL context, even if in Aeroglass. You wouldn't be able to use some eye candy, but this restriction would be limited to your drawing surface alone, and would not affect the rest of the GUI.

Essentially, OpenGL renders to an offscreen surface in video RAM, and on SwapBuffers, this surface can be bound as a texture by D3D/Aeroglass. You'd lose a little fillrate for the additional render pass performed by Aeroglass, but that shouldn't really be noticeable.

That should work great. Then again, the ball's not on our hands. This is the first time I feel the need to hate M$.

It doesn't look so bad. Seems like they are trying to fix up most of the biggest problem with consumer level computing, not really to kill OpenGL. My download of the platform SDK includes full OpenGL documentation, and never makes mention of it being an outdated SDK, or using Direct3D instead. I've even seen OpenGL listed along with Direct3D a supported XNA api on some stuff they released a while ago.

Do they have to hold back for all the other APIs?

I'm a big fan of OpenGL, I'm sure it's not the end of cross platform graphics libraries.

Edited to remove reference to a deleted post

[Edited by - phantom on August 8, 2005 1:00:17 PM]

not to mention that companies that decide to specialize on linux+opengl won t take a switch to future windows OSs into consideration just because of the insane amount of money it would take to port their software and who knows what microsoft does next

companies need to plan years ahead to make the investments profitable

I would not say MS supported GL in winXP (or really in 9x either) but the archtecture allowed for it to be there, extensions and all.

but now there new architecture looks like they did not want openGL there... if MS wanted openGL to be there they could have designed that in, but they did not.

I am hoping that fewer will adopt Vista that those that adopted XP. Myself, I did not upgrade to XP (my sorry state is that I use Win98SE for games and Linux for work) and at my workplace in Nokia, my workstation is running Windows2000... me thinks that MS will have a very, very tough sell in pushing Vista. I as a user was not even convinced to upgrade to XP [XP still crashes and still acts like a virus relay]. At the university in this city, the math department uses Linux exclusivly [but it is only half a building and the fella doing it was given a very free hand to do it anyway he liked, and had to cut costs].

I prefer openGL over Direct3D, in a really big way... but much of the time the 3D api one can abstract that away a great deal, if the program(game really) was made that way from the beginning. if it wasn't then, well... somethings are easier in Direct3D, in particularl until recently we all had to deal with "pbuffer hell"

as for games, PS3's graphics API is openGL. I have no idea what the Nintendo one will look like and we all know that the Xbox360 will be DirectX. However, for game developers, consder this: the PS2 has a much larger marketshare over the XBox (and Gamecube), and chances are the PS3 will as well... so crossplatforming one's code will either become necessary (to write for PC and PS3 same time) or, and this is something to consider, PC games for windows will severely slow down. Moreover, knowing openGL will be a necessity in writing for the PS3, so openGL is not going away, maybe it will go away only on MS operating systems.... Remeber the first days of win95? you had to boot to DOS to run your games... perhaps, PC games won't be as big as they are now, the new consoles are so powerful anyways, that the only thing missing from the consoles in the easy ability to mod games, but the current Xbox has a harddrive, and I would not be surprised that by the the time MS phases out Vista, the computer platform for games may be deserted. think about it: take a console add a keyboard and hardddrive, all you need to get the modding comunitities to go for it [oh wait PS2 has that already, not a new idea].

of course, us Linux and MacOS fans may get screwed; if the stuff is not in openGL to start with, then the port to our OS's is even less likely (I still love ID for porting doom3 to Linux as I will NOT ever buy another MS OS agian)


also think about this: a fair number of cities and school are experimenting (or really using) alternate systems to Windows, typically Linux gets the most publicity for this, but I think you will find alot of your digital artist out there would rather sell their soul then give up their Mac's. The reason being: they learned on their Macs. if the new generation learns on a non-MS os then perhaps that will reduce MS's monopoly. The real catch is to convince business office people that they do NOT need MS office and can use other programs jsut as well, if business's offices were not crack addicted to MS office then the MS operating system monoploy would not as strong [or we can always dream that the file formats become completely public so one can use any office package you felt like, but that is just a dream]


we can only hope (as openGL lovers)
a) MS will not scrw openGL this way or
b) MS's graphic architecture won't make it into Vista (like most of Longhorn's feature set)

or

c) enough people do not bother to "upgrade" to Vista.

Why not moving to Linux, it is a great platform for Gl developers, it will have all the eyecandy that XP has in future, have a look at this:
http://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/temp/seth/blog/xshots.html
http://live.gnome.org/Luminocity

Luminocity and project looking glass is the way forward and the future of Linux.
Support this movement by changing your platform to linux.

God bless OpenGl and Linux.