Mesa is really a OpenGL implementation with a different name. You do not have to worry about any license. I think that compiling Mesa yourself so it will take advantage of hardware acceleration (DRI) can be difficult.

If your version is 1.3 do you also have software implementations of functions that your card does not support. The difference between the extensions and software core functions is speed (surprised ) and often other limitations like just smaller textures being supported. I would say you are using 1.3 but you have to get entry points for core functions the same way as for extensions.

Intel made a little library that will make using the latest version and extensions a little easier special on Windows. It is available here
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/sdk.html

> Intel made a little library that will make using the latest version and extensions a little easier special on Windows

Intel ? You mean SGI

Yeah like the Anon Poster said... Every body mentions that SGI has made there own OGL 1.3 libs is this true and where can you get them?

Hmm, isn''t that funny, everybody always talks about those ''newer SGI libs'', but no one seems to have them or be able to point to a D/L location.

I''m starting to believe, that all this is nothing but a myth, used by Windows OGL programmers to justify their lack of recent OGL support when talking to Linux/Irix/Mac/Solaris users.
aka:

Linux_User: ''Hey, look, I''ve a nice OGL app. Do you want the source ?''
Windows_User: ''Sure, it looks good, and with minor modifications, I''ll compile it under MSVC++ !''
Linux_User: ''No, you won''t. It uses recent technology. OGL 1.3. You Windows users only have access to the obsolete 1.1 version due to Microsoft-stupidity''
Windows_User: ''Hmmm.. yeah I know,.. but.. uh.. uhm.. *cough*.. SGI is making an OGL 1.3 release !!''

I'm not aware of any SGI version of OpenGL 1.3 for Windows, but at one point SGI *did* write their own OpenGL implementation, back in the 1.1 days. It was significantly faster than Microsoft's OpenGL implementation when doing software rendering..But then A) everyone got 3D hardware, making the software rendering speed pretty meaningless (and it was still pretty slow if you did anything complex, just a lot faster than MS's software rasterizer) and B) Microsoft and SGI joined forces on Farenheit, a set of 3D APIs which were supposed to replace D3D and OpenGL, with both immediate and scene graph mode (Like the old D3DRM) APIs. Farenheit fell apart sometime a year or two ago and nothing much came of it. IIRC Microsoft did eventually release the scene graph part of Farenheit to a limited audience, but I havent heard anything about it in a long long time so I'm guessing they killed that off too.

I just did a quick google search and it looks like you can still get the SGI OpenGL SDK here:

http://www.berkelium.com/OpenGL/

Its completely unsupported though (and hasn't been supported since Windows 95, IIRC) and it has a few major known bugs that cause crashes. So all in all you don't want to use it.




If SGI does have a new 1.3 implementation, I haven't seen it. And yes, it is rather annoying that Microsoft has been dragging their feet so much on OpenGL. And its clearly all political (make OpenGL look dead on Windows to try and get more support for D3D).



Edited by - gmcbay on December 21, 2001 5:04:33 AM

> Umm us windows opengl coders have no problems accessing the 1.3 features.

No, you have to do it via extensions. Not all features are accessible that way, and even worse, it isn''t compatible with legacy 1.3 code.

> As for the SGI libs, from what Ive heard, microsoft refuses to let them release the libs, most likely in a vain attempt to get more people using d3d.

Microsoft can not stop anyone releasing OpenGL libs. Especially not SGI, since they developed OpenGL, and have all the rights, patents (if there are any), and trademarks. Releasing OGL libs doesn''t involve *any* M$ source. See Mesa.

I just don''t believe that SGI has actually written 1.3 libs for Windows. It''s more likely it is a ''Windows OpenGL user justification legend''.

Ok, guys.

SGI has written only one OpenGL implementation(v 1.1) for windows in year 1995.
There doesn''t exist any implementation of v1.2 , not saying v1.3
for Windows.
All functions of v1.2, v1.3 must be querried by glGetProcAddress as extensions.
Intel(Intel, not SGI!!!) has written a library, something like GL... howewer, I forgot. Idea is that this library is querring v1.2 funtions for you.

Best wishes.

Zengar.