OpenGL 4.2 Released

[MrBig55]

And from what we all know, DirectX always was the cheaper way to display graphics and that explains why the cheapest graphic card on the market costs about $50 while the cheaper openGL graphic card costs way more. The same applies to expensive cards, the openGL parts are very expensive. We don't sell Honda civics for millions of dollars but one could sell his Ferrari Enzo millions of dollars...

 

[Guest]

Look up efficiency benchmarks. Direct X is way ahead of OpenGL 4 in features and performance. You can also look at recent comments from John Carmack himself...he was commenting just about a month ago on how he "misses" the good old days of OpenGL and wised it was currently caught up with Direct X in features and performance and that it still had a ways to go. Thank you

 

[Guest]

For all the ignorant pro OpenGLers:

March 11, 2011
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/john-Carmack-DirectX-OpenGL-API-Doom,12372.html

The current success of DirectX is largely due to Microsoft's courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API. OpenGL has been held back by compatibility concerns, Carmack said.

AMD's GPU worldwide developer relations manager, Richard Huddy, agrees. He added that the actual innovation in graphics has been driven by Microsoft in the last ten or so years. "OpenGL has largely been tracking that, rather than coming up with new methods," he said. "The geometry shader, for example, which came in with Vista and DirectX 10, is wholly Microsoft's invention in the first place."

Better yet: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/03/11/carmack-directx-better-opengl/

Tomshardware.com article is even a bit contradictory about him staying with OpenGL saying DirectX is only a little better :

from bit-tech.net "

First person shooter godfather John Carmack has revealed that he now prefers DirectX to OpenGL, saying that 'inertia' is the main reason why id Software has stuck by the cross-platform 3D graphics API for years.

Speaking to bit-tech for a forthcoming Custom PC feature about the future of OpenGL in PC gaming, Carmack said 'I actually think that Direct3D is a rather better API today.' He also added that 'Microsoft had the courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API, while OpenGL has been held back by compatibility concerns. Direct3D handles multi-threading better, and newer versions manage state better.'

 

[Filiprino]

[citation][nom]gamerk316[/nom]This makes sense if the next gen consoles are also DX11 based..------------1: The 360 is hte only non-Winodws environment to even have a DX layer.2: No major release for the 360 uses the DX API for 3d graphics, because of speed concerns. [Remember that whole "DX is too slow" spat AMD had? This is where that came from].3: Even the PS3, which has an OGL ES layer, is coded at a lower level via libgcm, which unlike its OGL implementation, allows direct access to the RSX framebuffer, greatly speeding certain applications.So please, stop this whole "Consoles use DX" nonesense. Its never been true, but its been repeated enough where everyone thinks it is.[/citation]
Oh yeah, LOL. DirectX is not the problem and you should know it. Obviously the frame buffer can be accessed directly, via OpenGL and DirectX functionality on PS3 and X360 respectively as you have said for example what is happening with PS3 which uses libgcm, a library based on OpenGLES and adapted to the particularities of the console the same way OpenGL on PC is adapted to NVIDIA and AMD particularities.

If AMD said [http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/03/19/0538208/DirectX-Getting-In-the-Way-of-PC-Game-Graphics-Says-AMD] that DX is getting on the way, they had a good point on that, but not because DX is bloatware but because developers are lazy to do proper imports. Ha, try then to convince developers to use OpenGL extensions or make their own ones. Or do a proper use of multithreading. Or program well done 64bit versions of their games.

Bloatware is XNA which is an additional layer on top of the DirectX Xbox360 layer.
If you want to be credible, you can say computers have 10-20% less profitable power from the same hardware or that consoles get 1.1-1.2x the PC performance from same hardware, at most. And that's with todays bad optimisation with 32 bit games running on 64 bit operative systems with the Windows on Windows layer plus a bunch other functionality and peripherals. Heck, I can multitask while gaming LOL. Let agme running, go to browser, use instant messaging or have a P2P client. Everything is lighter than an antivirus.

 

[f-14]

i would like to see this get in before pci-E3 is released next year.

 

[Guest]

They don't do that because every piece of hardware is different.
You would have to code everything a thousand times (literally).
There are that many models new and old to support. And a lot of models don't have specification pages so you can't know how you should code stuff for those things this way.

This is completely untrue. The graphics drivers are the interface to the graphics card, and are relatively standardized, even between entire generations of cards.

Why should I tell DirectX to tell the drivers to tell the GPU to draw a cube when I can feed 8 coordinates and 6 textures to the driver directly? (Assuming of course my method would be faster than DirectX's.) You don't need to support every card; Only a set of drivers that are already written to a level of standardization that allows DirectX/OpenGL to not have to change their approach per-card/driver.

It's nowhere near as "impossible" as you claim.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]NuclearShadow[/nom]I'm having a hard time recalling any Windows based game using OpenGL that wasn't made years ago. It's a shame too because OpenGL is cross platform and actually still can hold its own today. OpenGL is vastly under used than it should be and in my opinion is still to this day superior to Direct X.[/citation]Well turns out your opinion doesn't mean squat to developers. They use whatever works best, and right now that is DirectX. Love it or hate it, DirectX has been superior for a long time now. Khronos screwed around for years and fell way behind, and only recently have they been putting forth proper effort. Hopefully they'll catch up to DX11 in time for DX12's release.

Even Carmack has admitted DirectX is better than OpenGL, and he has been a staunch supporter of OGL. He still uses OGL because he has so much invested into it (engines, tools) and isn't rewriting it all. He has been using OGL for ages, but even so he has said that Direct3D is a superior API.

 

[Guest]

All I know is wings3d does not work properly on my new Toshiba laptop, because Toshiba OEM customised the opengl drivers and the Intel website
update service will not update OEM modified opengl drivers! Wings3d is going to go the way of the dodo if the people supporting
it can not fix their opengl legacy problems!

 

[enforcer22]

[citation][nom]NuclearShadow[/nom]You do realize that features that even DX 11 added existed for years with OpenGL right? Also as gamerk316 pointed out it allows extensions. Even if you prefer Direct X (assuming you have actually used it other than playing a game) you have to admit the existence of OpenGL at-least gives a option that stops a complete take over from Microsoft. So if you are willing to ignore the positives OpenGL has over Direct X at the very least you should not the importance of its existence.[/citation]

I did say it had its places and was a nice cross platform niche deal. I was speaking of gaming entirely. on portable devices dx would just suck up to much resources and never give its full 3d capability. but for computer gaming imo its still junk. i should have also mentioned i prefer opengl however i rather use dx now because its better. If it does go away then i can see some dark ages in graphics if MS doesn't have to keep updating DX. I was responding mostly to the superior to DX thing. I thought we were talking about gaming here.

 

[Filiprino]

[citation][nom]Filiprino[/nom]Oh yeah, LOL. DirectX is not the problem...[/citation]
I just wanted to quote myself to add that the 10-20% of overhead is exaggerated too. Even more, any plausible overhead can be easily mitigated with overclocking both CPU and GPU, and the OC doesn't need to be extreme by any means. 50-100Mhz more on GPU, 500Mhz more on CPU and you are done, plus you get more power for other apps.

Overhead on computers is really negligible, just watch your CPU usage and process times...