The end of OpenGL?

[sinkoman]

http://www.tweakguides.com/

Front page:

...Microsoft appear [sic] to be lining up to neuter OpenGL in Vista.

by the looks of it MS want [sic] to make sure it runs so slowly vs D3D/WGF that it won't be worth our while to use it.

The end of OpenGL as we know it, if not the end of OpenGL completely (yes, I realize I threw off the saying)? No more Quake III? No more Doom III?

The bastards we all love to hate at Micro$oft are at it again!

 

[BeaverMon]

My god. I got a game called 18 Wheels of Steel: Pedal to the Metal, that runs on OpenGL only.

 

[Cole]

I seen this on quake evolved BUT
Actually it's not bad at all to some of the more intelligent people, let me bring some of teh stuff they said up.

Heres something:

Given OpenGL 1.1 which comes with Windows is Software (aka CPU-Based) rather than Hardware-Based, you can expect to see far poorer performance than a wrapped version of OpenGL 1.4 to Direct3D Hardware Acceleration. Something that will be a requirement for all Vista Drivers.

You can also be assured that the internal driver will also be replaced by any Manufacturer driver. Meaning that in reality any ATi or nVIDIA user will probably not see any change in speed what so ever. Cards like S3 DeltaChrome, SiS Xabre, and SiS 630 however will be able to use thier far superior DirectX driver support to run OpenGL (1.4 atleast) at a far quicker speed than the standard drivers.

Every tried running OpenGL on an SiS 6326? I know I have.. not an experience I ever want to repeat. It performs almost 10% the speed DirectX does. Under the new drivers you could be looking at reducing this gap.

This is pretty much saying that,
a developer can change the internal driver for there game so it runs great with open gl.
Now lets say you have a gfx card that does open gl like crap, you can wrap it around DX so it will run somewhat better.

In any case Direct3D and DirectX are going to be replaced. DirectX 9.1 is the last DirectX set to bare that particular name.

Microsoft hope to phase it out in favour of XNA. Similar design, but each component isn't refered to as seperate entities.

HERES A BIGGY POST:

quote:"Since I was at the OpenGL BOF at SIGGRAPH where this was discussed, I would like to clarify a bit of what was mentioned.

First, there were two current paths for OpenGL on Vista mentioned. The first one is a DX wrapper, with its potential performance shortfalls and lack of extension support. The second path was a traditional ICD which when activated would force the desktop out of the compositing mode, but would allow performance and extensions.

Second, 3DLabs, ATI, and NVIDIA all pledged that they were dedicated to work with Microsoft to add the additional support necessary to make ICDs work seamlessly with the rest of the OS. There was an open request to have developers contact their Microsoft reps to express any concerns that they have over this.

Finally, this is all my personal take on the issue as an attendee at the BOF. I think an unfortunate bit about the issue in that it gets quickly caught up in FUD from all directions, which helps no one. With the current state of affairs, you could possibly classify all of the following statements as true:

1. OpenGL support on Vista will run through a slow D3D wrapper.
2. OpenGL on Vista will not support the compositing desktop.
3. OpenGL will have support for the compositing desktop on Vista.
4. Vista will support high-performance OpenGL ICDs.

Obviously, they all need qualifiers, and are not simultaneously true. This unfortunately makes it too easy to confuse developers. Please get the facts straight and if you feel it will impact your products, make whatever Microsoft contacts you have aware of your concern over the issue." - Evan Hart, ATi

Thats from ATI.

Theres more let me get em.


Also End of open gl?
Yeah right:

You forget that the Games Industry the PC Market only makes up around 10% of the total market.
With Microsoft's X-Box owning a further 15%. This means that DirectX holds a total of ~25% of the market, if that.

OpenGL is still the primary API for graphics used on the Playstation2, Playstation3, GameCube and Revolution.
Given Sony's Playstation (2) is only bestest in terms of market penatration by Nintendo's Gameboy Consoles (the Nintendo DS also uses OpenGL, but the market itself is much smaller than anything so doesn't really count)

What your looking at is the majority of games currently in development in total are OpenGL-based. That's pretty much guarenteed. As I said, Microsoft would have to provide viable solutions for everyone in order to make sure DirectX had any real market domination. That's just not likely to happen.

Although there was some talk recently about XNA being available for the Revolution.

Now from what I understand Microsoft aren't trying to "kill" OpenGL at all.
In-fact if I've understood correctly the article(s) (OpenGL.org and msdn.Microsoft.com) what Microsoft are doing is extending support of OpenGL as a Layered API within DirectX for Avalon.

It has very little to do with, the stand-alone OpenGL that is shipped with your drivers. It also seems to have very little to do with anything except Avalon. So your games, applications, etc. Will remain untouched.
This is purely to provide OpenGL support within Avalon which uses DirectX currently. In-fact from my understanding what it'll be doing is wrapping the DirectX functions around the OpenGL layer, from within Avalon.

As I said, probably just a case of early paranoia. Microsoft don't have to wrap OpenGL to stop people using it under-Windows, they could simply do what they did with Java. Drop it from the Operating System altogether.

People will still use it by installing it from online, but realistically speaking if you drop support within Windows itself then the driver developers will also stop support for it because it'd be an unecessary development pipeline when they could concentrate on DirectX. You'd end up with better overall drivers.

 

[bryanf445]

hats off to your incite mineral

 

[Cole]

Well I noticed at the evolve site, most people even after those posts kept on going on about microsoft and ignoring these more educated posts.

So before it got out of hand here, I felt that I should at least get something across .
I don't love microsoft, and I don't hate them...but sometimes people will look for anything to say "M$ sux".

 

[sinkoman]

I don't love microsoft, and I don't hate them.

Same here. Which is why I said:

...The bastards we all love to hate...

 

[holydeadpenguins]

So many other things use opengl, microsoft cant kill it.

 

[PickledGecko]

Maybe it’s a good thing. The only reason I’ve put off using Linux is that it cant run all games. Maybe an end to OpenGL on Windows will make Linux a viable gaming operating system.

 

[holydeadpenguins]

Maybe it’s a good thing. The only reason I’ve put off using Linux is that it cant run all games. Maybe an end to OpenGL on Windows will make Linux a viable gaming operating system.

Linux will never use any licensed software