It was a rather “epic” saga to get a ticket, but I managed to grab one at the last minute. Should be pretty fun (hopefully) to talk to some of the Blizzard developers on the show floor, particularly to gather their thoughts on OpenGL 3 (Blizzard is a member of the OpenGL Working Group).
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Check it out, it’s a good read.
There has been a lot of noise on various news sites and forums concerning OpenGL 3 and how the GL Working Group has killed OpenGL. I consider most of that noise just that, noise. The dissatisfaction of API fanboys that has little to do with the reality of hardware and software vendors.
With that being said, here’s a a list of reasons why OpenGL is not dead:
- Apple
- Linux
- Samsung
- Autodesk
- Blizzard
- id
- NVIDIA
- AMD
- Intel
- Matrox
- Sony
You get the idea. Microsoft Windows is not the only operating system that needs a 3D graphics API. Are companies like Apple and those that have financial and strategic interests in Linux, or mobile handset manufacturers, really going to say “Oh snap, the fanboys have declared OpenGL dead, so huh… we’re not going to offer 3D hardware acceleration on our platform anymore. Sorry.”?
As for the reason I included Blizzard, id, NVIDIA, AMD and Intel in that list, it should be obvious: they contributed and are contributing massively to the development of OpenGL. Why in the world any company would spend significant man-hours (and hence dollars) on something it plans on killing? Projects do get killed, sure, but I doubt anyone has ever started a project with the intention of killing it from the start.
So to all the of API fanboys out there: beware the CAD monster. As for me, I will be discussing the new specifications over the course of the upcoming days, and am looking forward to OpenGL 3 drivers from the various hardware and software vendors in the industry.
Addendum: please see the comments for a clarification of what I mean by API fanboy. There are some very smart people who have criticized constructively the new specification, but those people have not made emotionally-charged and irrational comments such as “OpenGL is dead”. I am sorry if I offended anyone by not being clear enough the first time.
Along with the OpenGL 3 and GLSL 1.3 specifications, the OpenGL Working Group has also released a number of ARB extensions which bring any OpenGL 3 core functionality to OpenGL 2.1 if possible. Although the OpenGL 3 specification’s ARB extension annex doesn’t list them, they are available on the OpenGL Extension Registry. Below are direct links to the extension specifications. Most of them are the ARB form of NVIDIA’s Shader Model 4 EXT extensions.