4 ms·

Interesting that he says OpenGL has been more concerned with backwards compatibility than Microsoft has with Direct3D which is surprising considering Microsoft'

Interesting that he says OpenGL has been more concerned with backwards compatibility than Microsoft has with Direct3D which is surprising considering Microsoft's normal compatibility fanaticism.

ajross 16y ago
OpenGL did this via a fork, basically. The standard you really want to be looking at is OpenGL ES v2, which throws out almost all of the legacy stuff (begin/end, fixed function pipeline) in favor of a shader-only architecture which is much cleaner both for application and driver writers. Unfortunately its name says "embedded", but it's very much the future of the standard.
timthorn 16y ago
Not really; Microsoft wants existing software to run on the next version of their OS, and that's still supported. The issue is of source compatibility, I think.
th0ma5 16y ago
it may well be accepted in the gaming market that the cutting edge may break compatibility
awj 16y ago
This is api-level backwards compatibility for a library that is bundled with the games. Microsoft is fanatical about BC when the alternative is to break a piece of software. When the only people they're inconveniencing are developers, the philosophy changes. And rightly so, otherwise it's just that much harder to build new features.
stonemetal 16y ago
I think you are misinterpreting what he is saying. Direct3D is built on COM so the DirectX 1.0 COM interface still exists and code written against it should still work. However Microsoft has tried to make each version of the API internally consistent and as good as possible, so new versions of the API don't keep legacy junk sitting around. OpenGL on the other hand has made sure that OpenGL1.0 code is still valid in current OpenGL(Pallet swapping FTW). Though I find it a bit odd that he is making that comment now. OpenGL 3.0(back in 2008) started the transition to a modern API. It deprecated the cruft and started building for the future. OpenGL 4.0 was released a year ago with all the deprecated stuff removed, and is now a nice clean API that is actually pretty close to DX.
recoiledsnake 16y ago
I remember the brouhaha when it happened. http://www.gamedev.net/topic/504547-opengl30-i-mean-22/page__PageSize__25__WhichPage__1 http://www.gamedev.net/topic/504547-opengl30-i-mean-22/page_... http://developers.slashdot.org/story/08/08/11/2135259/OpenGL-30-Released-Developers-Furious http://developers.slashdot.org/story/08/08/11/2135259/OpenGL... One of the posts in the first link. >So let me get this straight... In order to allow what, a small handful of old CAD apps to compile against 3.0, they're willing to practically kill off all new applications developed against the API? That makes sense. One customer a year ago is better than ten next week... [grin] >Or maybe they've just realized that a) they've lost everything on Windows to DirectX so it doesn't really matter what they do there, and b) since they don't have a single competing API on other platforms, they don't actually need to make an effort there either. >End result, they can screw over developers as much as they like, and it won't actually hurt them. Windows developers wouldn't have used OGL in the first place, and everyone else will keep using them because there are no alternatives.

Interesting that he says OpenGL has been more concerned with backwards compatibility than Microsoft has with Direct3D which is surprising considering Microsoft's normal compatibility fanaticism.

ajross 16y ago

OpenGL did this via a fork, basically. The standard you really want to be looking at is OpenGL ES v2, which throws out almost all of the legacy stuff (begin/end, fixed function pipeline) in favor of a shader-only architecture which is much cleaner both for application and driver writers. Unfortunately its name says "embedded", but it's very much the future of the standard.

timthorn 16y ago

Not really; Microsoft wants existing software to run on the next version of their OS, and that's still supported. The issue is of source compatibility, I think.

th0ma5 16y ago

it may well be accepted in the gaming market that the cutting edge may break compatibility

awj 16y ago

This is api-level backwards compatibility for a library that is bundled with the games. Microsoft is fanatical about BC when the alternative is to break a piece of software. When the only people they're inconveniencing are developers, the philosophy changes. And rightly so, otherwise it's just that much harder to build new features.

stonemetal 16y ago

I think you are misinterpreting what he is saying. Direct3D is built on COM so the DirectX 1.0 COM interface still exists and code written against it should still work. However Microsoft has tried to make each version of the API internally consistent and as good as possible, so new versions of the API don't keep legacy junk sitting around. OpenGL on the other hand has made sure that OpenGL1.0 code is still valid in current OpenGL(Pallet swapping FTW). Though I find it a bit odd that he is making that comment now. OpenGL 3.0(back in 2008) started the transition to a modern API. It deprecated the cruft and started building for the future. OpenGL 4.0 was released a year ago with all the deprecated stuff removed, and is now a nice clean API that is actually pretty close to DX.

recoiledsnake 16y ago

I remember the brouhaha when it happened. http://www.gamedev.net/topic/504547-opengl30-i-mean-22/page__PageSize__25__WhichPage__1 http://www.gamedev.net/topic/504547-opengl30-i-mean-22/page_... http://developers.slashdot.org/story/08/08/11/2135259/OpenGL-30-Released-Developers-Furious http://developers.slashdot.org/story/08/08/11/2135259/OpenGL... One of the posts in the first link. >So let me get this straight... In order to allow what, a small handful of old CAD apps to compile against 3.0, they're willing to practically kill off all new applications developed against the API? That makes sense. One customer a year ago is better than ten next week... [grin] >Or maybe they've just realized that a) they've lost everything on Windows to DirectX so it doesn't really matter what they do there, and b) since they don't have a single competing API on other platforms, they don't actually need to make an effort there either. >End result, they can screw over developers as much as they like, and it won't actually hurt them. Windows developers wouldn't have used OGL in the first place, and everyone else will keep using them because there are no alternatives.