4 ms·

> Mantle and D3D12 are going to thoroughly leave GL behind (again!) on the performance and developer "mindshare" axes very soon. Huh? Performance, maybe, but h

by azakai 12y ago

> Mantle and D3D12 are going to thoroughly leave GL behind (again!) on the performance and developer "mindshare" axes very soon. Huh? Performance, maybe, but how is "mindshare" being measured here? DirectX "beat" OpenGL a long time ago - does the author claim OpenGL beat its way back to the top? If so, I can only assume that was due to GL on mobile platforms. But those mobile platforms - iOS and Android - still use GL, and are growing? How can D3D12 and Mantle beat those when they don't even run on those platforms, while Windows - the platform they do work on - is anyhow already under DirectX control? Furthermore, GL is seeing another area of growth through WebGL, which now works on even Microsoft's browser. Am I missing something? That mindshare statement seems completely off base.

sounds 12y ago
I kind of inserted "because Valve, Steam, and Linux" into his statements about OpenGL versus DirectX, and then I was better able to understand where he's coming from. I mean, you don't really think he has no idea what he's talking about, right? Then game dev world is really, really big. It's worth noting he has worked at Valve for some time, so he's coming from the Gabe Newell world.
- azakai 12y ago
  I ended my comment with a question - I'm more puzzled than anything. I assume I am missing something here, but I still don't know what.
  - loup-vaillant 12y ago
    If I had to guess, I'd say Linux gaming (and by extension the SteamBox), could suffer because of OpenGL. Right now we have XBox/Windows. From what I hear, Valve intends to make some SteamBox/GnuLinux competition. If OpenGL sucks compared to D3D and Mantle (more difficult to develop in, or just less efficient at runtime), this competition may not take off. Also if porting existing D3D (or PS3/4) games to OpenGL is hard, it likely won't happen. Of course, I'm only talking about smokin' fast and shiny AAA gaming, where D3D currently dominates. OpenGL owns mobile and the web, but they don't compete in the same category.
corillian 12y ago
He's referring to mindshare among professional (game) engine developers - those people who try to get maximum rendering performance out of multiple platforms. His statement is totally on target for reasons I enumerated with a blog article on this subject back in December: http://inovaekeith.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-opengl-probably-isnt-graphics-api.html http://inovaekeith.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-opengl-probably-... As for WebGL Apple intentionally disables WebGL support on iOS - except for in iAds - so game devs can't circumvent the app store. Since WebGL is needlessly restricted to the feature set of the OpenGL ES specification its usefulness is severely limited. WebGL also has many other problems such as the fact that JavaScript is slow as hell.
- azakai 12y ago
  I read the blogpost, but it seems to focus on why OpenGL isn't good - not on measuring mindshare of OpenGL? Yes, perhaps Mantle and DirectX are better, and that might in theory lead to more mindshare. But the fact remains that OpenGL is standard on mobile and on the web, which should increase OpenGL's mindshare. Yes, WebGL is disabled on iOS. It's disabled on OS X desktop too, for now. Hopefully that will change soon. > JavaScript is slow as hell. I wouldn't say that 67% of native speed is "slow as hell", and that's where things currently stand. Perhaps you have a specific workload in mind that happens to be slow - how did you measure?
  - corillian 12y ago
    The blog states that if the Mantle specification is adopted by other manufacturers, particularly on mobile, then it will become the new cross platform standard and OpenGL will cease to be relevant. 67% of native speed is astronomically slow in the world of real-time games where improving per-frame performance by 3ms is considered a huge win. Getting all of your nice special effects and post-processing implemented while still running at a smooth 60fps is very difficult - especially on mobile.
    - azakai 12y ago
      I see, thanks. Yes, if that happens it could certainly upset OpenGL's position. What, though, is the likelihood of that happening? Have there been signs of cross-vendor Mantle adoption, and of support by the OS vendors Google and Apple?

by azakai 12y ago

sounds 12y ago

I kind of inserted "because Valve, Steam, and Linux" into his statements about OpenGL versus DirectX, and then I was better able to understand where he's coming from. I mean, you don't really think he has no idea what he's talking about, right? Then game dev world is really, really big. It's worth noting he has worked at Valve for some time, so he's coming from the Gabe Newell world.

azakai 12y ago
I ended my comment with a question - I'm more puzzled than anything. I assume I am missing something here, but I still don't know what.
- loup-vaillant 12y ago
  If I had to guess, I'd say Linux gaming (and by extension the SteamBox), could suffer because of OpenGL. Right now we have XBox/Windows. From what I hear, Valve intends to make some SteamBox/GnuLinux competition. If OpenGL sucks compared to D3D and Mantle (more difficult to develop in, or just less efficient at runtime), this competition may not take off. Also if porting existing D3D (or PS3/4) games to OpenGL is hard, it likely won't happen. Of course, I'm only talking about smokin' fast and shiny AAA gaming, where D3D currently dominates. OpenGL owns mobile and the web, but they don't compete in the same category.

corillian 12y ago

He's referring to mindshare among professional (game) engine developers - those people who try to get maximum rendering performance out of multiple platforms. His statement is totally on target for reasons I enumerated with a blog article on this subject back in December: http://inovaekeith.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-opengl-probably-isnt-graphics-api.html http://inovaekeith.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-opengl-probably-... As for WebGL Apple intentionally disables WebGL support on iOS - except for in iAds - so game devs can't circumvent the app store. Since WebGL is needlessly restricted to the feature set of the OpenGL ES specification its usefulness is severely limited. WebGL also has many other problems such as the fact that JavaScript is slow as hell.

azakai 12y ago
I read the blogpost, but it seems to focus on why OpenGL isn't good - not on measuring mindshare of OpenGL? Yes, perhaps Mantle and DirectX are better, and that might in theory lead to more mindshare. But the fact remains that OpenGL is standard on mobile and on the web, which should increase OpenGL's mindshare. Yes, WebGL is disabled on iOS. It's disabled on OS X desktop too, for now. Hopefully that will change soon. > JavaScript is slow as hell. I wouldn't say that 67% of native speed is "slow as hell", and that's where things currently stand. Perhaps you have a specific workload in mind that happens to be slow - how did you measure?
- corillian 12y ago
  The blog states that if the Mantle specification is adopted by other manufacturers, particularly on mobile, then it will become the new cross platform standard and OpenGL will cease to be relevant. 67% of native speed is astronomically slow in the world of real-time games where improving per-frame performance by 3ms is considered a huge win. Getting all of your nice special effects and post-processing implemented while still running at a smooth 60fps is very difficult - especially on mobile.
  - azakai 12y ago
    I see, thanks. Yes, if that happens it could certainly upset OpenGL's position. What, though, is the likelihood of that happening? Have there been signs of cross-vendor Mantle adoption, and of support by the OS vendors Google and Apple?