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OpenGL has been a huge wall for me. I always learn only to forget it. Remembering its quirks is almost impossible, and the recent articles about how inconsisten

by arithma 12y ago

OpenGL has been a huge wall for me. I always learn only to forget it. Remembering its quirks is almost impossible, and the recent articles about how inconsistently implemented it is (drivers, vendors, specs..) and how useless the extensions are claimed to be discourage even further.

flexd 12y ago
http://open.gl http://open.gl is a fantastic resource.
mikevm 12y ago
Given the amount of cruft OpenGL currently carries, the massive changes (read: rewrite) that will require for it to be a sane modern graphics API and the fact that several Khronos members that would probably not want any significant changes to the API (CAD companies, for example), wouldn't it make sense for the industry to dump OpenGL like yesterday's paper and converge behind a new, modern API? For example, AMD's Mantle.
- Amadiro 12y ago
  No, that would make no sense whatsoever. You seem to be somewhat misinformed about GL... * OpenGL core profile is quite clean and lean. Both apple and intel have already decided not to implement OpenGL compatibility (where all the cruft sits). There are still a few things that can and should be cleaned up, but it's pretty great already. * Adding an additional API means there will be YET another thing vendors have to support and will be able to screw up, in addition to the already existing plethora of APIs: GL, D3D, DDX/GDI, OpenCL, VDPAU [or something like it], CUDA [or something like it], OpenMAX, Mantle. OpenVG, ... -- nobody is going to drop OpenGL or D3D for something like mantle, because that'd instantly lose you all your customers. Not even AMD. * AMDs mantle (which is, as far as we know, just a specific thing to their cards and not even portable to any other cards) is not an attempt to make things more stable, but an attempt by AMD to gain more control over the market (something they are in a good position to attempt right now, as they have control of the console market) and to push into the direction of a low-level interface that is strongly tied to their hardware model. Mantle as an API is (as far as we know) even lower-level than GL and D3D, and hence not very suited for most programmers and applications -- there are a lot more things you can do wrong with it. Don't believe all the FUD you read on hackernews. The main issue with OpenGL right now is that some vendors are doing a shitty job at it, which is mainly due to the heavy influence microsoft had on the gaming industry for a long time. GL is now making a major comeback due to linux, apple and mobile platforms gaining popularity, which will help rectify these issues over time.
  - mikevm 12y ago
    Thanks for schooling me :).
  - joebaf 12y ago
    Mantle is also not that important on Consoles - there you have thin driver layer, so Mantle would not help that much. Probably it will disappear in some years/months.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  In a way, it's already started from scratch - that's OpenGL ES. But I fear they want to "unify" the two soon such as that most of the cruft is added to OpenGL ES, too (just a presumption of mine). I think if they continue with ES on its natural path, it will simply become the default graphics APIs for billions of devices, without them doing much to push it one way or the other.
  - Amadiro 12y ago
    It looks more like Desktop GL might move to mobile devices soon. nvidia seems to be pushing really hard in that direction. But it'll remain to be seen where things go.
tomn 12y ago
I used to feel like this with OpenGL; the ammount of complexity to get my head around was so large that most of it had drained out of my ears between projects. I've been working on something recently using modern OpenGL though, and i've found it a lot more manageable. Because there's no longer a fixed pipeline -- you have to write your own shaders to be able to do anything 3D graphics related, the pltform is vastly simpler, to the point of being relatively easy to understand, if still a little complex to use. The API is still quite crusty; there's little in the way of abstraction, and you often have to make quite a few calls to do simple stuff, but it's conceptually a lot cleaner.
Amadiro 12y ago
Eh, a lot of the recent articles on hackernews about GL have been fairly low-quality and were badly researched (like the guy who complained about timer queries blocking, because he blatantly didn't understand how CPU/GPU communication works) No need to buy into the FUD. - if you use core profile, modern GL, there aren't a lot of quirks. It's a fairly nice API overall. - if you target reasonably modern drivers, you won't typically find many inconsistencies and issues. If you do something unusual (like the latest idtech with megatexture) you might run into driver issues -- but that's just how things are, it's not the fault of the API. New functionality needs testing, and GPUs are still constantly evolving. - extensions are not useless. There are a huge amount of absolutely fantastic extensions. This is, IMO, the main strength of GL over D3D (and other APIs), which does not have a mechanism like this. If you know the hardware supports a certain functionality, there will most certainly be a GL extension to exploit that functionality, even if you can't with D3D. - in particular, KHR_debug is the best thing since sliced bread. It allows you to have the GPU driver diagnose your program for you, and give you hints such as: - things you do wrong - things you should do differently to increase performance - general debug information - information on memory usage and where your buffers are stored

by arithma 12y ago

flexd 12y ago

http://open.gl http://open.gl is a fantastic resource.

mikevm 12y ago

Given the amount of cruft OpenGL currently carries, the massive changes (read: rewrite) that will require for it to be a sane modern graphics API and the fact that several Khronos members that would probably not want any significant changes to the API (CAD companies, for example), wouldn't it make sense for the industry to dump OpenGL like yesterday's paper and converge behind a new, modern API? For example, AMD's Mantle.

Amadiro 12y ago
No, that would make no sense whatsoever. You seem to be somewhat misinformed about GL... * OpenGL core profile is quite clean and lean. Both apple and intel have already decided not to implement OpenGL compatibility (where all the cruft sits). There are still a few things that can and should be cleaned up, but it's pretty great already. * Adding an additional API means there will be YET another thing vendors have to support and will be able to screw up, in addition to the already existing plethora of APIs: GL, D3D, DDX/GDI, OpenCL, VDPAU [or something like it], CUDA [or something like it], OpenMAX, Mantle. OpenVG, ... -- nobody is going to drop OpenGL or D3D for something like mantle, because that'd instantly lose you all your customers. Not even AMD. * AMDs mantle (which is, as far as we know, just a specific thing to their cards and not even portable to any other cards) is not an attempt to make things more stable, but an attempt by AMD to gain more control over the market (something they are in a good position to attempt right now, as they have control of the console market) and to push into the direction of a low-level interface that is strongly tied to their hardware model. Mantle as an API is (as far as we know) even lower-level than GL and D3D, and hence not very suited for most programmers and applications -- there are a lot more things you can do wrong with it. Don't believe all the FUD you read on hackernews. The main issue with OpenGL right now is that some vendors are doing a shitty job at it, which is mainly due to the heavy influence microsoft had on the gaming industry for a long time. GL is now making a major comeback due to linux, apple and mobile platforms gaining popularity, which will help rectify these issues over time.
- mikevm 12y ago
  Thanks for schooling me :).
- joebaf 12y ago
  Mantle is also not that important on Consoles - there you have thin driver layer, so Mantle would not help that much. Probably it will disappear in some years/months.
higherpurpose 12y ago
In a way, it's already started from scratch - that's OpenGL ES. But I fear they want to "unify" the two soon such as that most of the cruft is added to OpenGL ES, too (just a presumption of mine). I think if they continue with ES on its natural path, it will simply become the default graphics APIs for billions of devices, without them doing much to push it one way or the other.
- Amadiro 12y ago
  It looks more like Desktop GL might move to mobile devices soon. nvidia seems to be pushing really hard in that direction. But it'll remain to be seen where things go.

tomn 12y ago

I used to feel like this with OpenGL; the ammount of complexity to get my head around was so large that most of it had drained out of my ears between projects. I've been working on something recently using modern OpenGL though, and i've found it a lot more manageable. Because there's no longer a fixed pipeline -- you have to write your own shaders to be able to do anything 3D graphics related, the pltform is vastly simpler, to the point of being relatively easy to understand, if still a little complex to use. The API is still quite crusty; there's little in the way of abstraction, and you often have to make quite a few calls to do simple stuff, but it's conceptually a lot cleaner.

Amadiro 12y ago

Eh, a lot of the recent articles on hackernews about GL have been fairly low-quality and were badly researched (like the guy who complained about timer queries blocking, because he blatantly didn't understand how CPU/GPU communication works) No need to buy into the FUD. - if you use core profile, modern GL, there aren't a lot of quirks. It's a fairly nice API overall. - if you target reasonably modern drivers, you won't typically find many inconsistencies and issues. If you do something unusual (like the latest idtech with megatexture) you might run into driver issues -- but that's just how things are, it's not the fault of the API. New functionality needs testing, and GPUs are still constantly evolving. - extensions are not useless. There are a huge amount of absolutely fantastic extensions. This is, IMO, the main strength of GL over D3D (and other APIs), which does not have a mechanism like this. If you know the hardware supports a certain functionality, there will most certainly be a GL extension to exploit that functionality, even if you can't with D3D. - in particular, KHR_debug is the best thing since sliced bread. It allows you to have the GPU driver diagnose your program for you, and give you hints such as: - things you do wrong - things you should do differently to increase performance - general debug information - information on memory usage and where your buffers are stored