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It's somewhat scary to see new graphics APIs being introduced. The fragmentation of OpenGL is enough of a headache, but at least it offers some semblance of "w
by jarrett 12y ago
It's somewhat scary to see new graphics APIs being introduced.
The fragmentation of OpenGL is enough of a headache, but at least it offers some semblance of "write once, run anywhere." The introduction of Mantle and Metal, plus the longstanding existence of Direct3d, makes me worry that OpenGL will get no love. And then we'll have to write our graphics code, three, four, or goodness knows how many times.
I know: It's not realistic to expect "write once, run anywhere" for any app that pushes the capabilities of the GPU. But what about devs like me (of whom there are many) that aren't trying to achieve AAA graphics, but just want the very basics? For us, "write once, run anywhere" is very attractive and should be possible. I can do everything I want with GL 2.1, I don't need to push a massive number of polys, I don't need a huge textures, and I don't need advanced lighting.
- ndesaulniers 12y agoIn that case, you should be happy that WebGL will be on by default in iOS 8 and Safari.
- jarrett 12y agoVery happy indeed!
- general_failure 12y agoWhere did you read that uiwebview/mobile safari in ios8 has webgl?
- jasoncartwright 12y agohttp://www.extremetech.com/computing/183421-apple-wwdc-keynote-watch-the-live-video-unveil-of-ios-8-and-os-x-10-10-live-blog http://www.extremetech.com/computing/183421-apple-wwdc-keyno... - search for WebGL
- stevejohnson 12y agoThat's for desktop Safari.
- bd 12y agoMultiple people on Twitter confirmed WebGL running on their devices with iOS 8 beta installed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ0aWbZjX6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ0aWbZjX6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX5hUdhI4Hs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX5hUdhI4Hs https://vine.co/v/MpXia7EmwAl https://vine.co/v/MpXia7EmwAl https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/9hdhy0x8uk9d155/02uwwrlm.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/9hdhy0x8uk9d155/02uwwr... https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/9hdhy0x8uk9d155/iwy2qcbx.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/9hdhy0x8uk9d155/iwy2qc... It does run both in Safari and WebView and it's pretty fast: http://blog.ludei.com/webgl-ios-8-safari-webview/ http://blog.ludei.com/webgl-ios-8-safari-webview/ http://www.photonstorm.com/html5/a-first-look-at-what-ios8-means-for-phaser-and-pixi-js-hint-bunnies-lots-of-them http://www.photonstorm.com/html5/a-first-look-at-what-ios8-m... It has very decent subset of features supported: https://www.dropbox.com/s/i80qxzap59i230n/2014-06-02%2023.43.34.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/i80qxzap59i230n/2014-06-02%2023.43... But apparently it's not yet fully stable. Also Dean Jackson from Apple's WebGL team tweeted, please direct eventual bug reports to him: https://twitter.com/grorgwork/status/473580744892112897 https://twitter.com/grorgwork/status/473580744892112897
- zanny 12y agoOpenGL 5 will happen in the next two years (and GLES 4) and it will take the wind out of all these alt-language sails. I can't see Khronos making the same fuck up twice, as they did with Longs Peak. Yeah, it means depreciating a bunch of 3.x shit, and probably making another profile, but this time they better do it right.
- jarrett 12y agoI'm all for deprecating old OpenGL features. Old apps won't fail to run for a while yet. When they do, the community will no doubt create a compatibility layer like they did with DosBox.
- cwyers 12y agoI think it's reasonable to assume if an entity had fucked up once, they are at least capable of doing so again.
- fleitz 12y agoEven if they don't fuck it up, the half-assed implementations of it will.
- foxhill 12y ago> OpenGL 5 will happen in the next two years (and GLES 4) and it will take the wind out of all these alt-language sails. 2 years? in two years time nvidia will have their next line of GPUs out (pascal), intel will have launched knights landing (the many core xeon), and the next version of OS X will be released. 2 years is a long time, and it will already be behind the curve from it's announcement. khronos have a history of stagnation and disappointment. > I can't see Khronos making the same fuck up twice, as they did with Longs Peak. i think you may be mis-under-estimating khronos..
- pjmlp 12y agoThat is what engines are for anyway. Contrary to FOSS beliefs, consoles never had proper OpenGL support anyway, so game studios already had to take care of multiple APIs on their engines.
- nightski 12y agoThat worked out very well on Windows with DirectX. The engines clearly provided an equal experience for both OpenGL and DirectX, not favoring the platform specific API at all.
- jarrett 12y agoTrue, but as with advanced rendering techniques, not everyone wants to use off-the-shelf engines. In a simple application, there's something to be said for writing your own, simple graphics code.
- Argorak 12y agoActually, the name Metal reminded me of S3 MeTaL, one of the APIs during the time when each and every 3D accelerator manufacturer had their own API ;).
- panzi 12y agoAnd now we are at a state where almost all OS vendors and some GPU manufacturers have their own API. I'm only waiting for Nvidia to announce their own API. They did buy 3dfx back in the days, so they have (bought) some experience with own APIs.
- yoklov 12y agoI think NVidia might be betting on OpenGL prevailing through this mess. Not a bad bet, if you ask me...
- mrec 12y agoGlide is not remotely relevant to anything anymore, and hasn't been for years. Besides, NV have much more recent experience with their own APIs, in form of CUDA and Cg. I like the general trend indicated by this and Mantle and DX12, but the return to full-on platform fragmentation is a bit depressing.
- vincetogo 12y agoDid Apple deprecate OpenGL on iOS? If not you should still be able to work with it if it does what you need.
- jarrett 12y agoI'm pretty sure they didn't. My concern though is that OpenGL will fade away. OpenGL isn't exactly a product. There's no company that "writes" the OpenGL software. Rather, it's a specification published by a consortium. "Writing" the OpenGL libraries is a task that each GPU maker does independently. So you have a bunch of different implementations of the same API. For a long time, GPU makers have focused their attention on DirectX and done a lackluster job with their OpenGL implementations. If APIs like DirectX and Metal continue to proliferate, there will be less and less time and less incentive to maintain a good OpenGL implementation.
- fleitz 12y agoThen you don't need Metal. APIs are typically written for general use cases. Independent dev writing low poly apps for multiple platforms is the Unity use case. OpenGL 2.1 will be supported forever, don't worry, since you don't need anything more than GL2.1 it will run everywhere.
- Htsthbjig 12y agoIn my opinion, this is great news for OpenGL, it brings competition. The problem with OpenGL is legacy code and committee hell. If something works, like precompiled shaders, OpenGL committee will include it in the future spec. I use OpenGL for very simple things, OpenGL needs to loose weight and get slim. I am certainly not satisfied with OGL 2.1. It is a design that does not make sense anymore with actual hardware(it did like 10 years ago).