7 ms·

We need OpenGL as an alternative. What would Direct3D have been today without competition? But at the same time, GL is such a PITA to use directly that I don't

by maaaats 12y ago

We need OpenGL as an alternative. What would Direct3D have been today without competition? But at the same time, GL is such a PITA to use directly that I don't bother without some middleware abstracting it away.

pjmlp 12y ago
At the same level as the game console APIs. You don't get OpenGL on those.
- shmerl 12y ago
  There is no reason not to have OpenGL there, besides the jerkiness of console manufacturers. Hopefully Steam Machines can put an end to such situation.
  - eropple 12y ago
    The PS3 had OpenGL. Nobody used it because it was vastly slower than libgcm. The PS4 has OpenGL. Almost nobody outside of indie-land has even looked at it because there's no reason to when libgnm is right there and you still pay a significant performance vig, in an industry where you do not get the luxury of ignoring performance, for an only marginally better API. The Xbox One, on the other hand, does provide what appears (I don't have access to any of these consoles, I just know a lot of game devs who like to drink) to be a complete DX11 implementation...and it's plagued with perf issues you don't see on a PC because the assumptions of the API don't map to the actual hardware--which, I understand, the lower-level constructs of DX12 will address. The future of non-indie game development seems very much to be going towards hardware: Mantle, Metal, libgnm, DX12. If you're on a console, you can afford to actually develop for the console. If you're not, you don't matter. (Indies don't care, but few people care about them, so that tail wouldn't wag the dog. Nobody cares about Steam Machines, so I don't know why you'd bring them up.)
    - shmerl 12y ago
      The fact that OpenGL on consoles has poor performance is the fault of console manufacturers, not of OpenGL itself. Also, their release schedule results in outdated hardware in comparison with regular computers. I.e. developers are forced into mentality of writing on a very low level to squeeze performance from a dated spec. More frequent updates could solve this situation and that's what Steam Machines aim to change as well. There is no valid reason why OpenGL can't be made to perform well on consoles except the lock-in mentality which plagues consoles market.
      - eropple 12y ago
        > There is no valid reason why OpenGL can't be made to perform well on consoles except the lock-in mentality which plagues consoles market. Oh sure. Lock-in mentality is the reason. Never mind that Apple is doing Metal and AMD is doing Mantle because of defined, demonstrable issues with higher-level abstractions, both GLES and DX11 respectively. Certainly never mind that DX12 is shaping up to provide the same sort of low-level primitives as Mantle/libgnm/Metal. No, they're just hissss lock-in hissss. Can't possibly be because, like, it's a better option, can't have that. Like, do you know how many calls you have to make to accomplish stuff in some basic OpenGL extensions? And how much less you can do without the significant amounts of overhead it causes--overhead you can't remove because it's in the spec and now it never goes away? Did you ever stop to think, for just one second amidst your "there is no reason" absolutism about something it certainly sounds like you don't know much about past laymanship...maybe they're not laymen and maybe they have a good reason for stripping away abstraction? Not even providing their own incompatible abstraction, but just getting rid of it? I mean, Snidely Whiplash wants to make his platform dev-friendly too, but instead of doing that he gives you this bleeding bare-metal API? Come on. Have you stopped to give these guys an ounce of credit? . And complaining about a "release schedule resulting in outdated hardware" fails to comprehend that "outdated hardware" is every nine months. That is a feature, so that normal people don't have to go buy nVidia GTX9581 Platinum Edition cards every two years. Your position frankly beggars belief. The PC gaming treadmill sucks. The mobile treadmill sucks. And you want to make people jump to it on consoles? Do you know a normal person?
- cobalt 12y ago
  ps3 had opengl available, and the Wii and Wii U use OpenGL. I don't know about the ps4. Note, the xboxs use a modified version of DirectX which is more like mantle/dx12 (low overhead)
  - Narishma 12y ago
    Neither Wii nor WiiU use OpenGL, and on the PS3 it may as well not exist since pretty much no game uses it.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    > ps3 had opengl available Again this urban legend. PS3 had PSGL, which was OpenGL ES 1.0 using Cg as shading language. This is quite different than OpenGL. Wii uses GX and the Wii U uses GX2, they are modeled on OpenGL, which is also a bit different than being OpenGL.

by maaaats 12y ago

pjmlp 12y ago

At the same level as the game console APIs. You don't get OpenGL on those.

shmerl 12y ago
There is no reason not to have OpenGL there, besides the jerkiness of console manufacturers. Hopefully Steam Machines can put an end to such situation.
- eropple 12y ago
  The PS3 had OpenGL. Nobody used it because it was vastly slower than libgcm. The PS4 has OpenGL. Almost nobody outside of indie-land has even looked at it because there's no reason to when libgnm is right there and you still pay a significant performance vig, in an industry where you do not get the luxury of ignoring performance, for an only marginally better API. The Xbox One, on the other hand, does provide what appears (I don't have access to any of these consoles, I just know a lot of game devs who like to drink) to be a complete DX11 implementation...and it's plagued with perf issues you don't see on a PC because the assumptions of the API don't map to the actual hardware--which, I understand, the lower-level constructs of DX12 will address. The future of non-indie game development seems very much to be going towards hardware: Mantle, Metal, libgnm, DX12. If you're on a console, you can afford to actually develop for the console. If you're not, you don't matter. (Indies don't care, but few people care about them, so that tail wouldn't wag the dog. Nobody cares about Steam Machines, so I don't know why you'd bring them up.)
  - shmerl 12y ago
    The fact that OpenGL on consoles has poor performance is the fault of console manufacturers, not of OpenGL itself. Also, their release schedule results in outdated hardware in comparison with regular computers. I.e. developers are forced into mentality of writing on a very low level to squeeze performance from a dated spec. More frequent updates could solve this situation and that's what Steam Machines aim to change as well. There is no valid reason why OpenGL can't be made to perform well on consoles except the lock-in mentality which plagues consoles market.
    - eropple 12y ago
      > There is no valid reason why OpenGL can't be made to perform well on consoles except the lock-in mentality which plagues consoles market. Oh sure. Lock-in mentality is the reason. Never mind that Apple is doing Metal and AMD is doing Mantle because of defined, demonstrable issues with higher-level abstractions, both GLES and DX11 respectively. Certainly never mind that DX12 is shaping up to provide the same sort of low-level primitives as Mantle/libgnm/Metal. No, they're just hissss lock-in hissss. Can't possibly be because, like, it's a better option, can't have that. Like, do you know how many calls you have to make to accomplish stuff in some basic OpenGL extensions? And how much less you can do without the significant amounts of overhead it causes--overhead you can't remove because it's in the spec and now it never goes away? Did you ever stop to think, for just one second amidst your "there is no reason" absolutism about something it certainly sounds like you don't know much about past laymanship...maybe they're not laymen and maybe they have a good reason for stripping away abstraction? Not even providing their own incompatible abstraction, but just getting rid of it? I mean, Snidely Whiplash wants to make his platform dev-friendly too, but instead of doing that he gives you this bleeding bare-metal API? Come on. Have you stopped to give these guys an ounce of credit? . And complaining about a "release schedule resulting in outdated hardware" fails to comprehend that "outdated hardware" is every nine months. That is a feature, so that normal people don't have to go buy nVidia GTX9581 Platinum Edition cards every two years. Your position frankly beggars belief. The PC gaming treadmill sucks. The mobile treadmill sucks. And you want to make people jump to it on consoles? Do you know a normal person?
cobalt 12y ago
ps3 had opengl available, and the Wii and Wii U use OpenGL. I don't know about the ps4. Note, the xboxs use a modified version of DirectX which is more like mantle/dx12 (low overhead)
- Narishma 12y ago
  Neither Wii nor WiiU use OpenGL, and on the PS3 it may as well not exist since pretty much no game uses it.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  > ps3 had opengl available Again this urban legend. PS3 had PSGL, which was OpenGL ES 1.0 using Cg as shading language. This is quite different than OpenGL. Wii uses GX and the Wii U uses GX2, they are modeled on OpenGL, which is also a bit different than being OpenGL.