ton wrote:
- if we want to move on with OpenGL2 for a Blender3, we can also choose to strictly limit support to gfx cards that officially conform to ARB standards, meaning limiting choices to ATI, 3DLabs, Sun, SGI, and probably nvidia...
Or abstract the feature set away so that OpenGL libraries can be interchanged.. But it would require intense thought about what
basically blender needs and what additives people would want..
Not sure how hard it would be to abstract away from the libraries..
This may be a leap of imagination, but imagine if OpenGL was like a plugin, by use of some glue code.. So internally blender uses the original OpenGL, but if the plugin exists it uses card specific directives..
But make it so that the objects in blender can have any amount of
specific detail, but levels of detail like for basic OpenGL no graphics card the object is red, for medium case its OpenGL with graphics card that supports bitmaps, and the ball is red and rocky looking but no bump maps.. And for the high detail the ball uses custom procedurals to
define the bumpiness.. The idea being that no matter what version of blender you use, you can still use blender.. It might make the blend files hug though..
Would it be possible to do this without a close coupling of the libraries with
blender's source? Particularly without having multiple #ifdef throughout
the source code? Some how make it a runtime problem and not a compile time problem? Then someone could develop a OpenGL2 emulator
for paralization across a super computer for instance, without custom hacking the blender code and recompiling? It would be the difference between having to debug 100 spinoffs of blender using different
OpenGL source and debugging a single source and the gluecode/libraries
seperate..
Nvidia was obviously NOT present at the BOF, which was - I think - representative for the behind the scenes political fight over the Cg vs.OpenGL SL standard.
Well NVidia is losing out in "Maximum PC" magazine, ATI is out ahead on
graphics runtimes for games.. MaximumPC says their demos tend to use special features of the card to come out ahead of ATI but ATI is more
precise on what it does.. Their favorite thing to pick fun at is the NVidia
cards with the huge cooling fan attached.. If NVidia doesn't play along
they could go the way of Voodoo..
Too bad... also the role Microsoft wants to play in OpenGL is unclear...
Typical of Microsoft.. Keep the crowd mystified.. I wonder how
good Intel and Microsoft's relation is, Intel is fixing to develop
chips with about four times the resolution of the current process..
they wont 'help' but according to the ARB members, they wont 'attack' either. My question on the patent issue (MS has shader patents that might be enforced on) didnt give a clear answer either, other than "OpenGL has potentially 100s of patent infringing technologies implemented, non of the ARB partners ever was being sued over it, it's just unlikely anyone will". ARB partnerrs, still a strong part of the industry, will likely enforce their own patents, if attacked... patents being used here as a firewall.
There is a term called patent flooding, where a competing technology
patents everything surrounding a competitors technology so they can't move out of the confines of the specific technologies.. I had a friend in school who wrote software that would generate 3D plots of closeness of
patents and said he could literally see the process at work..
Time to find out if the US patent office can point out that the patents
make use of hardware technology.. I think software patents are lame,
especially if they can be reduced to math.. To make something patentable you have to have some kind fo hardware dependency, a proof that the software is a part of a hardware process. I'm wondering what the patents are and if they are enforceable.. I guess they can implement software in hardware, then can patent the hardware.. But you should still be able to
make the software..
In general, I've still got a very positive feeling of moving to OpenGL2 in the future. The specs are great, and creating support for this in a new Blender3 tool will give exciting possibilities. It just all takes so long.... with Direct3D becoming more and more the industry standard for consumer based 3d (games). Probably OpenGL will keep playing a (restricted but relevant) role in the 3d workstation & creation market. Which is fine.
-Ton-
I'm sure the games market will eventually want to get away from DirectX
because Microsoft will use it to leverage themselves in there, then purchase Activision and other companies, and soon we will be buying all our games from Microsoft.. That's how they work, they get you dependent on them, then they turn around and screw your market and take over..