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OpenGL 3.3 and 4.0
Friday, March 12, 2010 | Permalink

OK, I was not prepared for this one, but Khronos has released not just one but two new versions of OpenGL, 3.3 and 4.0. The 3.3 version is a nice upgrade on 3.2 and the 4.0 is pretty much a match for DirectX 11. To me it's clear that OpenGL is back on track again.

Now we just need drivers.

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PiggyHop
Friday, March 12, 2010

Good game Khronos!

But now open-source drivers are not one but two major versions late!

Seth
Friday, March 12, 2010

It's nice to see OpenGL catch up to Direct3D. Now I can play around with the tessellator in other operating systems.

Alien
Saturday, March 13, 2010

Hello!

I am not very good at OpenGL, and before starting to learn it I want understand some advantages and disadvantages.

P.S.
Sorry for my english=)

Seth
Saturday, March 13, 2010

@Alien

One advantage of using OpenGL is that it's cross-platform, meaning it works on Linux/Mac OS/Windows. Another advantage is that sometimes, vendor-specific extensions are introduced which allow upcoming hardware features to be toyed with early on.

The primary advantage to Direct3D, at least for me, is the cleanliness and precision with which features are implemented. For example, the new patch types play along with the geometry shader when no tessellation stages are present, whereas the OpenGL extension doesn't allow the geometry shader to operate directly on a patch.

One interesting thing to note is that the OpenGL tessellation extension specifies a barrier function in the control point shader, due to the fact that it allows you to read back per-output-control-point data from any execution.

Reavenk
Saturday, March 13, 2010

The 4.0 spec seemed to have popped outa nowhere without warning for me

deadc0de
Saturday, March 13, 2010

Good news, but please let's not open an DirectX vs OpenGL discussion, as the hardware abstraction API matters much anyway... You use what you need, what's better supported on the platform you are working on and it's not much of a problem to switch from one to the other anyway.

Seth
Sunday, March 14, 2010

@deadc0de

I don't think this was anyone's intention; I tried to give a couple of specific examples for Alien in my post.

I agree in that the important part is understanding the 3D fundamentals, which can then be applied to any API.

n00body
Monday, March 15, 2010

I'm just glad that the restructuring of the ARB is yielding some real results. Now that they are getting caught up, this may soon bring a more interesting question. What will happen if OpenGL begins to lead with features that D3D doesn't have?

Just have to see, I guess.

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