Not sure if you and others have seen this article, months ago ...
"
AMD hopes to put a little Mantle in OpenGL Next"
That would lead to an open standard API with low-level access and the ability to provide IHV-specific extensions. I'm going with the idea that Mantle helped point the APIs in a common direction, but what's left after they go there?
It was the lack of being able to add specific optimizations to DX12 that lead AMD to state that there was still enough to differentiate Mantle going forward.
Is there something else left when
OpenGL would be a standard, it would have buy-in from other vendors, a superset of major engines tied to Mantle, it would be open, it seems to be promising a break from the legacy cruft AMD campaigned against, and it would be present beyond legacy Windows PCs.
I'm asking what is still on the list of promises for Mantle that glNext cannot check off.
Does DX12 only get AMD cards 90% of the benefit of Mantle?
With IHV extensions, what doesn't a low-level OpenGL provide?
I suppose you people with an axe to grind are going to say that the 70 developers actively working with Mantle is a lie huh?
I have no reason to doubt the number. I'm asking what do they get by staying on the Mantle train when it seems the goal of convincing the industry on where it needs to go was accomplished.
I mean who are you trying to convince? Developers are using Mantle, pretty much all games coming from EA that use Frostbyte will support Mantle,
I remember how DICE very unsubtly hinted at the desire for a multiplatform API. That wish came up more than once--at the Mantle announcement and in that three-way chat between Andersson, Carmack, and Sweeney. The steps that need to be taken to make that happen with Mantle have not happened, and EA is represented at GDC with glNext, (by guess who).
Cryengine will also have native support for it.
This is the one engine I did not see listed in the GDC schedule for glNext. If Crytek's troubles are settled, I would be surprised if it didn't support the next OpenGL given its multi-platform engine.
(edit: spelling of glNext fixed in the above)
All the Stardock games based on the Starswarm engine will natively support it, etc. etc.
Oxide is at the glNext event as well, as are Epic and Unity.
To do more than just ask vague questions, I am going to put forward a hypothetical:
glNext is generally aligned with what DX12 which is generally aligned with Mantle.
glNext provides greater opportunities for specificity, and it does so many of the things DICE, and Oxide, and Unity, and Epic, and Crytek want. It provides the disclosure Intel called AMD on not providing.
Mantle has slowed in delivering the things that the above wanted, and one of the notable executive voices in favor of the stronger software development focus was John Byrne. He's "pursuing other opportunities" now.
Mantle does provide the ability to get low-level DX12-style access on existing Windows PCs, which is the only thing AMD has made a clear drive for. This is good for a smoother transition, and might be helpful for a non-Microsoft API that wants the broadest deployment possible.
Mantle might be better for those 70 developers and for AMD if it is folded into the foundation for either DX12 or the open low-level API it has struggled to become.