Some generic questions...

[OpenGL guy]

I get pretty much the same results with my 9800 Pro in the second computer. So to answer your question. Assuming you're not experience bugs with DirectX version.

I haven't seen any issue with multisampling and WoW on my X800 XT PE. What are you seeing exactly?

 

[ChrisRay]

I get pretty much the same results with my 9800 Pro in the second computer. So to answer your question. Assuming you're not experience bugs with DirectX version.

I haven't seen any issue with multisampling and WoW on my X800 XT PE. What are you seeing exactly?

I meant same. By same performance charactoristics I dont think I've had any issues with the 9800 Pro in WoW.

 

[Tim Murray]

I wonder... will NVIDIA push a GL-like language for PS3 graphics? that would probably heavily influence the number of D3D versus OGL games...

 

[akira888]

Reportedly from what one PSP developer on the console board said (Fafalada ?) the PSP graphics API seems to be some sort of implementation of OGL-ES, so an OGL-ish API for PS3 with a Cg interface would seem to be likely.

 

[Gnerma]

2. When will ATI release a fully opengl optimized driver? Omegas?

The following quote is the best answer to that question.

Allan: Recently when I was over visiting you guys in Canada I was talking to Joe Chien (not sure of sp please fix!) - he was heading up the team rewriting and working on the opengl driver,. How is this progressing to date, can you detail any plans regarding this? Can the end user expect a driver release with massive improvements, incremental gains over 2005 or do ATI want to put all their man power into the D3D side of the driver?

Terry: Joe is a great guy but has a big mouth He was in charge of the R3xx drivers, he was head of our DirectX drivers, and now has taken over our OpenGL drivers.
There seems to be a misconception though. We are not re-writing our OpenGL driver from scratch. What we are doing is re-writing certain portions of it to improve stability and performance. There will by no means be massive performance gains after this work is complete. This effort will attempt to improve the quality and speed of our OGL driver as much as possible, but until it is done (which still is a ways away) we cannot speculate on how much of a performance improvement users will see.

In other words, we are getting the much lauded 'optimizations' with every respective driver release. That quote is from here.

5. What recent games only use OpenGL? Riddick?

It depends on how you'd define 'recent'. Riddick, Doom 3, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and Call of Duty all run exclusively in OpenGL. Many other games have both OpenGL and D3D rendering modes.

 

[KimB]

Any compelling reason to use it?

OpenGL? Sure, but there is, unfortunately, also a very compelling reason not to use it: render to texture interfaces just aren't very good at the moment. As far as I can tell, this is the only remaining deficiency of OpenGL. If the members of the ARB get off their collective asses and get a good extension for render to texture out there, I don't think there will be any compelling reason to use Direct3D.

 

[DeanoC]

If the members of the ARB get off their collective asses and get a good extension for render to texture out there, I don't think there will be any compelling reason to use Direct3D.

D3DX makes developing 3D specific to MS machines much easier.

Things you get for 'free' are shader linkers, PRT computation, image loaders, animations system, maths library, etc.

Now you can write or hack together most things (though the PRT is probably the most advanced implementation due to PPS's involvement) from other open source projects but a simple library like D3DX would make OpenGL much more attractive.

I seriously considered using OpenGL for my latest PC engine but in the end D3DX swung it in D3D's favor.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Any compelling reason to use it?

OpenGL?

I was asking about the specific instance of the game reference earlier.

 

[KimB]

That makes more sense.

 

[KimB]

D3DX makes developing 3D specific to MS machines much easier.

Things you get for 'free' are shader linkers, PRT computation, image loaders, animations system, maths library, etc.

Now you can write or hack together most things (though the PRT is probably the most advanced implementation due to PPS's involvement) from other open source projects but a simple library like D3DX would make OpenGL much more attractive.

I would tend to think that there would be a number of libraries available for such things. But interesting nonetheless.

 

[Sigma]

OpenGL? Sure, but there is, unfortunately, also a very compelling reason not to use it: render to texture interfaces just aren't very good at the moment. As far as I can tell, this is the only remaining deficiency of OpenGL. If the members of the ARB get off their collective asses and get a good extension for render to texture out there, I don't think there will be any compelling reason to use Direct3D.

They already did: EXT_framebuffer_object (it isn't in the registry, but there is a 3DLabs presentation regarding it). It seems that the API is also prepared to support render to vertex array.

PBO is now a ARB extension too.
GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two is also a good advantage...

 

[KimB]

Well, if it's not supported currently, I don't think you can really say it's there, more like they're working on it.

 

[GameCat]

Well, according to the ARB minutes from the meeting in early december, the spec is basically complete they just wanted to review language about stencilmask reference values. So the ARB's work is nearly complete which means you should see implementations fairly soon. You can read the minutes here http://www.opengl.org/about/arb/notes/meeting_note_2004-12-07.html if you're interested.

 

[AndrewM]

Any compelling reason to use it?

OpenGL? Sure, but there is, unfortunately, also a very compelling reason not to use it: render to texture interfaces just aren't very good at the moment. As far as I can tell, this is the only remaining deficiency of OpenGL. If the members of the ARB get off their collective asses and get a good extension for render to texture out there, I don't think there will be any compelling reason to use Direct3D.

EXT_framebuffer_object's spec is basically finished. We're just waiting for it to be released. NV and ATI have working versions of it in their drivers, but is hidden (plus no specs).

(render to texture extension)