OpenGL

[erunamo]

Found this headline on opengl.org today:
Call to Action: Current plan for Windows Vista Aero will degrade OpenGL performance. Act Now to keep OpenGL a first class API under WindowsThe link is to a discussion board. It talks about the new Windows only supporting OpenGL 1.4 (fixed, so no plans to extend) and provides this support through a

Comments

[beelsebob]

But... don't the graphics card manufacturers usually write the Open GL drivers?

Bob

[erunamo]

Yes, but if you install the latest drivers from the manufacturer it will disable the fancy desktop (and basically revert to WinXP style). From what I could determine, Microsoft have a library that can sit between the opengl libraries and directx translating calls, but only up to version 1.4 and will not support any of the OpenGL 2.0 extensions.

[beelsebob]

Dude... what a load of twats... So does that mean that if you install any third party graphics driver it will do that... or just any third party GL driver?

If the former, then gamers are going to be pissed off (no more graphics card upgrades for you)... and if the latter, that's a damn good case for the EU to split them up over anti-trust. And I think that OpenGL *can* survive that long, it's got solid support from just about every non-windows OS, which is quite important when you consider that things like movie animation is done on Solaris/Linux boxen.

Bob

[dwinsper]

The Playstation 3 also uses OpenGL as its primary graphics platform.

[erunamo]

This is one of the things discussed on the forum. It's a good way of reducing ports from one platform to the other. Also forcing people using Windows to only play DirectX based games!