OpenGL: (Not So) Smooth Moves
Well, once again, I'm super late with the news. Apparently, OpenGL 3.0 was released yesterday. I saw the headline and I almost jumped out of my chair. Sweet hotness, it was finally out. Thankfully, reading initial impressions from more experienced OpenGL developers has completely sucked all that energy out of me. My risk of heart complications from elevated blood pressure are now over.
So, anyone who has been following OpenGL a little knows that it is the only real competitor to DirectX. This fact and the fact that it's open to any OS makes it kind of a big deal. The problem with OpenGL is that implementation sucks due to massive complexity issues. The OpenGL code is pretty damn old, around 15 years old. Now you're probably thinking, I guess that's old. In the tech world, that's ancient. Think about the hardware capabilities between now and 15 years ago. Huge difference exists there.
It's OpenGL 3.0 though, it can't be that old if there was a 2.0 in between. Yeah, the funny thing about OpenGL is that all they seem to do is patch the code constantly to keep up with modern features. All this patchwork makes for a really crappy design and hence the bad support due to complex implementation.
So what, if this is how it's always been, what's the deal with the fuss over 3.0? Well Khronos (the people now in charge of OpenGL) promised a clean break from OpenGL 2.1 with a complete rewrite of the entire API. This new API would be significantly more modern and feature increased speed and easier implementation. Every got super excited (in their pants) and then hit with a 10-ton anvil when the bomb dropped.
To sum things up: Promises were broken and I feel hurt as a game developer and Linux user.
People wonder what happened and many speculate they avoided a complete shift to appease their main market: CAD developers (think engineering software). It's nice to know they are happy with recent developments as a CAD developer responded on the GameDev.net Forums:
"After hearing these news, we will be starting the end-of-life plan for our OpenGL renderer in the very near future (XP compatibility and quad buffered stereo are the only features holding it back), and will be focusing on D3D10 exclusively from now on."
Awesome, they pissed off the game developers and the CAD developers. At least they still have OpenGL ES for the mobile market.
It's crap like this that makes me wonder why I use Linux. Our community needs to get it together. Times like this require us to either screw OpenGL and develop our own graphics API or rally to take OpenGL from Khronos and do something positive with it. Obviously, they lack the vision and guts to handle modern development. I mean if Microsoft did it with DirectX 10 then it should no problem to attack it with OpenGL.
Source: http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=504623