SGI do not have stop OpenGL support at all !

It just stopped updating the windows version of OpenGL cause working with MS seems to be the worst thing that you can have to.

(Don''t have worked with MS, but many firms stopped working with MS)

There''s an OpenGL review/design board updating OpenGL specs.
In that review board you can find SGI, IBM, INTEL, nVidia and 3Dfx to name a few.

OpenGL1.2 contains all features available in Direct3D7 and some more.
(3d textures for example)

Don''t know about the pixel and vertex shader, time will tell if it''s a good idea and how to add it to OpenGL.

-* Sounds, music and story makes the difference between good and great games *-

Much as I hate to admit it, the [alleged]DirectX 8.0 features of Pixel and Vertex shaders seem very forward-looking from Microsoft.
It sounds a lot like the RenderMan standard, or at least something approaching that. The flexibility of this approach could well be a big bonus for DirectX in the Direct3D vs OpenGL wars.
I hope that the OpenML library will come together, and come together SOON, or us poor OpenGL proponents will have to work with DirectX after all...

*sigh*
Bloody hell, I hate it when Microsoft does something right ...



#pragma DWIM // Do What I Mean!
~ Mad Keith ~

There seems to be a bit of confusion here:

OpenGL does not need support on the Win32 platform from SGI. SGI once supplied a software-version of the OpenGL1.1 standard ( CosmoGL I believe ), but Microsoft shipped their OWN implementation of the OpenGL1.1 standard. The SGI one is supposed to be faster, but they decided to no longer work on a new software version of their own.

At first this was because they were working with Microsoft to create Fahrenheit - which was going to be the marriage of DirectX to OpenGL. The collaboration failed though, and now SGI is only active as part of the board that defines the OpenGL standard, and as a chip-maker for high performance HARDWARE OpenGL. That''s where the trend is going now, hardware implementations of OpenGL, and so it does not need software support.

The only problem with this is that it is taking a very long time for the OpenGL1.2 standard to filter down, while you could argue that really they should already have OpenGL1.3, because DirectX is making such rapid advancements with hardware-supported features.


#pragma DWIM // Do What I Mean!
~ Mad Keith ~

Well, in fact OpenGL1.2 is not supported by windows, and I think MS doesn''t support it cause it was way ahead Direct3D.

Now that Direct3D is coming close to OpenGL1.2 specs, MS tell us that they will add OpenGL1.2 support to their platform.

It''s really unfair.

It''s true that vertex and pixel shaders are interesting (and I found renderman pretty nice) but I think that MS tries again to ''control'' people.
In this case 3d chip makers, to include pixel and vertex shaders in their hardware THE WAY MS WANT, and not the way manufacturer could have think of it.

So IMHO if OpenGL include those features, with the freedom they always let to the manufacturer, OpenGL will once again prove to be more Open than any other Graphic Library.
And thus get support from dev and hardware manufacturer alike.

I hope that OpenML will be as nice as OpenGL (I know it include OpenGL) and available very soon.

Direct3D enhancement were only step to make as good (in spec terms) as OpenGL1.2 and it take MS 8 release before reaching their goal.
Too many version in my opinion, with too many change each time to be a good API.

(Make a game, within one year you will have to remake everything cause of a changed interface)

All IMHO.

-* Sounds, music and story makes the difference between good and great games *-

Looking at it from the "smart" developer side it works very differently to what you describe:
Use what gets results. The end-user of your software doesn''t care if it''s DirectX or OpenGL, as long as it works fast and looks good.
And it looks like DirectX will be delivering more of that in the near future than OpenGL can.


#pragma DWIM // Do What I Mean!
~ Mad Keith ~

Let''s hope that OpenML will come with an updated version of OpenGL.
OpenGL1.3 maybe.

OpenML is definetely something I want to support cause it''s OpanGL like.
(Multiplatform, nice, fast, easy to learn but hard to master)



-* Sounds, music and story makes the difference between good and great games *-