Hi Robert,
Please go check out the the specs on OpenGL. It is a open standard. It's up to vendors to create OpenGL drivers to this standard. It's not an API like the OSG is an API, OpenGL is a standard with an standardised API. It's a standard that is derived from a standards body - this is what Khronos is all about.
Is OpenGL ratified by the ISO? No. So it's not a standard. The fact that it's a spec made by a consortium doesn't mean it's a standard, because not all companies are on that consortium and there's no way to force other companies to follow the standard (which is why we're having this whole discussion - perhaps it should become a real standard).
I'm afraid you have not grasped what OpenGL is about. It's a standardised hardware abstraction layer. It's meant to solve the problem of targeting multiple hardware types across multiple platforms so application developers don't have to worry about the platform specifics, they just write to the standard and it works.
In practice that's not what happens... That's the "ideal case" but it doesn't exist. In fact, we're lucky we only have OpenGL and Direct3D to argue about. Back in 1995-1998, on the PC side ("commodity" graphics hardware), each vendor had their API (look up Glide from 3Dfx, RRedline from Rendition, etc.) and games would support a list of 3D accelerators but certainly not all of them. I remember having to replace the executable for Tomb Raider 1 for another one when I changed from a Matrox Mystique to a 3Dfx Voodoo2 card. :-)
Having two competing standards that address the same job is very rarely a healthy phenomenon.
I have a different view. Competition is always good. I doubt we'd have OpenGL 3.0 drivers right now (let alone a "final" OpenGL 3.0 spec) if it wasn't for the ongoing Direct3D vs OpenGL debate (and the "OpenGL is dead" articles). Yes it spreads FUD that some buy into, but the APIs themselves progress faster when there's competition.
ATI and Intel two special cases of poor OpenGL support? We'll that only leaves one mainstream vendor that provides acceptable OpenGL drives, and it make it the exception to the rule - so surely NVidia is the special case here, not ATI and Intel.
Please actually read my arguments instead of just focusing on the wording. You can't refute the fact that Intel's hardware is not really 3D "accelerators", rather "decelerators" and that is in both Direct3D and OpenGL. So that dismisses one case right there, we're left with NVidia and ATI.
As for ATI's driver quality, as I said it was a generalized problem, not specific to OpenGL drivers, not that long ago. That may be a part of the picture that you missed, but which gamers are all too familiar with. Up until a few years ago, ATI was behind not because of the speed of its chips, but because of the quality of its drivers.
Anyways, I'll let you get back to your work. I don't think we're getting anywhere. Thanks for the server stats in any case, it's interesting.
J-S -- ______________________________________________________ Jean-Sebastien Guay [email protected] http://www.cm-labs.com/ http://whitestar02.webhop.org/ _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
