OpenGL 4.2 Released

Didn't Nvidia disable a bit of OpenGL so that their old tech demos won't work on their graphics cards anymore?

Um, why would they do that? Also has anyone heard anything about DX12? Microsoft always likes to release its new API along with their new operating system but of course since Windows 8 is going to be designed differently will MSFT keep that tradition?

wow this would be great AMD and Nvidia will follow up as soon as possible, we wait for its development

Perfect, I like it a lot, and I could not hide of joy in my mind

some rumor suggesting that windows 8 may come with DX11.1 instead of DX12. the rumor based on intel IGP that built-in for haswell based processor will featuring DX11.1 instead of DX12

They might have removed depreciated functions. You can't support legacy stuff forever or your code/hardware becomes bloated to the point of unsuitability.

What is the difference between DX11.1 and DX12 (other than DX0.9)? Sometimes a name or a number is just a name or a number.

That could be like how Intel didn't update thier IGPs to support DX11 and instead went the DX10.1 route. They waited until their Sandy Bridge IGPs were released to support it. DX10.1 was just an incremental update to add some missing features until the new stuff came along.

Like x86?

Both AMD and Nvidia said that their products will support OpenGL 4.2 in the immediate future.
... no intel GPU's?

Haha, long live MMX!

I'm having a hard time recalling any Windows based game using OpenGL that wasn't made years ago. It's a shame too because OpenGL is cross platform
and actually still can hold its own today. OpenGL is vastly under used than it should be and in my opinion is still to this day superior to Direct X

It's simple really. A whole digit would require sufficient change to name something 2.0 for example. While something being 1.1 would mean that they made minor changes not enough to actually call it a complete new version.

There is a reason people dont use OPENGL anymore.. its crap.. it use to be great back in the original halflife days when it was ya know better then the competition. Its open source nature of everyone wants their hands in the pie is crippling the API's progress to the point of irrelevance. Sure its good for well free and all good for niche stuff right now. But superior to DX? who are you kidding. Who cares if its open and free if it cant keep up.

This makes sense if the next gen consoles are also DX11 based..

"The new version integrates shaders with atomic counters as well as load, store and atomic read-modify-write operations to a single level of a texture."

I have no idea what I just read. Atomic wha-? This thing is nuclear?! But... it's software. Or... is it ?

>sceptical cat is sceptical
>divided by zero
>inb4 etc

There is a reason people dont use OPENGL anymore.. its crap.. it use to be great back in the original halflife days when it was ya know better then the competition. Its open source nature of everyone wants their hands in the pie is crippling the API's progress to the point of irrelevance. Sure its good for well free and all good for niche stuff right now. But superior to DX? who are you kidding. Who cares if its open and free if it cant keep up

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You are aware that OGL is actually AHEAD of DX, right? I mean, ulike DX, they support DX11 features for XP. Unlike DX, developers still have the ability to use their own extensions and the like.

This makes sense if the next gen consoles are also DX11 based..

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1: The 360 is hte only non-Winodws environment to even have a DX layer.
2: No major release for the 360 uses the DX API for 3d graphics, because of speed concerns. [Remember that whole "DX is too slow" spat AMD had? This is where that came from].
3: Even the PS3, which has an OGL ES layer, is coded at a lower level via libgcm, which unlike its OGL implementation, allows direct access to the RSX framebuffer, greatly speeding certain applications.

So please, stop this whole "Consoles use DX" nonesense. Its never been true, but its been repeated enough where everyone thinks it is.

You do realize that features that even DX 11 added existed for years with OpenGL right? Also as gamerk316 pointed out it allows extensions.

Even if you prefer Direct X (assuming you have actually used it other than playing a game) you have to admit the existence of OpenGL at-least gives a option that stops a complete take over from Microsoft. So if you are willing to ignore the positives OpenGL has over Direct X at the very least you should not the importance of its existence.

These APIs don't matter. Stuffs gonna be coded directly to hardware eventually. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already given we have only two companies Nvidia and AMD.

Anything to rid the world of the dreadful DirectX foisted on developers for the past decade.

@iwantamd7970
They don't do that because every piece of hardware is different.
You would have to code everything a thousand times (literally).
There are that many models new and old to support. And a lot of models don't have specification pages so you can't know how you should code stuff for those things this way.

API's that standardize stuff if done right don't actually have much/big negative consequences. They make stuff work everywhere is a much better deal you get than what you describe.

“OpenGL 4.2 has integrated feedback from developers that are shipping significant OpenGL-based applications and games, making for a faster, more capable API which will continue to evolve to meet market needs,” said Barthold Lichtenbelt, working group chair of the OpenGL ARB and director of Tegra graphics at Nvidia.

If they would only notice the anger/frustration/impracticalness about the absence of DSA = direct state access functions.
And would stop pushing state machine nonsense in new functions where it does not make sense.

Thank You, One of my Loyal Subjects.

Uhhuh and everybody will abandon every programming language but assembly. I mean there is only one x86 family after all. There is a reason why that API's like oGL and DX came out. It was so they no longer had to program ctm. Also just because you have the same manufacturer, their various architectures of the GPU's still means a pile of different hardware to code for.

Then can you explain why hospitals pay almost millions of dollars to set up powerful computers based on openGL ?? ^^

And from what we all know, DirectX always was the cheaper way to display graphics and that explains why the cheapest graphic card on the market costs about $50 while the cheaper openGL graphic card costs way more. The same applies to expensive cards, the openGL parts are very expensive. We don't sell Honda civics for millions of dollars but one could sell his Ferrari Enzo millions of dollars...

Look up efficiency benchmarks. Direct X is way ahead of OpenGL 4 in features and performance. You can also look at recent comments from John Carmack himself...he was commenting just about a month ago on how he "misses" the good old days of OpenGL and wised it was currently caught up with Direct X in features and performance and that it still had a ways to go. Thank you

For all the ignorant pro OpenGLers:

March 11, 2011
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/j [...] 12372.html

The current success of DirectX is largely due to Microsoft's courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API. OpenGL has been held back by compatibility concerns, Carmack said.

AMD's GPU worldwide developer relations manager, Richard Huddy, agrees. He added that the actual innovation in graphics has been driven by Microsoft in the last ten or so years. "OpenGL has largely been tracking that, rather than coming up with new methods," he said. "The geometry shader, for example, which came in with Vista and DirectX 10, is wholly Microsoft's invention in the first place."

Better yet: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gamin [...] er-opengl/

Tomshardware.com article is even a bit contradictory about him staying with OpenGL saying DirectX is only a little better :

from bit-tech.net "

First person shooter godfather John Carmack has revealed that he now prefers DirectX to OpenGL, saying that 'inertia' is the main reason why id Software has stuck by the cross-platform 3D graphics API for years.

Speaking to bit-tech for a forthcoming Custom PC feature about the future of OpenGL in PC gaming, Carmack said 'I actually think that Direct3D is a rather better API today.' He also added that 'Microsoft had the courage to continue making significant incompatible changes to improve the API, while OpenGL has been held back by compatibility concerns. Direct3D handles multi-threading better, and newer versions manage state better.'

Oh yeah, LOL. DirectX is not the problem and you should know it. Obviously the frame buffer can be accessed directly, via OpenGL and DirectX functionality on PS3 and X360 respectively as you have said for example what is happening with PS3 which uses libgcm, a library based on OpenGLES and adapted to the particularities of the console the same way OpenGL on PC is adapted to NVIDIA and AMD particularities.

If AMD said [http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/03/19/0538208/DirectX-Getting-In-the-Way-of-PC-Game-Graphics-Says-AMD] that DX is getting on the way, they had a good point on that, but not because DX is bloatware but because developers are lazy to do proper imports. Ha, try then to convince developers to use OpenGL extensions or make their own ones. Or do a proper use of multithreading. Or program well done 64bit versions of their games.

Bloatware is XNA which is an additional layer on top of the DirectX Xbox360 layer.
If you want to be credible, you can say computers have 10-20% less profitable power from the same hardware or that consoles get 1.1-1.2x the PC performance from same hardware, at most. And that's with todays bad optimisation with 32 bit games running on 64 bit operative systems with the Windows on Windows layer plus a bunch other functionality and peripherals. Heck, I can multitask while gaming LOL. Let agme running, go to browser, use instant messaging or have a P2P client. Everything is lighter than an antivirus.

i would like to see this get in before pci-E3 is released next year.

[quote=annymmo]They don't do that because every piece of hardware is different.
You would have to code everything a thousand times (literally).
There are that many models new and old to support. And a lot of models don't have specification pages so you can't know how you should code stuff for those things this way.[/quote]

This is completely untrue. The graphics drivers are the interface to the graphics card, and are relatively standardized, even between entire generations of cards.

Why should I tell DirectX to tell the drivers to tell the GPU to draw a cube when I can feed 8 coordinates and 6 textures to the driver directly? (Assuming of course my method would be faster than DirectX's.) You don't need to support every card; Only a set of drivers that are already written to a level of standardization that allows DirectX/OpenGL to not have to change their approach per-card/driver.

It's nowhere near as "impossible" as you claim.