Couldn't OpenCL have created better and good uniformity vs what MS tried.

[Anarchist420]

Open Source Software != Open Standards.

I knew that.

What patents stopped OpenGL from progressing?

Patents propped up microsoft. The fact that OpenGL isn't controlled by a big money hungry corporation that thrives from the Hamiltonian Federal system puts open standards at a disadvantage.

If another standard or company had stepped up to the plate and been embraced, it would have. MS won out and did a decent job of it.

But again, this seems more philosophical argument than anything practical,

It's only impractical due to the system we live under. But yes, I was making a philosophical argument and I wanted to know what people thought about the topic specifically... I'm trying not to be talking about patents, but it really is a large reason that M$ got so big. As for whether M$ did a decent job of it, that's debatable.

Your last thread on the same topic wasn't enough?

No it was not enough for me.

 

[Ferzerp]

Exactly how many threads will you make on this same topic before it is enough? Are you going to keep doing it until people agree with you? 5 times? 10 times?

 

[FalseChristian]

I wouldn't worry about Direct X 11.1. Game developers are barely getting into standard Direct X 11 shit. Since Windows 8 is a dud and hardly anyone will be using it I think we're safe.

 

[brandonb]

Anarchist420 is as much fail as OpenGL is. And the last game made with it. Rage.

 

[Anarchist420]

Exactly how many threads will you make on this same topic before it is enough? Are you going to keep doing it until people agree with you? 5 times? 10 times?

Enough is kind of enough, but it's not really enough as some would say.

I wouldn't worry about Direct X 11.1. Game developers are barely getting into standard Direct X 11 shit. Since Windows 8 is a dud and hardly anyone will be using it I think we're safe.

I will continue to worry about it because they keep adding these new features, from the top down, when they (or something like them) could've already been standard.

MS has ruined nearly everything. We would've been better off if there had been no hardware blending and no hardware depth... it's a dumb idea to continue it.

 

[Arkaign]

Microsoft has fractured themselves due to being schizophrenic about gaming in the first place. They have PC gaming, which they hinder to a large degree because they would just rather you play on Xbox instead, which is a completely different division within Microsoft. PC gaming would be miles ahead of where it is now had Microsoft never made the Xbox to begin with, or given up on it with Xbox 1 after losing billions of dollars on it.

 

[NTMBK]

Patents protect the ability of innovators to profit from their innovations, and hence encourage innovation. Who would take the risk of investing large amounts of time, money and effort in exploring new ideas and techniques when they could just rip off the people who went to that effort? Patents are a force for good.

 

[Greenlepricon]

Patents protect the ability of innovators to profit from their innovations, and hence encourage innovation. Who would take the risk of investing large amounts of time, money and effort in exploring new ideas and techniques when they could just rip off the people who went to that effort? Patents are a force for good.

Having the intention of protecting innovation is one argument for patents. There are way too many negatives about them to count. Look at Google vs. Apple if you want some examples.

Microsoft did a good job of unifying games on a single os. I don't feel that they're holding computer gamers back so much as everyone who plays on consoles is due to them shoving money towards these systems rather than computers. Corporations follow the money. Microsoft isn't helping but they're still providing everything needed for the pc gamer.

I agree we shouldn't worry about DX11.1 at all. Looking at modern games I'm already impressed. Seeing as how it took so long for an os to surpass Windows XP I would say we still have a while before they make Windows 7 obsolete. The gamers in forums like this are one of the few exceptions to keeping the same hardware/software for extended amounts of time though, so who knows what Microsoft expects.

 

[NTMBK]

Having the intention of protecting innovation is one argument for patents. There are way too many negatives about them to count. Look at Google vs. Apple if you want some examples.

Oh there are plenty of ways that the system can be improved, for sure. But the fundamental concept is a good one, and it is the fundamental concept which the OP is attacking (again, and again, and again...).

 

[Greenlepricon]

Oh there are plenty of ways that the system can be improved, for sure. But the fundamental concept is a good one, and it is the fundamental concept which the OP is attacking (again, and again, and again...).

Alright you won that one easily :thumbsup:

 

[Haserath]

Gaming would most likely had a much rougher start without a single company to unify the game market. I'd say MS has been good in the past, but it is now too much a business about profits. They're forcing the customer to follow them instead of taking the customer's words to heart.

Patents can be argued to prevent innovation, but they could also be argued to increase innovation. Why would somebody go out of their way to create/improve on something if somebody else could just take their ideas?

Btw, I signed up for Steam for Linux a few days ago. Can't wait for it to be ready...

 

[lamedude]

MS licenses S3TC and makes it free for D3D. On OpenGL you had IHV's not willing to pay for S3TC even though its available for D3D. You would've rather have the inferior and probably infringing FXT1 or no texture compression at all (that worked well for the PS2)?

 

[BFG10K]

Another thread full of epic comedy.

Oh there are plenty of ways that the system can be improved, for sure. But the fundamental concept is a good one, and it is the fundamental concept which the OP is attacking (again, and again, and again...).

Yeah, but the OP wouldn't be attacking it if an investment of his got ripped off.

Or if he showed up to work one day and his boss wouldn’t pay him because “the market will take care of it” or “he can sing and dance on stage to make money”.

 

[3DVagabond]

Another thread full of epic comedy.


Yeah, but the OP wouldn't be attacking it if an investment of his got ripped off.

Or if he showed up to work one day and his boss wouldn’t pay him because “the market will take care of it” or “he can sing and dance on stage to make money”.

While my views are more "moderate" than the OP's. I think most of us will agree that IP, patents, etc.. have swung to far into "liberal interpretation". Rather than protecting ideas it's stifling innovation. Besides, M$ isn't trying to do anyone any favors.

 

[BFG10K]

While my views are more "moderate" than the OP's. I think most of us will agree that IP, patents, etc.. have swung to far into "liberal interpretation". Rather than protecting ideas it's stifling innovation. Besides, M$ isn't trying to do anyone any favors.

This has absolutely nothing to do with DirectX or the topic, though. The OP was asked repeatedly last time what patents DirectX is enforcing onto OpenGL, but he failed to answer anything of substance.

All you have to do is go back to the 1990s when practically every vendor had their own API, and you basically had to buy a different graphics card depending on what games you wanted to play. Something similar existed with sound cards under DOS, where they had to be individually programmed for.

Anyone who argues that this scenario is better for customers/developers compared to the unified standard DirectX brings to the table is completely out of touch with reality. The fact is that DirectX is probably the best thing to ever happen to PC gaming.

 

[nforce4max]

I see it as a fail that it should include compute and that over the past two decades other APIs that had great ideas were forced to die such as Glide. It may not be mainstream in the minds of most consumers but in several years being able to use the gpu for more than just playing videos and displaying simple graphics. Consumers will be wanting to use their gpu for work related tasks such as video encoding or accelerating data base performance.

 

[esquared]

I knew that.

Patents propped up microsoft. The fact that OpenGL isn't controlled by a big money hungry corporation that thrives from the Hamiltonian Federal system puts open standards at a disadvantage.

It's only impractical due to the system we live under. But yes, I was making a philosophical argument and I wanted to know what people thought about the topic specifically... I'm trying not to be talking about patents, but it really is a large reason that M$ got so big. As for whether M$ did a decent job of it, that's debatable.

Your last thread on the same topic wasn't enough?

No it was not enough for me.

It was enough for me.

The two threads have been merged

 

[Maximilian]

Seek professional help.

lmfao

 

[Absolution75]

Nvidia and AMD have constantly been regulated by MS and then only half of what is left up to them is any good... and on Microsoft's part, they're always been behind the times. For example, the ROPs and depth units should've been programmable from the beginning (now they should be vector FPunits with FMA5 or FMA7, really fast FP64 and FX64 precision, and completely programmable) because those are where the user would have more of a choice simply because the drivers would operate at the low level that way... the drivers wouldn't have to have uniform functions and it wouldn't always be slower. It would help backward compatibility without hurting the future or uniformity. The one with the better texture units (the only thing that should be hardware function) would win out or the better texture units would be copied. Larrabbee was probably scrapped in part due to the focus on frames per second rather than the individual wants and because the FP32 vector units may not have been enough precision. It was also something intel probably didn't have faith in and perhaps they thought they could make more money in the short term by making crap iGPUs. AMD also wanted to do a more software based design, but the wrong way... they wanted the ROPs and depth units to be hardware while the texture units were to be shaders. There is less flexibility for the end user that way and for the programmers it won't be a net gain for all programmers. Modern ROPs are also more scalable and have more features, so they're more transistors than nvidia's texture units... which would be even better if they dropped all lossy formats from hardware and replaced them with a single lossless texture compression format and had support for raw uncompressed maps where necessary or when something new came up... the DXT and other lossy format maps could be comfortably done by the compute cores. Maybe they could even increase the trilinear mipmapping calculation precision to quadruple extended fp precision (i.e., FP160).

Anyway, I think this all has roots back to 2002, when MS made it so ATi would get off the ground (if you'll remember, ATi did nothing new of their own with R300; they simply used clever marketing while making the filtering no better overall, worse in my opinion than what the 8500 was capable of, kept the 8500's IQ/compatibility problems by keeping the very aggressive and IQ-decreasing back buffer optimizations and used the bare min specs specified by microsoft, like FP24 PS precision, short shader inst length, 24 bit fixed point max z buffer format, no practical way to run games that would use the w-buffer, and they even used an integrated DAC before DVI had taken off instead of using excellent circuitry like Matrox did), then nvidia made too many dumb decisions with the GeForce FX so after that they started listening to MS more and more but they also partnered with industrial L&M (yet ignored the best possible AA for that part they spent so much effort on) and then finally created CUDA. CUDA was not vulnerable to the market and therefore not open because of patents and no applications even use it probably because nv keeps such a tight wrap on it... that is why OpenCL or a better OpenGL could never get ahead because of that and because OpenCL wanted to co-operate. That said, I think nvidia was probably more innovative than ATi, but they were also just as wasteful not in spite of, but because of top down and hyper stable management.

AMD and MS never got the uniform standards they wanted because they sucked so bad and got hooked on recycling/reforming old designs and ideas, used an inappropriate mishmash of hw and sw function, and they were behind the times... they couldn't do anything outside of the box.

OpenGL would've worked better because it was run by a board of individuals that shared power/worked with the IHVs... it wasn't run from the top down. That's largely why it would've been better and closer to uniform if MS hadn't tried to micromanage... they really sucked at it, but they sure did con most people into thinking DX was the best thing since sliced bread. I don't know whether MS thought it could make everything uniform and that everyone would be happy, if they were just trying to be manipulative and make money (or both)... my money is on both and it's not really their fault since they were corrupted by the state like everyone is, but they were more corrupted by the state than individuals since they were institutions and were aggressive and even somewhat pro-state almost from the very beginning. Bill Gates said he would sue for people copying him even before he was taken to court by Apple, IIRC.

Sorry for the incoherence, but I wouldn't believe I'm the only one who sees it this way. I just think that the GPU industry is something incredibly corrupted by the State and by IP... it has held back innovation and it's a shame. It may have pleased some people, but I've never thought nv and AMD had it more than 1/2 right. They wouldn't have been able to make as much money, but then they waste money and resources more than I do.

Your thoughts?

None of this has anything to do with why DirectX is more popular than OpenGL. It is completely besides the point.

Microsoft just has more resources than kronos - it is very apparent in their documentation. The thing most people forget is that software developers drive adoption rather than hardware developers. A tool/API/language can be the best thing in the world (being fast/good quality/whatever you benchmark is), but if its hard to program for, no one will use it.

MSDN blows the OpenGL reference out of the water. I wouldn't even call the OpenGL documentation complete. There is a ton of ambiguity throughout all of the reference pages. There are no official examples - just 3rd party sites which are inadequate due to lack of explanation or incorrect information.

DirectX won because it won over developers and because MS has the resources to support it. Ask nearly any professional game developer, they would probably rather use DirectX compared to OpenGL.

My old professor said it best:
OpenGL: Easy things are easy, hard things are hard
DirectX: Easy things are hard, hard things are easy

Most games do hard things which makes DirectX a better fit. It is that simple.

 

[Anarchist420]

None of this has anything to do with why DirectX is more popular than OpenGL. It is completely besides the point.

It doesn't have anything to with why it's more popular, I'll grant you that

DirectX won because it won over developers and because MS has the resources to support it. Ask nearly any professional game developer, they would probably rather use DirectX compared to OpenGL.

No it won because of the IP system. You must first make above market profits to get ahead of the creator.

The two threads have been merged

Thank you

This has absolutely nothing to do with DirectX or the topic, though. The OP was asked repeatedly last time what patents DirectX is enforcing onto OpenGL, but he failed to answer anything of substance.

The patents have everything to do with it, because Microsoft would've failed as an institution if they didn't have patents (and globalism) or they would not have been as big. OpenGL could not patent everything because it was a board of standards. DX was at an advantage when trying to unify things because of the patents... the patents then allowed it to be big enough to try to run things from the top down more than OpenGL was meant to do... openGL simply approved things, DX tried to make things mandatory when it wound up holding back progress. It wound up holding up progress because it made standards mandatory... that has several problems:
1. They miss certain things... they have to keep updating them. For example, DX11.1 has a lot that DX11.0 doesn't require.
2. The uniformity is seldom there because DX can't specify every little thing. The lack of everything not being able to be specified shows that there is very little, if any uniformity.
3. Nvidia and AMD have to design around and based upon DX's specifications and that takes away choice.

I'm retarded.

 

[Ferzerp]

I'm retarded.

Mods feel free to edit this if it's out of line

edit: also, note, that at the time of my posting, that is a direct quote and not paraphrasing at all.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I'm retarded.

Yes, you are.
With no protection for IP there'd be no home PCs. Who would pay to develop the hardware if someone else could just steal the design and sell it without having to recoup the R&D cost. You'd have no hardware, no OS, and no applications, so why are you obsessing over an API? Neither is workable in your unworkable economic system.

 

[BenSkywalker]

OpenGL is still less uniform, and will remain so. It was only great when there was nothing else, or today, on platforms where there indeed is nothing else.

That just isn't close to being true. The ability to create a custom extension for use with OpenGL kept it very useful for a long time after Direct 3D had become the popular choice for PC developers. There was also code portability to consider, obviously D3D was a profound failure on that front with *no* portability *even to Windows NT*. D3D had many massive flaws that were utterly huge that kept OpenGL in the game. I could keep going, but the general point should be made. OpenGL stuck around for so long because D3D in many ways, just plain sucked.

The patents have everything to do with it, because Microsoft would've failed as an institution if they didn't have patents (and globalism) or they would not have been as big.

DirectX is a programming interface. You seem profoundly confused on this point. They do not set any industry standards. They do not create the development environment. They do not patent 3D technology. They do not tell the hardware vendors what to make.

Direct X exists to make developers lives easier. That is it.

Does MS use this as a way to give Windows gaming an edge? Absolutely. That is why they spend the money to do it. Unfortunately with their new approach it looks like we may be moving away from that as the Win8 business model seems to have a lot of developers furious and we may be headed towards a more Linux friendly development approach. Long term this may work out, but quite honestly the more iron fisted the control over a gaming platform, the more stable it tends to be(in terms of actual stability, development stability, consumer level stability etc).

 

[Cerb]

That just isn't close to being true. The ability to create a custom extension for use with OpenGL kept it very useful for a long time after Direct 3D had become the popular choice for PC developers. There was also code portability to consider,

1. Custom extensions mean one of the 3+ vendors can't use it, so they get minimal/no support, because it needs to run on all of them that claim to be complaint with version X, and that's enough work all by itself (unless the HW vendor wants to throw some extra money your way).

2. Extensions keeping OpenGL useful would be a textbook definition of a strawman. It has nothing to do whatsoever with what I wrote. DX allows for a more uniform set of client PC expectations, and has excellent support from MS. MS never set out to kill off OpenGL, and it's not going to go dying any time soon. They set out to make Windows and Microsoft console development easier, and to make income from that. DX's primary goals have been to make it easier for game developers on Windows (including MS consoles), and in the process they've dealt with some of the other issues of OpenGL, like lack of strong hardware requirements (but, they were smart enough not to specify implementation details).

3. How does OpenGL help you port between a x86 Windows environment and a Xbox360? Any other portability simply doesn't matter. If it did, then DirectX wouldn't even be an option, if coding from scratch. IE, if you have the choice between the two, you're generally either working on top of a licensed engine that can do either, or directly coding for Windows PCs. If you're concerned about portability to non-MS OSes, MS doesn't care about you, and DX is out of the picture.

In fact, I'll even go and use the end of your post for it:

Long term this may work out, but quite honestly the more iron fisted the control over a gaming platform, the more stable it tends to be(in terms of actual stability, development stability, consumer level stability etc).

OpenGL doesn't do that nearly as much as Direct3D, which is among Direct3D's benefits over OpenGL, in a Windows environment (OpenGL ES are exceptions, though).

obviously D3D was a profound failure on that front with *no* portability *even to Windows NT*.

Hmm? I've been gaming for over 15 years now on Windows NT, with DX versions from 3 through 11, and have only come across one game that could not be made to run (a console port, at that). If there were any oopsies regarding making D3D work on DOS-based Windows and NT, they clearly weren't anywhere close to being, "profound," because the games ran in NT, and in 32-bit, most continue to do so, today.

They do not set any industry standards. They do not create the development environment.

Actually, those are two things they actually do. Defining features hardware must support to claim compliance, along with minimum software feature support in drivers, and having major vendors agree to do it, is setting industry standards.

They have created the development environment, as well, since the mid 90s.

Neither point has anything to do with patents, though.

 

[BenSkywalker]

1. Custom extensions mean one of the 3+ vendors can't use it, so they get minimal/no support, because it needs to run on all of them that claim to be complaint with version X, and that's enough work all by itself (unless the HW vendor wants to throw some extra money your way).

Prior to the XP timeframe almost all new proofs and working understanding of new features came under OpenGL because we could actually use them without having to wait for months or years for MS to get around to adding them to DirectX.

2. Extensions keeping OpenGL useful would be a textbook definition of a strawman. It has nothing to do whatsoever with what I wrote.

You stated-

It was only great when there was nothing else, or today, on platforms where there indeed is nothing else.

Vendor extensions allowed developers to have titles launch that had features built in that weren't in DirectX at the time of their release, let alone a couple years in advance when they needed to have support for development purposes. You try and marginalize this if you'd like, Sweeney, Carmack and Newell all held out moving to pure DirectX support until version 8 or later. If MS allowed custom extensions in DirectX the way that OpenGL did then Sweeney and Newell at least would have moved over sooner. Sweeney is *still* lamenting this today(when Intel was trying to build hype for Larrabee they had an interview with Sweeney laying out exactly why DirectX still sucks- lack of flexibility was his main point).

Lack of flexibility, which OpenGL trumped DirectX in because of vendor extensions, was a *very* real reason why it held on for so long. It is also the main reason why it absolutely owned pro 3D for even longer. If you are seriously trying to call it a strawman, then you are ignorant on this subject.

How does OpenGL help you port between a x86 Windows environment and a Xbox360? Any other portability simply doesn't matter.

So the ~80% of the gaming market that isn't Windows or XBox doesn't matter. So sayeth you. Does it even need to be explained how ignorant that is? I don't think so, let's move on.

OpenGL doesn't do that nearly as much as Direct3D, which is among Direct3D's benefits over OpenGL, in a Windows environment (OpenGL ES are exceptions, though).

Drop the lunatic fanboy mindset. Did I ever say that OpenGL was *better* then Direct3D? Nope, never came close to approaching anything of the sort. Did OpenGL have very, very real advantages over Direct3D? Yes, yes it did.

Hmm? I've been gaming for over 15 years now on Windows NT, with DX versions from 3 through 11

The last version of Windows that was called NT was version 4. I am well aware of what kernel is being used today, but alas, Microsoft decides what Windows is called, not you. So, link me up these Windows NT Direct X 11 libraries. NT4 was my primary OS until 2K hit(when I could finally drop the dual boot with Win98)- I am very well versed in what Windows NT could and could not do for gaming- and if you wanted to port a game to Windows NT you used OpenGL. Again, you can try and say that you decide what Windows is called and not Microsoft, but reality doesn't agree with that line of thought.

Actually, those are two things they actually do. Defining features hardware must support to claim compliance, along with minimum software feature support in drivers, and having major vendors agree to do it, is setting industry standards.

No, it is setting a platform standard. Do nVidia and AMD both offer a rather lengthy list of capabilities that go outside of the D3D specification? Yes. If you can pull the IEEE standard up that mandates D3D compliance I will gladly say that I am wrong without hesitation. The only thing I have ever seen is MS's standards for their small and shrinking slice of the gaming pie.

They have created the development environment, as well, since the mid 90s.

Sony, Nintendo, iOS, Android, Mac OS and Linux developers are curious about where this D3D development environment is. The majority of the gaming world uses something that is *NOT* D3D. That is reality.