Valve, EA, and Unity To Unveil New Graphics API at GDC

[NTMBK]

If anything it will be good for cross API consistency

Yeah, anything that makes porting between DX and OpenGL easier is a good thing.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

No Half Life 3 - don't care...

They're going to release Half Life 2 Episode 2 Chapter 1 next. Switching to a chapter based release schedule will allow them to release content incrementally thus bringing it to the people faster and cheaper.

 

[SPBHM]

OpenGL has never been the main PC API to my knowledge (unless you want to count Macs). 3dFX owned the market during their time with Glide, and once 3dFX started to die, DirectX took its place.

well, I remember it as being the main API during the Half life 1 - Quake 3 days, but maybe I'm wrong, still OpenGL was a lot more relevant for Windows back then

Not sure why anyone would advocate OpenGL besides for the cross platform part.

that's enough, cross platform, not limited by MS.

 

[cmdrdredd]

well, I remember it as being the main API during the Half life 1 - Quake 3 days, but maybe I'm wrong, still OpenGL was a lot more relevant for Windows back then




that's enough, cross platform, not limited by MS.

Limited how? They are giving away Windows 10 for a year to everyone who has windows 7 and up.

 

[notty22]

quake 2 was opengl.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/real-thing,45.html

I ran the Quake II Test only under a GL engine, not under software emulation. This included the '3Dfx OpenGL', 'PowerVR OpenGL', 'Permedia 2 OpenGL' (default OpenGL), 'RIVA 128 OpenGL', 'Verite 2100 Mini GL'. Pretty much the same is valid for GLQuake, only that you can't choose it as easily there. Unfortunately there isn't any OpenGL engine ready for ATI's Rage Pro cards (XPERT@..), so that these cards are currently pretty useless for GLQuake or Quake II Test, unless you want to play the ugly software engine version.
In GLQuake I ran the well known Timedemo 2 by typing 'Timedemo demo2' on the control panel. I used Quake version 1.09, GLQuake version 0.96.

I remember the first time using DX/direct3d, for me, was monster truck madness. A MS title.

 

[ShintaiDK]

that's enough, cross platform, not limited by MS.

If limited by MS means the progress we had so far. Then for the sake of everything holy to gaming forget any kind of cross platform.

OpenGL had all the chances they could want the last 20 years. And they utterly blew it. Not to mention the mess with vendor-specific extensions that gets implemented because the vendors can't wait.

 

[Lonyo]

Note that the "EA engineer" that the article mentions is Johan Andersson, one of the key minds behind Mantle. I'd expect the new API to follow the same design and conventions as Mantle (and DirectX 12).

Bring on the low-overhead APIs! :thumbsup:

Exactly.
FOLLOW.
Not lead, but follow.

 

[Jodell88]

Funny, you can use the AZDO concept in OpenGL and hit the limits of current graphics cards already.

They needed to redesign OpenGL anyway and this is the chance.

 

[Silverforce11]

This (OpenGL improvements & support in more game engines) is actually a good thing for developers, they can utilize a cross-platform engine to design mobile, console, PC games altogether, with various settings aimed at the different platform of choice. OpenGL allows this to happen seamlessly, whereas a DX path would then cost more resources to port to other platforms.

Given that a lot of the $ is in mobiles & console gaming, in the future, we of the PC master-race will be complaining about "mobile ports" a lot more frequently than "console ports". But it won't be all that bad, mobile performance improves so fast, in a few years, an Apple flagship device will be equivalent to PS4.

 

[2is]

With all of the money Valve is making from Steam, do you really think they care about HL3?

Pretty sure he was talking about what he cares about. Not what valve cares about.

 

[dacostafilipe]

Funny, you can use the AZDO concept in OpenGL and hit the limits of current graphics cards already.

They needed to redesign OpenGL anyway and this is the chance.

AZDO is not new, but still not really supported by vendors. It requires to much of a change on how engines work.

Would be surprised if glNext is "just" AZDO.

 

[Red Hawk]

If limited by MS means the progress we had so far. Then for the sake of everything holy to gaming forget any kind of cross platform.

OpenGL had all the chances they could want the last 20 years. And they utterly blew it. Not to mention the mess with vendor-specific extensions that gets implemented because the vendors can't wait.

Yep. Hating DirectX is one particular Microsoft hate train that I can't board. OpenGL was prevalent back in the day, and there were other alternative APIs like Glide. No one forced games to be developed with DirectX, and for the first few versions of DirectX, the tech was rather poorly executed and people didn't adopt it. But somewhere along the line, DirectX got good, probably because it became easy to develop for. This was not a bad thing.

And even once DX became dominant, there still wasn't any outside force to make developers use it. But the ease of use and the consistent march forward with features has kept developers on the platform. The one criticism that DirectX has had in recent years is that it's gotten a bit too bloated and inefficient with overhead, but Microsoft appears to be addressing that issue by making DirectX 12 much closer to the hardware.

Either way though, more options are always nice. We'll see what comes of this new API. If it's basically just a relaunch of OpenGL, I'm not exactly holding my breath for it to matter much to PC gaming. I'd bet it will be limited to smart devices and SteamOS (the lack of DirectX is a problem facing SteamOS, and this is not a fix). But we'll see what happens.

 

[3DVagabond]

Yep. Hating DirectX is one particular Microsoft hate train that I can't board. OpenGL was prevalent back in the day, and there were other alternative APIs like Glide. No one forced games to be developed with DirectX, and for the first few versions of DirectX, the tech was rather poorly executed and people didn't adopt it. But somewhere along the line, DirectX got good, probably because it became easy to develop for. This was not a bad thing.

And even once DX became dominant, there still wasn't any outside force to make developers use it. But the ease of use and the consistent march forward with features has kept developers on the platform. The one criticism that DirectX has had in recent years is that it's gotten a bit too bloated and inefficient with overhead, but Microsoft appears to be addressing that issue by making DirectX 12 much closer to the hardware.

Either way though, more options are always nice. We'll see what comes of this new API. If it's basically just a relaunch of OpenGL, I'm not exactly holding my breath for it to matter much to PC gaming. I'd bet it will be limited to smart devices and SteamOS (the lack of DirectX is a problem facing SteamOS, and this is not a fix). But we'll see what happens.

You don't think MSFT manipulated the gaming market to insure DX dominance? They dumped huge, gigantic amounts of cash into it.

Before that gets taken the wrong way, I'm not saying they did anything wrong.

 

[NTMBK]

Exactly.
FOLLOW.
Not lead, but follow.

As long as we get better games which run well on my PC, I really don't care who did it first. A good idea is still a good idea.

 

[Eric1987]

OpenGL already dominates, just not the PC front, but mobiles, its the one.

Given that Unity engine is the most well known cross-platform engine, its no surprise it will support glNext.

Dominates? Dominates what? What big game has been ran in openGL natively in the last 2-3 years? Rage? What else?

 

[Jodell88]

AZDO is not new, but still not really supported by vendors. It requires to much of a change on how engines work.

Would be surprised if glNext is "just" AZDO.

AZDO is supported by AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. As with all things it takes a while for new graphics APIs to be supported. The only games I know of that use OpenGL 4+ are the metro redux games.

 

[dacostafilipe]

AZDO is supported by AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. As with all things it takes a while for new graphics APIs to be supported. The only games I know of that use OpenGL 4+ are the metro redux games.

Last time I read something about AZDO it was stated that the drivers are not ready at the moment.

If you could point me to some reading material, that would be nice :thumbsup:

 

[NTMBK]

Dominates? Dominates what? What big game has been ran in openGL natively in the last 2-3 years? Rage? What else?

Angry Birds, Monument Valley, Clash of Clans, Minecraft... anything you can run on your phone.

 

[Jodell88]

Last time I read something about AZDO it was stated that the drivers are not ready at the moment.

If you could point me to some reading material, that would be nice :thumbsup:

When it was unveiled at GDC 2014 it was ready and was already existing in released OpenGL drivers. You just need OpenGL 4.2+ support as it is part of OpenGL spec.