Why did glide/open GL die off?

[bryanW1995]

Just finished reading Anadtech's Rage writeup, and it got me thinking about open GL. This was before my time, and the only games I ever play now that use it even a tiny bit are BG/SOA/IWD - type games, though I do still own quake 3.

I'm hoping that some people who are in the know and were around back in the day might care to jump in with their thoughts.

 

[Medikit]

Glide was a proprietary 3dfx API. It fell out of favor when 3dfx hardware became outpaced by nvidias GeForce line around 2000.

I'm not sure when OpenGL fell of favor but I presume it had something do with microsofts ongoing efforts to improve directx.

 

[BD231]

Microsoft /thread

 

[Billb2]

3DFX driver development continues to this day. About a year ago iI stumbled on a group (Switzeland? http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1839&whichpage=4) developing new open GL/Glide drivers for a 3DFX Voodo 5000 (dual GPU) card I was playing with.

Developers are out there, somewhere....http://www.opengl.org/

 

[blackened23]

OpenGL is still around and still being used. As for glide, it died with 3dfx.

This guy remembers his first 3dfx card playing GLQuake. May they rest in peace

 

[Lonyo]

OGL died because Microsoft did something right for once.

 

[nenforcer]

You can probably count on two hands the number of games using OpenGL that came out the past decade and a half and pretty much all of them used an iD Tech engine.

With the release of the original XBOX in 2001 you could target DirectX on the PC and a similar API on the XBOX.

Couple this with the faster progression of the DirectX API's and more features OpenGL now is viewed more as a follower than a trendsetter like DirectX is.

OpenGL pretty much adds features already included in DirectX in its new releases.

 

[blackened23]

OGL died because Microsoft did something right for once.

Not so sure about that. The API overhead is so big that it bogs down current GPU's for about 70% of their performance. Its pretty sad when PC GPU's are 15x faster than their console counterparts -- but yet struggle to render some DX11 games at 60 fps. Its downright ridiculous.

John Carmack discussed this situation recently, hopefully low level hardware programming will become an option in the future. It is clear that DX11 is a pig (see: crysis 2, metro 2033) and the API overhead is way too large.

 

[Denithor]

Unless I'm mistaken, didn't/don't they use OGL in AutoCAD?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Not so sure about that. The API overhead is so big that it bogs down current GPU's for about 70% of their performance. Its pretty sad when PC GPU's are 15x faster than their console counterparts -- but yet struggle to render some DX11 games at 60 fps. Its downright ridiculous.

John Carmack discussed this situation recently, hopefully low level hardware programming will become an option in the future. It is clear that DX11 is a pig (see: crysis 2, metro 2033) and the API overhead is way too large.

That's odd, are you still thinking about Carmack's opinion of 5 years ago back in 2006? That isn't what he's saying now:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/03/11/carmack-directx-better-opengl/

"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.'"

It's not just Carmack:

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

 

[Broheim]

Unless I'm mistaken, didn't/don't they use OGL in AutoCAD?

pretty much all cad applications etc. use openGL to my knowledge.

the playstation use openGL.

Mac games use openGL.

webGL is basically just openGL.

android and iOS uses openGL.

and the list goes on.

openGL is far from dead, you just don't hear about it as much.

 

[SirPauly]

imho,

Glide was important for a time but eventually, over the years, OpenGL and Direct3d were as good or robust as GLide and the need for GLide with developers wasn't as important. 3dfx, eventually, opened it up.

I'm surprised OpenGL isn't used more though.

 

[Anteaus]

Not so sure about that. The API overhead is so big that it bogs down current GPU's for about 70% of their performance. Its pretty sad when PC GPU's are 15x faster than their console counterparts -- but yet struggle to render some DX11 games at 60 fps. Its downright ridiculous.

John Carmack discussed this situation recently, hopefully low level hardware programming will become an option in the future. It is clear that DX11 is a pig (see: crysis 2, metro 2033) and the API overhead is way too large.

DirectX was responsible for great growth in PC gaming. Creating a centralized and predictable API protected developers from the volatile market nature of closed hardware. Microsoft should definitely get credit for this, even if DX11 is a little piggish. That being said, there is tons of postprocessing occuring in DX11 direct3d that simply didn't exist in earlier versions of Direct3d. John Carmack has always been critical of Direct3d and has pretty much made the same comments for the last few DX releases. Of course he is right to a degree, but it's not like it isn't possible for developers to optimize their software accordingly and it's not like MS has never updated DX.

When has DirectX, or Windows in general, not been piggish? It's nothing new. 0.02

 

[blackened23]

That's odd, are you still thinking about Carmack's opinion of 5 years ago back in 2006? That isn't what he's saying now:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/03/11/carmack-directx-better-opengl/

"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.'"

It's not just Carmack:

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

http://e3.gamespot.com/story/631872...alks-wii-u-playstation-vita-and-next-gen-rage

E3 2011

So, that is a different situation than previous generations where there's still a lot that can be exploited in there. I mean, we did know up front, "Here's the memory we have, here's the amount of processing cycles we have." [But] there're still plenty of alternate directions that we could wind up looking at. It is interesting that on the PC side, we have systems that are 10 times more powerful than the consoles. But it's frustrating in that a lot of the PC systems that are many times more powerful still have trouble holding the same 60 frames-per-second rate because of API overhead, API clocking issues, and things like that. We're working with Intel and Nvidia on all these issues, but it is kind of frustrating when I know that the hardware is vastly more powerful but because we don't have quite as tight control over it, a lot of power goes to waste.

"The PC suffers so much from API overhead," said the id boss. "We have some systems with 10 times the raw horsepower of the consoles, and they are still struggling to maintain the 60 FPS rate. Now, PCs can render 10 times as many fragments, they can be running in 4xAA 1080p, but if I want to do all these things in 15 milliseconds, the PC is at a bit of a handicap – and it has to make up for it with raw brute force."

This is part of the reason why consoles have overtaken the video games industry and left PC's far behind. They can do almost as much with far less hardware, because of the issues mentioned above by John Carmack. The best solution would be low level programming but obviously Microsoft can't have that - they want to charge us for xbox live in windows 8 afterall.

 

[SirPauly]

I agree with that -- agree with Repi, too, from Dice.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I think you've misinterpreted Carmack's remarks. He's speaking of the complete Windows software stack including the OS (thread and file I/O scheduling, etc.) and video card drivers, not DirectX. He's saying he has these problems now coding for PCs, and as you know he does that coding using OpenGL not Direct3D.

With a console, it isn't running MS Security Essentials checks of file I/O, it isn't running 50 background processes and a few dozen services, it isn't keeping one application (your game) from hogging resources by design.

 

[velis]

glide died off because it wasn't advancing and because it was proprietary
OpenGL took a very big hit because MS (that is on OpenGL board) delayed the OpenGL 3.0 release that would allow for pixel shaders and other advanced stuff that was working in DirectX 8.x and up.

 

[darckhart]

to my knowledge, new versions of popular cad softwares use directx, especially since introduction of 64-bit windows os.

 

[blackened23]

I think you've misinterpreted Carmack's remarks. He's speaking of the complete Windows software stack including the OS (thread and file I/O scheduling, etc.) and video card drivers, not DirectX. He's saying he has these problems now coding for PCs, and as you know he does that coding using OpenGL not Direct3D.

With a console, it isn't running MS Security Essentials checks of file I/O, it isn't running 50 background processes and a few dozen services, it isn't keeping one application (your game) from hogging resources by design.

Okay so when Carmack talks of *****API****** overhead what the hell else would he be talking about? MSE isn't an API. Give me a break. There was a youtube video specifically about this and he mentioned directX by name. If I cared more I would dig it up, but in the meantime understand the PC's are pigs right now because of the API nonsense and its ridiculous that a PC can't run crysis2 at full detail at 1080p without SLI, even a single gtx 580 has roughly 12-13 more gpu horsepower than a console. Yet a console can run it 720p with 20x worse hardware at 60fps fluid the entire time.

A console does almost as much with far less hardware, and this is why pc gaming is dying. This is why Rage for PC was a console port. This is why almost every AAA title for the PC is a console port. Face it , DX is a pig and low level hardware programming needs to happen. That is why consoles are so efficient - they don't have to deal with the API bullshit, you can program directly to the metal. The DX11 API layer slows your hardware far more than it needs to, and Carmack mentioned this many times during his Post release Rage interviews. Even a core 2 duo with a gtx 285 is far more powerful than a console -- yet will you see that system running crysis 2 at full detail at 720p DX11? Absolutely not.

 

[Anarchist420]

I had heard that 3dfx charged developers to use glide, but I'm not sure if what I heard was true. They still used it quite a bit though, so it must have been good.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Okay so when Carmack talks of *****API****** overhead what the hell else would he be talking about?

Win32 APIs for file I/O, core affinity, thread priority, timer interrupts. And the lack of APIs to define Quality of Service for a program to give it the priorities it needs to run as a real-time application. All access to hardware and OS behavior in Windows for applications is through Application Programming Interfaces.

He mentions pushing polygons but not being able to control the power to have the work done on the 15 ns heartbeat he needs for a smooth 60 FPS.

Long ago when I did a bit of coding for the Commodore 64 in 6502 assembly, there was a fixed vertical blank interrupt every 1/60 th of a second (NTSC) or /150th (PAL) and the number of cycles you had to run code during the retrace interval was fixed and known. You could count on a stable 60 FPS as long as your code ran in a certain number of cycles.

With windows, "because of API overhead, API clocking issues, and things like that" you don't have that level of control over the hardware. Windows might decide to suspend your thread to let Adobe or Sun do a check for update, and not revive your thread until it's too late to finish its work in that 15 ns window.

 

[Blahman]

you meant ms, not ns, right?

 

[BFG10K]

OpenGL isn’t dead, not by a long shot. It’s still used in professional/high-end rendering, and it’s also the primary 3D API on most non Microsoft platforms.

Glide died because it was a propriety API implemented by a vendor who also died.

 

[DaveSimmons]

you meant ms, not ns, right?

D'oh! Yes, ms not ns. Technically Carmack should have said 16.666... ms not 15 ms for 60 fps.

 

[bryanW1995]

Interesting discussion guys. I didn't realize that open gl was still that popular.