Will OpenGL make a comeback if Rage is successful?

[TurtleCrusher]

That boat has sailed long ago...

This...

 

[Cogman]

John Carmack on Rage:

What he isn't saying is that those "small" pieces of code REALLY depend on what tech you are on. And they are only small by comparison. 2000 to maybe even 10000 lines of code which, compared to a million, isn't THAT much. But it is quite extensive.

Just because the code doesn't depend so much on it, doesn't mean that porting is an easy thing. That would pretty much defeat the purpose of saying "Oh, it is cross platform compatible." If it is so easy to do, why doesn't everyone do it?

What he isn't saying, even though they might get things to work with rage, they are going to work slower. No matter what. Wrapper libraries by their nature will always be slower than the real thing. This is something you can't always give up in games.

Not only that, but a wrapper library hides platform capabilities. It implements what the library is supposed to be able to do without revealing everything that is possible to do on the system.

Rage is dead in the water.

 

[SunnyD]

OpenGL is dead

The news of OpenGL's death is greatly exaggerated.

OpenGL is back where it began: Performance workstation, visualization and modelling applications. Given it's the only 3D rendering stack an countless operating system, OpenGL is here to stay.

 

[Cogman]

The news of OpenGL's death is greatly exaggerated.

OpenGL is back where it began: Performance workstation, visualization and modelling applications. Given it's the only 3D rendering stack an countless operating system, OpenGL is here to stay.

Here to stay? Yes. Here to make a comeback and become the game rendering API of choice? Not likely.

 

[n0x1ous]

Portable gaming is finally coming into its own which will no doubt keep opengl alive, but it certainly won't seriously compete with Dx on other platforms anytime in the foreseeable future. Rage has awesome graphics, but it uses a very advanced and proprietary engine that ID has decided not to licence to other companies. It's like comparing an experimental jet engine to an economy car and I just don't see too many companies going down that road anytime soon. It could make a real comeback with the next generation IDtech engine which is supposed to be able to provide extreme compression for both textures and geometry, at which point it may end up making Dx look like the ad hoc collection of graphics compromises it is.

This is false. Zenimax/id have stated that they will license the id tech 5 engine to other developers on the condition that Zeni/Bethesda has publishing rights to the title.

 

[Lonyo]

Here to stay? Yes. Here to make a comeback and become the game rendering API of choice? Not likely.

You need to qualify that. Game rendering API of choice on Windows PCs for installable games.

 

[faxon]

yea you guys really keep forgetting that right now most of the games being coded for mobile (iphone and android to start) are all GL based, and that market is ever expanding as well, not to mention being the biggest growing gaming market around right now

 

[Rifter]

short answer, NO.

Long answer, see above

 

[bryanW1995]

Lots of FUD here.

OpenGL is still the *only* choice that works on *all* platforms, and that includes portable devices. That is a huge market that is just begining to show what it can do.

openGL 4.1 is pretty much equal to DX 11 in most areas, and better in other areas.

The main problem is that intel has piss poor drivers, and so does SiS/S3.
Nvidia & AMD are doing a pretty good job with openGL 4.x

not that good. I had to roll back my driver to 259.xx just to get opengl to work for me when I pulled the BG series out of mothballs the other day.

 

[nemesismk2]

The news of OpenGL's death is greatly exaggerated.

OpenGL is back where it began: Performance workstation, visualization and modelling applications. Given it's the only 3D rendering stack an countless operating system, OpenGL is here to stay.

I should of said OpenGL is dead for Gaming

 

[brandonb]

yea you guys really keep forgetting that right now most of the games being coded for mobile (iphone and android to start) are all GL based, and that market is ever expanding as well, not to mention being the biggest growing gaming market around right now

And the OP said will openGL make a comeback if Rage is successful. The answer is NO... Even if phones, facebook, etc all embrace OpenGL and it makes some gains, it would have nothing to do with Rage.

 

[wuliheron]

This is false. Zenimax/id have stated that they will license the id tech 5 engine to other developers on the condition that Zeni/Bethesda has publishing rights to the title.

Nice to know.

 

[Childs]

What he isn't saying is that those "small" pieces of code REALLY depend on what tech you are on. And they are only small by comparison. 2000 to maybe even 10000 lines of code which, compared to a million, isn't THAT much. But it is quite extensive.

Just because the code doesn't depend so much on it, doesn't mean that porting is an easy thing. That would pretty much defeat the purpose of saying "Oh, it is cross platform compatible." If it is so easy to do, why doesn't everyone do it?

What he isn't saying, even though they might get things to work with rage, they are going to work slower. No matter what. Wrapper libraries by their nature will always be slower than the real thing. This is something you can't always give up in games.

Not only that, but a wrapper library hides platform capabilities. It implements what the library is supposed to be able to do without revealing everything that is possible to do on the system.

Rage is dead in the water.

What he is saying is that there is a abstraction layer to get around the fact that the Xbox doesnt support it natively, but the reasons are superficial. PS3 uses a variant of OpenGL to make use of the CG functionality on RSX. Rage is targeted at 60fps on both consoles, and if it hits it, when many high profile games that use DX can't even hit 30fps @ 720p, there is nothing to suggest that Rage was held back by using an abstraction layer to use OpenGL. OpenGL code can pretty much run anywhere, and thats the beauty of it.

 

[Cogman]

What he is saying is that there is a abstraction layer to get around the fact that the Xbox doesnt support it natively, but the reasons are superficial. PS3 uses a variant of OpenGL to make use of the CG functionality on RSX. Rage is targeted at 60fps on both consoles, and if it hits it, when many high profile games that use DX can't even hit 30fps @ 720p, there is nothing to suggest that Rage was held back by using an abstraction layer to use OpenGL. OpenGL code can pretty much run anywhere, and thats the beauty of it.

What are you talking about? If Rage uses DirectX to implement Opengl for the xbox (which it will HAVE to do), then by your own words the absolute fastest it can go is 30fps. No ifs, ands, or buts. A wrapper can NEVER be faster then what it is wrapping around.

Yes the potential run anywhere aspect of opengl is nice. Though, like I've pointed out, its implementation is shoddy at best across platforms. Which means lots of fun platform specific code to make sure things look the same... This is the very thing that Opengl is supposed to try and avoid.

The ability to run anywhere is such an overstated and underwhelming thing in programming that I find it pretty hilarious. 90% of applications developed are developed for 1 platform with no need or desire to be ported to another. The other 10% are almost certainly doing something that requires platform specific code for them to run on a given platform. Go ahead, look for some GPLed code that is compilable on both windows and linux without any special Win32 code. Except for the most basic of libraries, you simply are not going to find it.

It is the same with Opengl code. Great, it can be everywhere. It is not so great that whenever you do something intensive with it, you pretty much have to do the very thing that you wanted to avoid doing, write platform specific code.

 

[faxon]

And the OP said will openGL make a comeback if Rage is successful. The answer is NO... Even if phones, facebook, etc all embrace OpenGL and it makes some gains, it would have nothing to do with Rage.

yea you have a point there. one game isnt going to have that big of an impact on it as a whole, but with so many devs working on mobile now its hardly dying any time soon. what we will probably see is more devs making ports of their games from iphone and android to places like the mac apps market place and whatever the windows equal is when microsoft releases one

 

[WelshBloke]

yea you guys really keep forgetting that right now most of the games being coded for mobile (iphone and android to start) are all GL based, and that market is ever expanding as well, not to mention being the biggest growing gaming market around right now

And that's relevant to PC gaming because?