Apple Progressing Toward Full Support for OpenGL 3.0 in Mac OS X 10.6.3

[Stridder44]

OpenGL is still better.

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX

A link to a blog? Really?

Khronos Needs to be shot. I wish a accountable OSS or Standards company like RedHat would look after OpenXX. Hell even AMD/nVidia.

Same goes for W3C. Make a damned video standard already.

Until OpenGL has sense of Direction it will always be the Workstation Standard.

Exactly. I wish DirectX had some real competition by having OpenGL kick ass, believe me, but they just don't seem to have their **** together enough to make any kind of real threat. Perhaps this is why Apple is so behind OpenCL?

 

[Thomas Harte]

Some of that info is crap. The author states that GL supports new features faster via extensions. Which is a crap statement because using extensions in shipping code is dangerous.

Yeah, I once shipped a program that, where available, used the texture_rectangle extension rather than padding to power of 2s for a sprite-type engine. As a result, my house burnt down.

Extensions have the advantage of exposing functionality quickly, the disadvantage of needing to coexist with fallback code. The solution is that substantial extensions end up rolled into the core.

There's nothing dangerous about it if you write proper code. However, the burden of writing proper code is much greater.

On the main topic, Apple really need to get up to speed, especially with respect to the shading language version they support. I have on my desk a copy of OpenGL Shading Language third edition, which is the standard text. However, the language it describes differs from the older version supported by Apple to the extent that the book uses different keywords and assumes a different set of available functions.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

So does 10.6.3 support 23 of 24 OpenGL functions like the Beta or not? Every article I've searched only talks about the developer beta and little if anything about the actual release.

From what I've been reading about OpenGL versus Direct3D, it's not quite the advantage Microsoft would have you believe and a good game maker should have no problem abstracting their code to use multiple APIs and this must be done if you're going to release for more than one platform (beyond XBox). In other words, if you want to release your game for the Wii or PS3 or iPhone or OSX or Linux, you need abstract and then deal with the few necessary calls to the specific API. Games used to regularly include both DirectX and OpenGL renderers in many games. The idea that OSX gaming is slower solely because the games were released in DirectX on Windows seems to be another erroneous excuse for the fact that MOST Apple hardware pretty much sucks for gaming regardless and oddly, some people think that's just fine and Apple shouldn't release better hardware since they're making money with the stuff they're already selling. Apple also seems to have priorities beyond what one would expect. They prioritized supporting OpenCL (which almost no one will use for a LONG time to come) instead of supporting technology that's already available that WOULD make a big difference for some software (i.e. Open GL 3.2). And I still can't figure out why Final Cut Pro uses only 52% of my available CPU power when rendering to H264 even with Snow Leopard and Grand Central (so much more making good use of mult-threading across cores, even in their own professional software and what a waste of time/cpu on a MBP).

This article (http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22929 ) suggests that 10.6.3 actually regressed performance from 10.6.2 and that Snow Leopard in general is actually SLOWER than regular Leopard for many things. So much for "optimizing" Leopard. Way to go Apple!

 

[edddeduck]

So does 10.6.3 support 23 of 24 OpenGL functions like the Beta or not?

Yes (at least on newer cards) you can just download the GLView application and see for yourself what calls are supported on your card.

10.6.3 does add in quite a lot of new stuff that could make games faster although as they are new calls applications will need to be updated to take advantage.

Edwin

 

[bobbytomorow]

Yes (at least on newer cards) you can just download the GLView application and see for yourself what calls are supported on your card.

10.6.3 does add in quite a lot of new stuff that could make games faster although as they are new calls applications will need to be updated to take advantage.

Edwin

I've never seen that app before thats pretty rad