opengl

[Mitsukai]

where can i download opengl source code? i havent seen it anywhere? or is opengl not open source?

[Ejaz]

Take a look at here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL), here (http://www.opengl.org/) and here (http://www.opengl.org/resources/)

[Marc G]

[ moved thread ]

[luckykiran]

Hi
I thought u get more information on www.microsoft.com

[Hnefi]

(reading the Wikipedia article)
What the heck is that about Microsoft and Windows Vista? They're going to layer OpenGL over DX?? Why on earth would they do such a ridiculous thing?

Darnit, I'm probably going to have to learn DX if they go through with that. *grumble* :mad:

[Marc G]

(reading the Wikipedia article)
What the heck is that about Microsoft and Windows Vista? They're going to layer OpenGL over DX?? Why on earth would they do such a ridiculous thing?

Darnit, I'm probably going to have to learn DX if they go through with that. *grumble* :mad:
In Windows Vista, DirectX is rendering everything for Windows, meaning DX has exclusive access to the graphics card. So, it's difficult to let OpenGL have access to the graphics card. That's why all OpenGL calls will be translated on the fly to DirectX calls.

[Hnefi]

In Windows Vista, DirectX is rendering everything for Windows, meaning DX has exclusive access to the graphics card. So, it's difficult to let OpenGL have access to the graphics card. That's why all OpenGL calls will be translated on the fly to DirectX calls.
But why implement such a narrowminded, cumbersome and unnessecary system? I can see no particular technical reason why it would be a good idea to actively prevent low-level OpenGL drivers to be written and implemented by the hardware vendors. That's how it works on pretty much every platform today and I've never seen or heard any complaints about it.

I can see political reasons for this, in that it will marginalize OpenGL, but that doesn't exactly make me more sympaphetic.

[Marc G]

No, you don't understand it.
Everything in Windows Vista is drawn by DirectX, all windows, buttons etc... all drawn by DirectX. Because of this DirectX gets exclusive fullscreen access to the graphics card and thus OpenGL can't have access anymore. Maybe they implement something to allow fullscreen opengl applications to get exclusive access to the graphics system, but windowed OpenGL won't and will need to be translated to DirectX on the fly.
And before saying that this will be bad for the OpenGL performance, wait for Vista and test it out yourself.

[Mitsukai]

nothing of this helped me but thnx for trieing. i need the source code off opengl. i think its not available

[Marc G]

There is not 1 version of OpenGL. Several vendors have written an implementation.
Check out Mesa (http://www.mesa3d.org/) for an open source opengl implementation.

[Hnefi]

No, you don't understand it.
Everything in Windows Vista is drawn by DirectX, all windows, buttons etc... all drawn by DirectX. Because of this DirectX gets exclusive fullscreen access to the graphics card and thus OpenGL can't have access anymore. Maybe they implement something to allow fullscreen opengl applications to get exclusive access to the graphics system, but windowed OpenGL won't and will need to be translated to DirectX on the fly.
And before saying that this will be bad for the OpenGL performance, wait for Vista and test it out yourself.
That doesn't make sense. Even if Vista itself is written in and rendered by DX, there's no reason why there wouldn't be full OpenGL support. Third party applications do not need to access the graphics library of whatever platform it runs on - if that was the case, neither OpenGL nor DirectX would work on W9X. All that's needed is native drivers developed by the hardware manufacturers.

According to 3dLabs Microsoft simply won't release the necessary details about Vista to allow them to write such drivers, which is a change of course from how it's been in the past. I'm starting to see why so many people dislike MS...

[Marc G]

That doesn't make sense. Even if Vista itself is written in and rendered by DX, there's no reason why there wouldn't be full OpenGL support. Third party applications do not need to access the graphics library of whatever platform it runs on - if that was the case, neither OpenGL nor DirectX would work on W9X. All that's needed is native drivers developed by the hardware manufacturers.
No, it's my understanding that if an application (in this case Windows itself) is using some kind of API (in this case DirectX) to get exclusive access to the graphics board, then another application cannot aquire exclusive access anymore.

According to 3dLabs Microsoft simply won't release the necessary details about Vista to allow them to write such drivers, which is a change of course from how it's been in the past. I'm starting to see why so many people dislike MS...
Well, you are free to use an alternative OS. ;)

[Hnefi]

The component that requires DX for rendering - Aero, it seems to be called - is just a shell. There's nothing difficult about creating a shell in one API and still have support for another. There are literally dozens of examples today, including all versions of Windows. Other parts of the system has no reason to care about what renderer is used, so they should not matter. In fact, sometimes apps are written that use both DX and OpenGL. A representative for 3dLabs have said that they would have no problem writing a good OpenGL driver for Vista if MS would just release the details to the hardware vendors (3dLabs, Matrox, nVidia, ATI) that they always have when creating a new OS.

As for using a different OS, I most certainly will. That's not a problem. The problem is that there's a real risk that most OpenGL apps written by me or others will not be able to run on Windows, which will probably pretty much kill OpenGL - and we know what happened last time there was only one "real" gfx API that was controlled by a single corporation. OpenGL is needed for its simplicity, compatibility and competitiveness.

Ah well, I've derailed this thread enough. It's not like I can change anything about this anyway.