[NTLUG:Discuss] Video Card Recommendation? -- Long Redux

[Steve Baker]

Bryan J. Smith wrote:

> Okay, you're correct in that regard.  But it does seem that it's been
> far too long between OpenGL 1.3 and the proposed OpenGL 2.0 work.

Eh?

OpenGL 1.4 has been out for about 7 months now.   The OpenGL ARB
aim to get a new revision of the spec out every year - it's announced
each year at SigGraph.

> As far as Cg, I thought nVidia was freely sharing it.  Is this not true?

Yes - Cg is OpenSourced in fact.  You can find it on SourceForge.

However, what's happened is that Microsoft have adopted the Cg standard
(but not the OpenSourced implementation) and renamed it HLSL - which is
now a part of DirectX - they will extend it in ways incompatible with
Cg (because that's what M$ always do with standards).   nVidia clearly
don't want to waste more money maintaining the OpenSourced version when
it's only relevent to OpenGL - and OpenGL now has it's own native shader
language (GLSL).  I think they said that the latest revision of Cg will
be the last that they'll support.

>>Not exactly.  It was HEAVILY obfuscated sources - quite utterly
>>unreadable.  No better then disassembled machine code.
> 
> Right, but then the community started reworking it and putting back in
> the formal identifiers and that's when the 3rd parties started bitching
> and moaning about litigation.  It's quite sad.

Yeah - well - that would have been all well and good but since nVidia
rev their hardware about every year, and each card has a bunch of radical
new features, I think it's virtually impossible for an OpenSourced version
to keep up without nVidia's direct support.

> I just dislike all the "demonization" of nVidia by the community. 
> Without their continued release of Linux drivers, Linux would be a piss
> poor OpenGL platform in general.

Right - exactly.   If both nVidia and ATI decided to stop supplying drivers,
there would be no 3D for Linux.  That means no modern games, a severe kink
in what you could do on the desktop - companies like the one I work for who
depend on 3D under Linux would be forced into a god-awful Windoze solution.
The movie and special effects companies would be forced to look back at
Windows - having made the transition to Linux.

The world would be a MUCH worse place and widespread use of Linux-on-the-desktop
would be a more distant dream than it is right now.

Whilst I'd altogether prefer to have OpenSourced drivers for my OpenSourced
operating system, if I had to choose between Closed Source drivers under
Linux and Closed Source drivers under Windows - I know which I'd prefer!

So I like to keep gentle pressure on these companies to change their policies
and release sources - but I don't want to turn on the rabid Linux fanaticism
because I don't want to scare them off altogether.

>>The main problem with ATI's OpenGL drivers is that they are just buggy
>>as hell.  Really awful.  We get repeated crashes, freezes, incorrect
>>adherence to the OpenGL spec, memory leaks...you name it.
>
> And that's the problem with creating a "clean room" implementation.
> You have to give ATI some credit for trying, but it seems that even
> they agree with nVidia.  It's best to just use what you got already,
> even if that means closed source.

I'm AM referring to ATI's closed source proprietary drivers - they are really poor.

The (fairly ancient) OpenSourced 3D drivers for ATI hardware are just completely
unusable.   They don't support any features more recent than about four years
ago - heck, I doubt they work at all with modern Radeon cards.

> Thanx for the update on a few items.  Glad to see OpenGL 2.0 work _is_
> progressing.

Yep.  In fact I'm going to an OpenGL 2.0 Advanced training course down
in Houston on Wednesday (hosted by Sun - of all people!) - so things are
certainly hotting up.

GLSL is a much more advanced programming language than Cg/HLSL - this next
revision will put OpenGL head and shoulders beyond Direct3D (for a while
at least).   By aiming high, they've managed to essentially skip a whole
generation.  Cg is a kinda twitchy programming language with lots of messy
special restrictions and sneaky 'gotchas'.  GLSL is a clean specification
- which may start out being hard to implement (so practical implementations
may be restricted and have gotchas' to start with) - but hardware will
soon catch up.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
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