Re:Pixel and Vertex Shading and OpenGL2.0? (Score 1)

3Dlabs has been totally open with their ideas for OpenGL 2.0 from the start. The first presentation to the ARB was the September ARB meeting last year. Right after that the white papers appeared and were publicly available. Since then they have told the ARB at every meeting what they were thinking OpenGL 2.0 should look like, and have asked for feedback from ARB members, and people like us, developers. They wrote white papers, openly discussed their ideas, took feedback from developers and others and used that to improve the quality of their white papers. They also published a prototype compiler. It is pretty clear that a lot of developers like the direction OpenGL 2.0 is going. BTW, the next ARB meeting is next week, it'll be interesting to see what will happen there. Usually the meeting notes are available on opengl.org a week later. In the mean time nvidia, who is a member of the ARB, listened to all this, and decided to put their formidable resources behind their own competing proposal for a high level shading language. That is just simply lame. Nvidia is part of the OpenGL ARB standard body, but didn't put any effort into helping OpenGL 2.0 along, just decided to do their own thing. That is not behavior that is acceptable as a member of any standard body, including the ARB. If, on the other hand, they had actively worked together with 3Dlabs and the rest of the ARB, imagine how much good that could have done for OpenGL 2.0, and resultingly in what we get to play with. (Before anyone argues that OpenGL 2.0 is more than Cg, that is correct. But let's face it, the key part of the OpenGL 2.0 proposal is the high level shading language.) Cg is exactly what nvidia wants. It compiles to either OpenGL 1.3 / 1.4, or DirectX. Well, what targets do we have for a compiled version of a Cg shader? NV_vertex_program, and hopefully soon ARB_vertex_program (which is pretty close to NV_vertex_program). Guess what, those are invented by nvidia as well. NV_vertex_program does not support loops, function calls, or if statements. So how is a high-level Cg shader that has those constructs going to run on NV_vertex_program? How is a high-level Cg shader going to be run on someone elses hardware, that does have loops or function calls? It is not, since nvidia dictates the compiler, and what target it compiles to. OpenGL 1.3 / 1.4 does not define fragment shading capabilities, other than NV_register_combiner. Yes, another nvidia extension. I hardly would call NV_register_combiner a fragment shader, but I digress. What if an OpenGL fragment shader extension surfaces and gets proposed to the ARB that nvidia doesn't like? How do I get my Cg shader compiled to that new extension? In other words, nvidia effectively dictates the pace of innovation. That is *not* an open standard. Nvidia is afraid of OpenGL 2.0, because it does not fit their hardware roadmap.