Originally posted by ramlambmoo
As for this being the beta and thus not final yet: Yes. Yes that\'s very true. However, to change it it\'d require a complete rewrite of the way Aeroglass renders, meaning that Microsoft will have to push the release date of Vista back another 6 months. For some reason, I can\'t see them do that, especially since they\'re hurting from not having anything new out there right now. So, this is probably more or less permanent.
God, thats some nice assumptions... can you give any links or proof that it will take another 6 months of development to change it? That sounds awfully speculative to me, you know.
[LONG post]
Actually, yes. Yes I can. If you\'ve done any kind of work in D3D, you\'ll KNOW that D3D requires 100% access to the GPU/Graphics Card, all the time. If you don\'t believe me, try and run two separate D3D games/apps in windowed mode right next to each others and you\'ll see how they come to lag your computer to death.
Now, add in OpenGL and it\'ll not be pretty, especially on older systems. It might get better once GFX cards have Dual-Core CPUs, but I don\'t see that happen anytime soon.
To solve that problem of not being able to have two D3D apps next to each others, Vista makes it so that EVERY app use D3D. You can turn that feature off, but in this case it\'s actually a good thing, since it means a much less CPU-intense desktop (much more load on GPU since it\'s hardware-accelerated). So, in essence Aeroglass itself is a D3D app. EVERYTHING you see in Vista is hardware accellerated through D3D.
In comes OpenGL apps. D3D doesn\'t play well with OpenGL. In fact, it lags pretty bad. So this means you have to pipe OpenGL through D3D in order to make things render as they\'re supposed to. However, this automaticly also makes OpenGL a second-class API, since it\'s basicly emulated through D3D. Worse, since D3D is a closed API Microsoft itself decides what features OpenGL-apps can and cannot use, instead of the card manufacturer writing the drivers. And right now, they say that only OpenGL 1.4 apps will be supported. But I digress.
Now, there isn\'t anything inherently evil here except Microsofts policies. Everything is designed just like OSX does it with one major exception: It uses D3D instead of OpenGL as it\'s primary rendering mechanism. No surprise here, D3D is Microsoft\'s baby and I\'d be surprised if they *didn\'t* use it. But as a consequence, you can\'t have the AeroGlass features and OpenGL-drivers running at the same time, and the only way to ensure OpenGL *and* Aeroglass eyecandy works at the *same* time is to rewrite the engine to OpenGL, which unfortunately would make D3D the second-class API instead.
Let me remind you that this is Microsoft. They\'ll stick to D3D no matter what, but for the sake of argument, let\'s say that they actually re-implements Aeroglass in OpenGL. Then they\'d need about 6 months extra to betatest this new branch of Windows Vista, at the very least. So as it looks right now it won\'t ever happen.
And that is why it\'ll be a cold day in hell before Vista supports OGL natively.
Originally posted by garlando
OpenGL has been designed from scratch to provide an alternative for DirectX. The creaters of OpenGL have worked to ensure that it works well under windows as it currently does. Now why assume that the creaters of openGL will call it a day and stop trying? Someone there will almost certainly be on the beta list of Vista and so can then start trying to come up with OpenGL2 or other evoloution. Just because Windows changes doesnt mean that everything else will fall in a heap, just that it will have to adapt and improve.
Wrong. OpenGL existed since even before Windows95 and DirectX, and it was only because of GLQuake that it started to get interesting for gaming. What do you think all those fancy IRIX-powered SGI workstations used as 3D-renderers for the special effects in, say, Jurrassic Park? =P
See above as for why it\'s impossible to get Vista running Aeroglass and OpenGL Native at the same time.
