OpenGL Now Natively Supported in Windows Vista

[|Overlord|]

http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3760

Performance to rival that of Direct3D

The problem with OpenGL was that it was never officially supported or evangelized by Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft has always advocated its own Direct3D driver model over OpenGL, but GPU manufacturers have long supported OpenGL in drivers. Many games and productivity applications still use OpenGL even today. With Windows Vista, Microsoft made it clear that OpenGL support would only work as a layer sitting on top of Direct3D. There was going to be translation involved and thus, a performance hit.

This week the Khronos group, which is responsible for developing and maintaining OpenGL, has released a report indicating that OpenGL support will now be natively supported in Vista without layering over Direct3D. Using standard Windows installable client driver (ICD), OpenGL will be fully accelerated and be fully compatible with Windows Vista's Aeroglass UI. In fact, Khronos says that by the time Windows Vista ships, Aeroglass performance on OpenGL will be superior to that of Direct3D. According to Khronos and NVIDIA:

* Hardware overlays are not supported
* Hardware OpenGL overlays are an obsolete feature on Vista
* ATI and NVIDIA strongly recommend using compositing desktop/FBOs for same functionality

However, the OpenGL ICD drivers must still be downloaded and will not ship on the Windows Vista installation disc. Khronos said that NVIDIA already has a beta 2 ICD OpenGL driver available and ATI will release its own soon. If no ICD is present, Windows Vista will rely on the layered OpenGL mode by default and only offer basic functionality.

We can only hope that Vista doesn't get any more bad publicity throughout what's left of it's delvelopment before it ships and what further decisions microsoft makes with it (or what else we hear about it). Even though it's not going to ship with Vista, It's still a alternative to consider.

One thing is for sure, i'll be using OpenGL as opposed to Direct3D when I use Vista (Take XGL for example, it offers the same effects on opengl with it's desktop enviroment on weaker hardware too).

 

[DragonDude]

Good.

Though I still won't be touching Vista with a fifty foot pole until well after after its release, due to Microsoft's continuous lack of a clue as far as security is concerned.

 

[|Overlord|]

Good.

Though I still won't be touching Vista with a fifty foot pole until well after after its release, due to Microsoft's continuous lack of a clue as far as security is concerned.

Agreed, I really don't think all the measures they are taking to improve the security in Vista are going to work. If anything, the user should be more aware of what they are dealing with, which has been partialy done, however not well enough.

More users need to be educated about Security and Security risks, regardless of what OS they use. MS/Windows rants on about security but places to much on it and then here comes a new windows exploit/bug/worm/virus that affects it's users. It's an argument that comes both ways I guess, plus with MS trying to move in with it's own security software and locking out companies like symantec, they are making their security a lot worse then it already could be/is. Being educated about security from Microsoft in some cases seems very misleading to an average user or computer noob.