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WhatMeWorry
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Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 12:51 pm

Does anyone think the PS4 will help popularize OpenGL in a big way? I take it Sony won't (or can't) use DirectX. Or does Sony roll their own graphics software? Not sure what PS3 uses. If you're going to go with an APU from AMD, you would pick OpenGL, right?
I dont think, therefore I am not.
 
just brew it!
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 1:18 pm

The PS3 was OpenGL-based as well, and it didn't seem to do much to "popularize OpenGL in a big way".

I should also point out that OpenGL *is* still quite widely used, just not for desktop PC software.

Steam for Linux probably has a better shot at helping OpenGL take back desktop market share, since A) it actually runs on desktop hardware; and B) porting a game to Linux implies supporting an OpenGL code path in the game engine. Of course, it remains to be seen whether Steam for Linux will be a viable product over the long run, or just an experiment.
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mdk77777
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 1:27 pm

Close,

Open CL...GL is a different.

Open CL can be used across many platforms..CPU, GPU, or in this case, a combination of both. :wink:

And yes, Heterogeneous compute is the big bet AMD made years ago when it bought ATI.

Hopefully they can generate a significant Supplier/user ecosystem to make it take off. :wink: :wink:

http://developer.amd.com/resources/hete ... cture-hsa/

Note SONY has joined?

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/30278 ... re-members

Why?

PS4 of course.
 
moridinga
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 1:41 pm

Why are you talking about OpenCL? He wants to know about graphics APIs (he did mention DirectX, not DirectCompute).
 
mdk77777
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 1:47 pm

Because, the programing for games in the PS4 will be using new SDK...derivative of AMD architecture...which is OPENCL...not OPENGL.

Parse, the question as you will...

The thing that will be "popularized...in a big way?" is open CL and not open gl. :D
 
just brew it!
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 1:53 pm

I think you're a little confused. OpenCL is for GPU computing, OpenGL is for 3D graphics. They are different APIs that solve different problems. AFAIK the PS4 will be using *both*.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
mdk77777
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 2:13 pm

No, not confused.

Just answering the question of what is the revolutionary concept...the thing that will be popularized in a big way, the thing that will leverage the hardware....both cpu and gpu.

http://playstation-techzone.com/playsta ... en-console

OpenGL if used will be a tool, will not be nearly as significant. (revolutionary, moving the user/supplier ecosystem in a new direction....popularizing in a big way.) :wink:
 
auxy
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 2:24 pm

just brew it! wrote:
The PS3 was OpenGL-based as well, and it didn't seem to do much to "popularize OpenGL in a big way".
PS3 actually used LibGCM, a low-level graphics library created by Sony. I do believe it is loosely or perhaps in part based on OpenGL though, at least in spirit anyway. (๑・ω-)~♥”
 
GrimDanfango
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 2:46 pm

auxy wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
The PS3 was OpenGL-based as well, and it didn't seem to do much to "popularize OpenGL in a big way".
PS3 actually used LibGCM, a low-level graphics library created by Sony. I do believe it is loosely or perhaps in part based on OpenGL though, at least in spirit anyway. (๑・ω-)~♥”


I think I read somewhere that it was effectively their in-house branch of an early version of OpenGL or OpenGL|ES. The PS3 actually does have OpenGL|ES as an option, but apparently very few developers use it, as LibGCM is lower-level and they can squeeze more out of the GPU with it.
From what I've read, it seems LibGCM is purely used for that reason on the PS3, and reports seem to suggest the PS4 is a lot simpler to code for... I presume being simple to code for would preclude having to directly address the GPU through a low-level library, so I reckon they're probably going the OpenGL route. I guess it'll turn out to be some customized offshoot, but maybe it'll be sufficiently similar to allow for easy crossover with conventional OpenGL.

Only time will tell.
 
Flatland_Spider
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 2:59 pm

The PS4 might help OpenCL become more mainstream. I would be more optimistic about this if the Playstation had some way to create homebrew games and programs. It's the amateurs that tinker around with stuff that really propel technology forward. Still, the PS4 is a mainstream product that will sell in the millions in a highly competitive sector where people will be looking for an edge.

There are two things that are helping OpenGL: the Khronos group taking over stewardship and releasing updates; the rise of Unix-like Operating Systems specifically OS X, iOS, and Android.

Actually releasing updates to OpenGL helped tremendously. It was left for dead for a while, and this was when DirectX really took off.

OS X, iOS, and Android use OpenGL, or OpenGL ES, as their 3d graphics libraries of choice. OS X has become a viable alternative platform, and iOS/Android gaming is the hot sector right now.

@GrimDanfango

The PS4 isn't going to have a weirdly structured CPU, so that probably helps in the simplification department.
 
auxy
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 3:43 pm

The irony here is that the PS4 is using an AMD GPU and probably some type of OpenGL or OGL-derived API, and yet AMD has never been able to produce a proper working OpenGL driver on Windows. Ha-haaa.... ┐( ̄ヮ ̄)┌

I realize that the quality of their Windows drivers has very little to do with the PS4, but the irony slapped me in the face.
 
GrimDanfango
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 4:55 pm

auxy wrote:
The irony here is that the PS4 is using an AMD GPU and probably some type of OpenGL or OGL-derived API, and yet AMD has never been able to produce a proper working OpenGL driver on Windows. Ha-haaa.... ┐( ̄ヮ ̄)┌

I realize that the quality of their Windows drivers has very little to do with the PS4, but the irony slapped me in the face.

It's a very old irony. Their OpenGL drivers have been pretty solid for a long time now. Maybe not quite up to nVidia's level of robustness, but I've had no problems using Radeon cards for a whole swathe of visual effects packages - and that's traditionally where the OpenGL issues manifest most spectacularly.

I actually switched back to nVidia recently, after about 6 years of Radeons, not because of any driver issues, but because on my latest - a 7850, AMD's power-saving GPU-throttling-when-idle caused the screen to flicker violently every time it flicked on or off, which was especially noticeable when using Firefox, as it'd keep flicking between power states every time I scrolled a webpage.
 
auxy
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 5:02 pm

GrimDanfango wrote:
It's a very old irony. Their OpenGL drivers have been pretty solid for a long time now. Maybe not quite up to nVidia's level of robustness, but I've had no problems using Radeon cards for a whole swathe of visual effects packages - and that's traditionally where the OpenGL issues manifest most spectacularly.
Is it? Wasn't it just last year that AMD flubbed the RAGE launch so horribly? (edit: it was late 2011.) What about Second Life and City of Heroes, games which languished for years (and in the case of SL, still do), barely working at all on Radeons because of the rubbish OpenGL ICD? What about Unigine benchmarks, which run more or less the same on Geforce cards in DX9 or OpenGL mode, but lose half the performance or more in OpenGL on Radeons?

Whatever. ┐(‘~`;)┌
 
GrimDanfango
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 5:41 pm

auxy wrote:
GrimDanfango wrote:
It's a very old irony. Their OpenGL drivers have been pretty solid for a long time now. Maybe not quite up to nVidia's level of robustness, but I've had no problems using Radeon cards for a whole swathe of visual effects packages - and that's traditionally where the OpenGL issues manifest most spectacularly.
Is it? Wasn't it just last year that AMD flubbed the RAGE launch so horribly? (edit: it was late 2011.) What about Second Life and City of Heroes, games which languished for years (and in the case of SL, still do), barely working at all on Radeons because of the rubbish OpenGL ICD? What about Unigine benchmarks, which run more or less the same on Geforce cards in DX9 or OpenGL mode, but lose half the performance or more in OpenGL on Radeons?

Whatever. ┐(‘~`;)┌

Hmm, okay, I was only really basing my argument on the old notion that their OpenGL drivers were unstable, which they really haven't been for a long time.

Both sides have plenty of select examples where one camp is better optimized for than the other. Id/Mr.Carmack have always been big fans of nVidia, and basically wrote Rage on them, so it's not really surprising AMD ended up having to play catch-up. Half Life 2 originally worked much better on Radeons, as they focused development of Source more towards that camp.

I agree, there is certainly a demonstrable performance advantage on nVidia running OpenGL in the majority of cases, but it's rare that it's a very big advantage, and it's far more common that poor performance on one camp's cards or the other's comes back to shoddy game development rather than problems with drivers. Second Life has hardly been a bastion of cutting edge graphics, so it seems pretty likely that they just made a bit of a naff engine.

So, I stand by my statement, OpenGL is solid on Radeons, and has been for a long time, as a general rule. It may not be exceptional, it may not quite keep pace with nVidia, but it is solid.
 
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Thu Mar 14, 2013 5:57 pm

GrimDanfango wrote:
So, I stand by my statement, OpenGL is solid on Radeons, and has been for a long time, as a general rule. It may not be exceptional, it may not quite keep pace with nVidia, but it is solid.
Well, it isn't, but this is offtopic for this thread. '`,、('∀`) '`,、 PM me if you want to discuss this further.
 
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 3:37 pm

WhatMeWorry wrote:
Does anyone think the PS4 will help popularize OpenGL in a big way? I take it Sony won't (or can't) use DirectX. Or does Sony roll their own graphics software? Not sure what PS3 uses. If you're going to go with an APU from AMD, you would pick OpenGL, right?


Back to the original question- doubtful. Even if the PS4 uses OpenGL, it still won't be the same as OpenGL for desktop cards. There will be low-level access calls and such added to it to make the most of the GPU.

Add to that that on the desktop, if you're using OpenGL for games and your last name isn't Carmack, you're doing it wrong.
 
auxy
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 4:15 pm

Airmantharp wrote:
Add to that that on the desktop, if you're using OpenGL for games and your last name isn't Carmack, you're doing it wrong.
This dood is da troof. ☜(゚ヮ゚☜)
 
cwj717
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 8:46 pm

auxy wrote:
GrimDanfango wrote:
It's a very old irony. Their OpenGL drivers have been pretty solid for a long time now. Maybe not quite up to nVidia's level of robustness, but I've had no problems using Radeon cards for a whole swathe of visual effects packages - and that's traditionally where the OpenGL issues manifest most spectacularly.
Is it? Wasn't it just last year that AMD flubbed the RAGE launch so horribly? (edit: it was late 2011.) What about Second Life and City of Heroes, games which languished for years (and in the case of SL, still do), barely working at all on Radeons because of the rubbish OpenGL ICD? What about Unigine benchmarks, which run more or less the same on Geforce cards in DX9 or OpenGL mode, but lose half the performance or more in OpenGL on Radeons?

Whatever. ┐(‘~`;)┌


Reading this post made me curious so I ran unigine heaven on my radeon 7970 in D3D and OpenGL, it was 17% faster in D3D. I did the same for unigine valley and it was 28% faster in D3D. They both ran just as well under linux compared to windows (in OpenGL). Just thought I would share.
 
auxy
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 8:52 pm

cwj717 wrote:
Reading this post made me curious so I ran unigine heaven on my radeon 7970 in D3D and OpenGL, it was 17% faster in D3D. I did the same for unigine valley and it was 28% faster in D3D. They both ran just as well under linux compared to windows (in OpenGL). Just thought I would share.
Oh? It does seem GCN has a better OpenGL driver for whatever reason (strange, because they should use the same ICD...)

See here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=86845#p1156726
GrimDanfango wrote:
The PS3 actually does have OpenGL|ES as an option, but apparently very few developers use it, as LibGCM is lower-level and they can squeeze more out of the GPU with it. From what I've read, it seems LibGCM is purely used for that reason on the PS3, and reports seem to suggest the PS4 is a lot simpler to code for... I presume being simple to code for would preclude having to directly address the GPU through a low-level library, so I reckon they're probably going the OpenGL route.
I see your logic here, but it's fallacious. The idea that "simpler to code for" = "using OpenGL" is just not accurate -- it goes the other way, for sure ("using OpenGL" => "simpler to code for"), but not vice versa. Sony could even mandate that developers use LibGCM or something equally asinine, or developers may simply prefer to do so to get the maximum performance. Personally, I doubt many top-end games will use OpenGL on the PS3 as those games generally won't be using OpenGL on the PC, so, if you have to re-code the renderer anyway, there's no reason not to do so as efficiently as possible. Since most games -- especially most multiplatform games -- will be using a pre-packaged middleware engine anyway (e.g. Unreal, Cryengine, etc), which means the optimization only has to be done "once" -- barring game-specific optimizations or renderer hacks -- I find it very likely that the graphics code will be as low-level as possible.
Last edited by auxy on Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
cwj717
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:06 pm

auxy wrote:
cwj717 wrote:
Reading this post made me curious so I ran unigine heaven on my radeon 7970 in D3D and OpenGL, it was 17% faster in D3D. I did the same for unigine valley and it was 28% faster in D3D. They both ran just as well under linux compared to windows (in OpenGL). Just thought I would share.
Oh? It does seem GCN has a better OpenGL driver for whatever reason (strange, because they should use the same ICD...)

See here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=86845#p1156726


It could have been crossfire... or maybe their cpu? I have an I5 2500k @ 4.8GHz. I can give it a try on a radeon 6870 that I have lying around.
 
auxy
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:10 pm

cwj717 wrote:
It could have been crossfire... or maybe their cpu? I have an I5 2500k @ 4.8GHz. I can give it a try on a radeon 6870 that I have lying around.
If you read further in the thread, someone with a single 7970 gets ~1/2 the frames in OpenGL (which is actually where I derived my remark in the original post you quoted.)
 
cwj717
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:15 pm

auxy wrote:
cwj717 wrote:
It could have been crossfire... or maybe their cpu? I have an I5 2500k @ 4.8GHz. I can give it a try on a radeon 6870 that I have lying around.
If you read further in the thread, someone with a single 7970 gets ~1/2 the frames in OpenGL (which is actually where I derived my remark in the original post you quoted.)


Ok, I figured you were talking about the 6970 result because you said "It does seem GCN has a better OpenGL driver"

Edit: Link to my results http://www.filedropper.com/unigine
 
auxy
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:27 pm

cwj717 wrote:
Ok, I figured you were talking about the 6970 result because you said "It does seem GCN has a better OpenGL driver"

Edit: Link to my results http://www.filedropper.com/unigine
Well, specifically I was referring to the difference in the two.

I'll have a look when I get home; can't open filedropper from work internet.
 
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:40 pm

auxy wrote:
cwj717 wrote:
Ok, I figured you were talking about the 6970 result because you said "It does seem GCN has a better OpenGL driver"

Edit: Link to my results http://www.filedropper.com/unigine
Well, specifically I was referring to the difference in the two.

I'll have a look when I get home; can't open filedropper from work internet.


You can look at his results here:

Image

Image
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auxy
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:56 pm

auxy wrote:
I'll have a look when I get home; can't open filedropper from work internet.
The irony is that I'm actually posting from my PHONE, which doesn't go through the work internet. Herp.
JohnC wrote:
You can look at his results here: (images)
Looks kinda low for a Tahiti! ... although I suppose the other guy (cynan?) had his GPU overclocked 2DMAXX!!

Anyway, I still place the blame on AMD's OGL driver, since I get very nearly the exact same results in D3D11 vs. OpenGL on my Titan. Actually, IIRC, it actually runs slightly -better-, although I think there's some effect missing in OGL. I don't remember.

Anyway, this is all offtopic and I'm sorry for continuing to pollute the thread with my offtopic nonsense. (;=_=)
 
wintermane666
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sat Mar 16, 2013 11:31 pm

The fact of the matter is the consoles will have little impact on pc games other then the obvious ram usage multithreding usage and such. The use of opengl on the console wont effect the fact its most likely almost all the pc versions will use direct x.
 
jihadjoe
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sun Mar 17, 2013 12:00 am

No.
PS4 developers will likely code to a much lower level library like LibGCM. It just doesn't make sense to make their developers learn OGL code now, only to have to make them learn GCM later on when further optimization becomes necessary. Being able to code to very specific hardware has always been one of the main advantages (or, I'd dare to say: requirement) for console and that's not gonna chance now just because PS4 uses an x86 CPU.
 
Airmantharp
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Re: Will PS4 help popularize OpenGL in a big way?

Sun Mar 17, 2013 12:48 am

wintermane666 wrote:
The fact of the matter is the consoles will have little impact on pc games other then the obvious ram usage multithreding usage and such. The use of opengl on the console wont effect the fact its most likely almost all the pc versions will use direct x.


If there's anything to take away from the PS4's spec-sheet, it's that we can expect games to start being very highly multi-threaded as well as using significantly more RAM and an order of magnitude more detail. These are definitely good things. That Sony and Microsoft are using the same CPU and GPU IP (if possibly in slightly different variations) is also a very good thing for PC users. Games that will be developed for all three will likely be easier to optimize, or be able to be more optimized than games built for the PC and the last two consoles.

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