Valve to present glNext: High Performance Graphics at GDC

[HEXUS]

Offering details and live demonstrations of the next generation of the OpenGL API.

Read more.

[shaithis]

A finalised steam controller? I'll believe it when I see it

Hopefully ONE of these new APIs will stand out as the best and be adopted, although the pessimist in me thinks we will take a step backwards and end up with games that will run better on one API or another and then have graphics cards that support one API better than another......just like Unreal Tournament days again.

[DemonHighwayman]

"Half Life 3, Portal 3 or Left 4 Dead 3" this is all I want to hear about from Valve, they've p*ssed around too much with all the other cr*p and neglected the fans who made them what they are today.

[Chadders87]

They have changed their core business model from developer to publisher. Yet they still create and improve new games and are getting into tech innovation (slowly).

I can't see HL3 ever being released, and if it is I won't be excited. Ive already forgotten the story and plot archs from the first 2.66 games.

I am a day 1 user and fan, and I am happy they have made the PC Gaming industry more streamlined. Without steam, I would guess Consoles would have won.

[RT-XD]

It makes me wonder if the wait will actually be worth it? I really hope it will be...

I do look forward to this though - should be interesting what they have to offer. In addition to half life 3 that is

[GuidoLS]

It's sort of meaningless if everyone else out there doesn't come on board, or as noted above, the API's become even more fractured. I'd be far more impressed if their geniuses came up with some sort of wrapper, like the old glide wrappers from days gone by, that allow decent or better 'emulation' for DX/D3D under Linux, instead of having to futz around with Wine/Cedega/PlayOnLinux/Etc.

[DanceswithUnix]

A finalised steam controller? I'll believe it when I see it

Hopefully ONE of these new APIs will stand out as the best and be adopted, although the pessimist in me thinks we will take a step backwards and end up with games that will run better on one API or another and then have graphics cards that support one API better than another......just like Unreal Tournament days again.

It will probably come down to glNext on tablets/phones and DX12 on Windows, basically no different from where we are today with gl on phones & tablets and DX11 on Windows.

I don't see a long future for Mantle.

[Corky34]

That's odd as i see Mantle doing better than DX12.
Mantle being platform agnostic and DX12 being Windows 10 only, then again Mantle is only AMD cards

[DanceswithUnix]

That's odd as i see Mantle doing better than DX12.
Mantle being platform agnostic and DX12 being Windows 10 only, then again Mantle is only AMD cards

I thought Mantle was Windows only, so just as platform specific as DX12. I can't see Intel adopting Mantle either, not with DX12 so close.

The upshot of that would be that a game engine would have to support DX12 to get Nvidia users supported, so where is the desire to keep supporting Mantle going to come from?

[Jedibeeftrix]

based off mantle.

[Corky34]

I thought Mantle was Windows only, so just as platform specific as DX12. I can't see Intel adopting Mantle either, not with DX12 so close.

The upshot of that would be that a game engine would have to support DX12 to get Nvidia users supported, so where is the desire to keep supporting Mantle going to come from?

I'm not sure how it stand ATM, but iirc AMD have said the have 'plans' to bring it to Linux.
And it's know that it's not dependent on having a particular version of Windows, i.e DX12 only being available on W10.

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm not sure how it stand ATM, but iirc AMD have said the have 'plans' to bring it to Linux.
And it's know that it's not dependent on having a particular version of Windows, i.e DX12 only being available on W10.

I won't hold my breath on them bringing it to Linux.

I would be tempted by a R9 285 card, except it is next to impossible to use under Linux. The sweet spot seems to be the 270 as that works OK, rather than the 290 for which the driver support is so broken that it works at about the same performance as a 270. But I don't want a 270, I want a 285. If they can't do normal Linux drivers, it would seem a stretch to imagine Mantle working well.

[Goobley]

Hopefully this will improve cross-platform portability of graphics code. It will probably just become another competing standard, but we have to hope not.

It seems to me that Linux is in display driver hell at the moment, neither Mir nor Wayland are ready for release, X is getting pretty decrepit and missing a lot of modern functionality. So I expect companies like AMD are waiting to see whether steamboxes take off and which new windowing system becomes the new standard before writing drivers to hook into it. Problem is, it's pretty much a self-perpetuating cycle. AMD won't invest in drivers so they don't get made and support gets worse, X (and games) get less stable on newer hardware, and they never see a reason to invest due to the market not being there due to their poor drivers.

I use Linux as a primary OS so I really want to see this sort of thing get sorted out, but every time I have to drop down to programming something that interacts with the X.org environment I very quickly get to "kill -9 self".

[shaithis]

AMD has to pull their finger out soon with Linux drivers or they are going to miss a potentially large boat with SteamOS.

Although I've been thinking that for about a year now.....

[crossy]

I thought Mantle was Windows only, so just as platform specific as DX12. I can't see Intel adopting Mantle either, not with DX12 so close. The upshot of that would be that a game engine would have to support DX12 to get Nvidia users supported, so where is the desire to keep supporting Mantle going to come from?

Mantle is Windows only at the moment, but AMD said - when they launched Mantle - that they wanted Linux support. Plus Mantle is supposedly an open standard, so there's nothing to stop Intel or NVidia doing Mantle-compatible libraries for their hardware. But if that comes to pass then I'll get out the butterfly net and catch me a bacon sandwich.

AMD has to pull their finger out soon with Linux drivers or they are going to miss a potentially large boat with SteamOS. Although I've been thinking that for about a year now.....

They are also missing out on a portion of the CAE/scientific visualisation market - where if it isn't Linux compatible then you're starting off on the back foot. Given their noises about believing in "open standards" I can't understand why they don't put more effort into the Linux drivers.

[Bane2087]

glNext is the one that I really hope will win out in the end. It's truly cross platform and graphics hardware vendor independant. Game developers adopting it widely could end the domination as Windows as the only seriously viable PC gaming OS and lead to way more Mac and Linux versions of games.