GLSL - OpenGL Shading Language

[Kitty Hello]

Get the latest update. I'll upload a sample program tomorrow or tonight. The Manual should get you started, though.

With GLSL you have the total power of writing realistic rendering shaders. With these you have all the rendering feature of the future at hand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLSL

Date for IRC chat about GLSL is Wednesday, 27-Sep-06, 22:00 CET (that's GMT+1 - we have summertime)

[bigsofty]

Wow, congrats Gernot, this is a big feature addition!

Thank you,


Ian

[Hemlos]

Yes indeed, GLSL was only recently innovated, im impressed with the turnover time on implementation to the highend GLBASIC language!

Curious though, i heard good things about the directx innovations ..shaders, is it possible to add these in our code in the gbas files?

[Kitty Hello]

GLSL is shaders for OpenGL. GLBasic uses OpenGL. Not DirectX. If I ever will be forced to use DirectX, that will be the worst day of my life.

[Sebe]

Gernot I think you're too spoiled. DirectX currently has a feature that OpenGL lacks: FX shaders support multiple techniques and rendering passes which GLSL afaik doesn't. Also with DirectX10 the fixed function pipeline will become obsolete. I can't see OpenGL taking that step in the near future. While OpenGL sure has the power to produce nice and next-gen graphics (just take a look at the Doom3 engine) DirectX HAS advantages over OpenGL. But maybe you won't even be forced to use DirectX at all, since in the future the more important API will be XNA :-P

Edit: By the way - ATi still doesn't support OpenGL in their latest Vista drivers. So if someone wants to run a game with best compatibility on Vista, even Blitz3D is a better choice than GLBasic. I can't say a thing about the NVidia drivers though. They added OpenGL with the latest driver but since my laptop has a Radeon X1600 I was not able to test their drivers *lol*

[Kitty Hello]

Take a few minutes and read the pdfs here:
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~feelgood/opengl/siggraph/
multi-pass for shaders is already there for years now. Also you might have to use frame buffer objects, pbuffers or the like. OpenGL lacks _nothing_ behind DirectX.

[bigsofty]

OpenGL lacks _nothing_ behind DirectX.

Agreed.

[Sebe]

Thanks for the link Gernot, interesting read. However "OpenGL lacks _nothing_ behind DirectX" is not 100% right, because OpenGL lacks driver support compared to DirectX (note: I'm an ATi user). I know that's not OpenGL's fault, but it's still something annoying and should be mentioned if speaking about OpenGL or DirectX lacking something :-)

[Kitty Hello]

When Vista is out for customners, ATI will have OpenGL drivers. They can't afford not to have.