Any Last Requests?

[princec]

Well, some of you know that 0.9alpha is being released at Easter with any luck, which is a very short time away in terms of free evenings and such!

If 0.9alpha works we'll go to beta status which means we're officially going to freeze the API except for bugfixes. Hurrah! This means you can rely on us not to totally rewrite everything again! (It's happened about 4 times now!)

What this means for you is: if you have a desperate urge for any API that needs to be in there, please tell us! Or it might not make it into the 1.0 release. (At 1.0 I think we shall all take a rest from developing it for a while and get on with using it, yes?)

The feature I feel is most useful to the community at large is an AWT bridge of some sort so we can render to an AWT canvas; this will be part of the new "context management" interface I'm working on.

Cas

[elias]

It was mentioned in another thread, but I think a FSAA API would be nice.

- elias

[fbi]

I have not a lot to ask for...what I really needed I implemented on my own  
My unique point is: how much of the platform-dependant extensions (WGL, GLX) do you plan to expose?
For example the experimental OpenGL plugin by the Eclipse team let you use each and every extension such as you were working in C/C++.
I don't know wether this is the case (there are pros and cons for each choice) but I would like to know your opinion...so I will know what we'll get in LWJGL 1.0  

[elias]

I don't think we plan to support any WGL, GLX and AGL extensions, unless there's a really good reason for doing so. In fact, I recently removed all previous supported WGL extensions from CVS.

- elias

[princec]

What about OpenGL 1.5? Are we going to get that in for 0.9?

Cas

[alexz]

I'd like to see OpenGL 1.5 in LWJGL 0.9...  :roll:

[princec]

So would I. Any volunteers ? I'm busy putting all the security & bounds checks stuff in.

Cas

[Matzon]

1.5 in next release - at the cost of postponing 0.9 - IMO

[elias]

I'm all for postponing 1.5 to later and have a proper 0.9 alpha out for review. After all, OpenGL 1.5 is a simple API addition and is not even supported in any drivers yet (nv and ati that is).

- elias

[Matzon]

ehh?  GLSLang is supported in ATI, albeit in beta

[alexz]

I thought GLSLang support in LWJGL is almost ready...  :roll:

http://puppygames.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=420

[elias]

Nono, GLSlang and friends are *not* opengl 1.5, although it's an extension defined alongside the 1.5 spec. We have GLSlang already. When I say 1.5 I mean those few extensions that are promoted to core for that particular version. That's also the reason it can wait - all 1.5 functionality exist already as ARB extensions, as far as I know.

- elias

[elias]

But this 1.5 discussion might be obsolete very soon anyway - spasi, the extension expert, is likely to implement support for it soon anyway. Am I not right, spasi?

- elias

[spasi]

OK, the following are the 1.5 core promotions:

ARB_vertex_buffer_object
ARB_occlusion_query
EXT_shadow_funcs

and a few tokens were renamed. LWJGL already has these as extensions, including the GLSL ones (which are not in the 1.5 core) and the renamed tokens as well. What you are saying is (correct me if I'm wrong) to create a GL15 class (like the 11-14 ones), that contains the above extensions. And remove the separate ones. It's no big deal actually (no delay worries). Just a few cuts&pastes. Is that it? Tell me and consider it done.

Just a personal note... I'm not sure I like this merging. Especially for such important extensions. I mean, it kind of ruins the clean-up we're doing with all the extension splitting. And unless we keep them separate as well, the fact that VBO (for example) will be inside GL15 is confusing, since it's supported in much older cards too (with not even 1.4 support). Any thoughts?

[elias]

Nono, you don't do any merging. Even though the extensions are "promoted" to gl 1.5 they're still different from the actual extensions. So you create a GL15 class and don't touch the extensions. Take ARB_texture_compression: we have it as a separate extension, but it's also inlcuded in GL13.

That way, users can decide to use a specific GL version (say 1.4) and assume all functionality without checking if all the extensions they need are there (because they're in 1.4). Or they can settle on a lower version (say 1.2) and use specific extenions.

- elias