Carmack & Open GL
A post entitled “The present and the future” is up on the Slashdot forums from one Mr. John Carmack, talking about the future of 3D graphical API’s. It is lengthy, and technical, particularly for someone who doesn’t actually know what API stands for. Never-the-less, as far as I can tell Carmack is a firm believer in the future, insisting that it is only going to get better and taking the time to have a shot at the 3D hardware manufacturers while he’s at it:
At that point, a higher level graphics API will finally make good sense. There is debate over exactly what it is going to look like, but the model will be like C. Just like any CPU can compile any C program (with various levels of efficiency), any graphics card past this point will be able to run any shader. Some hardware vendors are a bit concerned about this, because bullet point features that you have that the other guy doesn’t are a major marketing feature, but the direction is a technical inevitability. They will just have to compete on price and performance. Oh, darn.
posted by splash · at 8:26 am · filed under News