Yes, but OpenGL is so outdated that the people that should use it the most (game and 3D application developers) were avoiding it due to a hardware vs. API incompatibility.
Vulcan was created to get that same portability, with an API that fits modern hardware.
All the target systems had latest Windows updates, and they all run Direct3D 11 software just fine (I mostly develop for D3D and I test on them). On some systems it works in 10.1 compatibility mode, MS calls that “feature levels”. Not a big deal in practice, the majority of D3D11 stuff still works OK.
No, you're getting stuck at 3.0 because you're hitting the deprecation strategy. You need to specifically request a post-3.0 context with wglCreateContextAttribsARB which you're not doing. Thus the system thinks you're an old legacy OpenGL app, and is giving you 3.0 as that was the last version before things were removed.
> No, you're getting stuck at 3.0 because you're hitting the deprecation strategy.
I think you’re wrong here. Two reasons.
1. If that would be the case, I would be stuck with GL3.0 regardless on the GPU. In reality, I’m only stuck with GL version < 4.0 on HD2000 and VmWare. On my desktop PC (Maxwell at the time I’ve wrote that demo) OpenGL 4.0 worked just fine in that very project. Even on Intel HD 4000 laptop, OpenGL 4.0 worked just fine with the same code.
2. Please read Intel’s documentation: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000... Specifically, please expand “2nd Generation Intel® Core™ Processors” section. As you see in that table, Intel says HD Graphics 3000/2000 only support OpenGL 3.1, which is exactly what I’m getting from the GLEW library I’m using in that project.
Also, you can see in that article that no intel GPU supports GL 4.6 mentioned by GP. Even the latest generation UHD Graphics 620/630 only support GL 4.5. Meanwhile, they support the latest DirectX 12 for several years already.
> 1. If that would be the case, I would be stuck with GL3.0 regardless on the GPU. In reality, I’m only stuck with GL version < 4.0 on HD2000 and VmWare. On my desktop PC (Maxwell at the time I’ve wrote that demo) OpenGL 4.0 worked just fine in that very project. Even on Intel HD 4000 laptop, OpenGL 4.0 worked just fine with the same code.
Behavior depends on if the device supports 3.2+ compatibility mode which is optional.
> Also, you can see in that article that no intel GPU supports GL 4.6 mentioned by GP. Even the latest generation UHD Graphics 620/630 only support GL 4.5. Meanwhile, they support the latest DirectX 12 for several years already.
ok, so? 4.5 isn't really outdated, either. It still supports all the modern good stuff. And, as we've established at this point, it's not Window's stopping you from leveraging the full extent of the hardware you have. By contrast macOS does stop you from using the hardware you got to the fullest, as it's stuck on 4.1
> depends on if the device supports 3.2+ compatibility mode which is optional.
For the systems I have in this house it’s not required, i.e. I’m getting the same OpenGL version that’s advertised by the GPU vendors.
> You need to use the method I mentioned to get real post-3.0 OpenGL.
Either I don’t, or the authors of that GLEW library https://www.opengl.org/sdk/libs/GLEW/ already did that. When running on modern GPUs, the code in my repository already uses real post-3.0 OpenGL just fine, including the shaders.
> ok, so? 4.5 isn't really outdated, either.
Right, but 3.1 (Intel Sandy Bridge) is. And 4.0 is outdated, too (Intel Ivy Bridge). Meanwhile, modern Direct3D works fine on these GPUs, 11.0 feature level 10.1, and native 11.0, respectively.
> Either I don’t, or the authors of that GLEW library https://www.opengl.org/sdk/libs/GLEW/ already did that. When running on modern GPUs, the code in my repository already uses real post-3.0 OpenGL just fine, including the shaders.
Go read the extension I linked, it explains the behavior you're seeing. Also go read the tutorial I linked, it's using GLEW and shows you how to create a context.
You have a bug if your intention is to get a post-3.0 OpenGL context. Whether or not you care is up to you. You may be perfectly happy being in the compatibility bucket. I don't know. But you're not in the explicit 3.1 or later path.
> Right, but 3.1 (Intel Sandy Bridge) is.
Sandy Bridge is a 7 year old CPU. Of course it's outdated...? And D3D 10.1 is from 2007, it's also hugely outdated. You're getting anything more modern out of the hardware with D3D than you are OpenGL here. I don't even know what the argument you're trying to make is at this point.
No. Both ATI and Nvidia drivers include recent OpenGL versions, so OpenGL support problems are limited to actually not capable hardware.
In the old link you offer as example, Intel HD3000 and HD4000 are bad, with bad drivers that lie about OpenGL versions (hence the need to downgrade the client), and fortunately obsolete. Current Intel integrated graphics have improved. And VMware is a virtual machine, not hardware; it should be expected to be terrible.
> Intel HD3000 and HD4000 are bad, with bad drivers that lie about OpenGL versions
Technically that’s probably true. However, if you drop support of Intel GPUs, your GL4+ software will no longer run on a huge count of older Windows laptops people are still using. For many kinds of software this is a bad tradeoff. That’s exactly why all modern browsers implement WebGL on top of Direct3D, and overwhelming majority of multi-platform games and 3D apps use D3D when running on Windows.
> VMware is a virtual machine, not hardware; it should be expected to be terrible.
It’s only terrible for OpenGL. The virtual GPU driver uses host GPU to render stuff, and it runs D3D11-based software just fine. I don’t use it for gaming but it’s nice to be able to use a VM to reproduce and fix bugs in my software caused by outdated OS, windows localizations, and other environmental factors.
That's not why they do that at all. They don't need anything recent from OpenGL or Direct3D, which is why they target DX9. And DX9 specifically is targetted because that also works on XP, which D3D10 doesn't.
Intel GPUs D3D drivers have historically been better than their OpenGL ones (which isn't saying much since their D3D drivers are also trash), but now we're talking driver quality of one player which has nothing to do with the API itself or opengl somehow being outdated on windows.
But ANGLE also targets desktop OpenGL (and vulkan), and as OpenGL 4.3 adoption increases I'd expect increasingly more browsers to use it for WebGL 2.0 since you don't need translation there at all. OpenGL 4.3 provides full compatibility with OpenGL ES 3.0.
You seem to be pretty confused on how OpenGL versions line up with the D3D ones, too. For reference OpenGL 3.1 is roughly equivalent to D3D 10.1. When you're complaining about only getting GL 3.1, you're also complaining about being stuck with D3D 10.1
Vulcan was created to get that same portability, with an API that fits modern hardware.