Jonathan Blow on the Problem with OpenGL

Jonathan Blow on the Problem with OpenGL

Clip from Jonathan Blow

#jonathanblow #gamedev #webdevelopment #programming #opengl

[felix_xb]

Nobody tell him we barely know how to properly write to terminals now. Just a bit more before we mess up writing to files too.

[markoates]

JB be like:
don't use OpenGL
- unless you're interested in getting things done
- and also I use it

[smallbluemachine]

The problem with OpenGL as Jon gets around to here, is that it's not ideal, but easier and more cross-platform than everything else. 😆 I like OpenGL a lot, I know, I'm an asshole. But notice how Vulkan isn't mentioned.. Metal is Apple only and DirectX is Windows only. -Remember, AMD did JUST overhaul their OpenGL driver code last year and sped it up and made it closer to standard. Meanwhile Nvidia has added Mesh Shaders to OpengGL recently - without bumping up the OpenGL version. OpenGL is still supported and will be for a long, long, long, time.

[ricopin]

I am happy Jonathan mentioned raylib! It's a very nice lib without much fuzz

[tonyvisente]

Opengl Is a good tool to learn graphics basics.

I don't find It particularly useful to spend 30 hours just to setup a vulkan pipeline to draw a single triangle if you know nothing about computer graphics.

[alexnoman]

Raylib creates a window on any OS, abstracts the graphics card and gives you input on keyboard, phone, controller, and VR. You then write code to make game. Done.
And if you want to know how it works, go read the source.

[edhalferty]

As an indie game dev, I have found OpenGL to be the perfect balance between simplicity and usefulness. Vulkan/DX12 are too much work, I can't be productive when I need to think about so many things. Anything higher-level starts to get into rendering engine territory, and I think making your own rendering engine is important to give your game a unique look & feel.

[ferasboulala]

There are no zero cost abstractions. You can use a simple, high level API but you will be trading off performance or control. The better answer is to use the level of abstraction that makes sense for you. Usually, libraries that let you dive deeper when needed are better.

[toffeethedev]

"Use SDL or Raylib instead of opengl" SDL requires raw opengl code to do 3D or shaders, and Raylib is just a wrapper around opengl. I don't really understand what his point is here..
If you want to make games, Raylib is amazing. If you want to learn graphics programming, yeah, no harm in using opengl

[untimateds]

Story teller way to end a tale: "...and everyone lives happily ever after..."
JB: 😫😩

[downthecrop]

Jon's amazing solution to graphics API's is to make a wrapper.. Much like the bazillion other OpenGL/Vulkan wrappers! Brilliant!

[AnimeGIFfy]

Last time i knew how to draw a triangle on the screen i was using Pascal

[douglaslawrie]

Can someone link me to 3 videos where Johnathon blow says something positive about anything?

[perfectionbox]

We had simpler APIs like GDI and QuickDraw but they were framebuffer only. GPUs are the only practical way to achieve modern rendering for complex geometry/effects, even things like interactive brush strokes in paint programs because artists need large brush sizes. I had hoped OpenGL would refactor but Vulkan took that idea and made a verbose low-level API, and as you've mentioned the GPU and platform vendors prefer developer lock-in. The best thing would be to mimic Unreal Engine's renderer and make a nice API from that, because Epic has figured out the cross-platform stuff.

[Stowy]

seems like WGPU (and WGPU-native for c/c++) is close to being what jonathan describes here (although still a bit complex)

[vitasartemiev]

If all you need is to draw a rectangle, nobody's stopping you from using OpenGL 3. It's braindead easy to draw triangles, triangle strips or quads there.

[elcugo]

I have been learning Vulkan and god it's so complicated, finickly and error prone, whoever designed it really hated people.

[yapdog]

Based on what he's saying here, it's not just OpenGL, it's virtually all APIs that are the problem.

[RPG_Guy-fxns]

we need a bare metal revolution in PCs. I want to see more options that are like powerful game consoles, or single board PCs, no background processes, or OS, just the 1 app at a time in arcade mode, maybe a tiny boot loader menu, giving you 100 percent of your resources. We need a modern version of micro-computers. Every app should not require any libraries, it should be self contained, with all the drivers built into each app, with a region of memory that directly talks with peripherals. I basically want a modern MSX, without any software bloat, strong enough to run AI or modern games, but with open source code and no operating system, just some graphics apis and an example file system to start with, but it should be able to edit all of its own code.

[SomeRandomPiggo]

I love OpenGL, I don't really get what point he's trying to make here. I've designed my engine to be somewhat easier to swap the renderer out later on, but I don't think I'll add another API aside from GLES ever. Vulkan gives the graphics programmer control that the driver developer should have, which is why OpenGL drivers are so damn fast