[Bf-committers] Proposal: Up blender requirements to OpenGL 2.1

[Mike Erwin]

On Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 11:16 AM, <hewi at jupama.org> wrote:

> This topic leads me to two questions:
>
> - upgrade to OpenGL 2.1: the OpenGL is currently at version 4.5.  Is it
> impossible to maintain the same version in blender?
>
>
This would severely limit blender's audience. Only Windows & Linux running
proprietary vendor drivers on *new* graphics cards are able to run GL 4.5.
The laptop I'm using right now says GL 4.4 even with the latest drivers!
2.1 has been around long enough that it is essentially universal. Yes we'll
miss out on some nice capabilities. We have been using features from later
versions of GL but not always in a consistent way. Part of the project is
eye candy, part is improved performance, and just as important is setting a
higher baseline and making the code consistent and safe.

- and my endless quest of finding out the relation between OpenGL, GLSL,
> GHOST.  Does GHOST uses the OpenGL libraries directly? or does it call
> GLSL.
>

GHOST sets up OpenGL contexts in platform-specific ways. Other than that
GHOST does not use GL or GLSL for its own purposes.


> Thanks for your time.
>
> Regards
>
> Hewi
>

Mike Erwin
musician, naturalist, pixel pusher, hacker extraordinaire