http://www.opengl.org/about/arb/notes/meeting_note_2004-03-02.html theres the link.. some of these extensions do look exciting..but something bothers me..right now it is a vote for NO for ARB_vertex_program,ARB_fragment_program and ARB_fragment_program_shadow even though these are the the most common and being used. i assume that if its not accepted into the core that the "extensions" will still be available. the notes do say that is still an improvement, wondering if there will be enough time to swing enough votes for Yes. if any of you would like to post feedback then go to openGL.org and tell them. how many of you are using extensions right now and what do you use them for? just curious. the notes say OGL 2.0 will be released at SiGGRaph 2004. hopefully by then at least there will be an agreement of what is not added and what is added.

the extensions will continue to exist but just wont be pulled into the core, which does mean that any other IHV which makes a gfx card and driver doesnt have to make them availble to still conform to the standard.
I think the thinking behind this is to move people towards GLSL instead, which as new cards come along will be alot more expressive and powerfull to use when compared to vertex/fragment_programs as the compiles will have alot more high level infomation avaible to them to make optermisations etc (current state of the system isnt really representative of what it will be like by then)

Of course ARB_*_programs will be available through extensions in OpenGL 2.0! But it seems like that these extensions won't be in the core.

I think that assambler shader programming will be quite complex in future. Ok, right now you don't have any problems but take a look at GeForce series 6 hardware: up to 65355 instructions per shader!! Would you really want to code a view thousand instructions on your own using assambler shader programming? ;-)

But the thing which I'm really concerned about is that there is no information about any render to texture extension which doesn't uses WGL/GLX (like pbuffer). As written in the notes from March 04 it is not sure that there will be such an extension (like EXT_render_target) in the core. I hope that this changes!

Quote:
how many of you are using extensions right now and what do you use them for?

Right now I'm using almost only extensions:
ARB_multitexture
ARB_texture_border_clamp
ARB_depth_texture
ARB_vertex_buffer_object
ARB_vertex_shader
ARB_fragment_shader
ARB_shader_objects
ARB_shading_language_100

Currently I'm only using GLSL (but I'd like to add a ARB_*_program renderer).

Also 8-9th June there was the last ARB meeting before the OpenGL 2.0 release and I'd REALLY like to read the notes ;-)

I'm waiting for notes from last ARB meeting. I was kindof hopping they would throw some things out of the code (like CVA and some "obsolete" extensions) but I guess that's not gonna happen. We'll probably have to wait quite some time to see final specifications, becouse some of existing extensions have some "problems" (*cough*GLSL*cough*).

>>how many of you are using extensions right now and what do you use them for?

"Core" extensions (needed for engine even to run)
ARB_multitexture, ARB_texture_cube_map, ARB_texture_env_combine, ARB_texture_env_dot3, ARB_texture_compression, ARB_vertex_program, ARB_vertex_buffer_object
Optional extensions (used when avabile)
ARB_vertex_shader, ARB_fragment_shader, ARB_shader_objects, ARB_shading_language_100, ARB_fragment_program, NV_register_combiners(1/2), NV_texture_shader(1/2/3), ARB_occlusion_query
(I might have missed some)

What are they used for? Just about all "shaders" and having geometry in VRAM (VBO). I might throw out ARB_fragment_program when GLSL implementations will become a bit more stable.

Quote: Original post by _DarkWIng_
I'm waiting for notes from last ARB meeting.

I think these notes will be availabe after OpenGL 2.0 release... ;-)