Hi,

What version of OpenGL now comes with Windows 10?

Still looks like 1.1 to me in the DLL. As usual, you're a million times better off using GLEW.

They haven't changed their stock version, it is still 1.1 with no acceleration.

I can see and understand their reasoning for leaving it to the old (1995 or 1996?) implementation.

Replacing it and supporting it would mean adding another software implementation since they would need to support non-accelerated hardware and remote displays and terminals. They could probably get it updated to a newer version of Mesa's software implementation, but there really isn't a need since the hardware vendors provide drivers with newer implementations. There isn't a problem with the software implementation since anybody who has graphics hardware is going to bring in their own drivers, and the rare people who want a software rasterizer have Mesa available to them. Leaving it alone they get support that works just fine for terminals and local rendering, and hardware vendors can push it to whatever version they want. Why do something when you can do nothing for equal benefit?

There are many sources for more current libraries, so that shouldn't be much of a hardship.

I can see and understand their reasoning for leaving it to the old (1995 or 1996?) implementation.

Hilariously enough, it is not the same implementation. It transitioned from software to a wrapper around D3D - 9 in the XP timeframe and 10 from Vista I think.

Just to clarify, since this is For Beginners: Microsoft ships an ancient version of the OpenGL libraries with its Windows operating system. Most graphics card vendors ship their own OpenGL runtime containing what is often their latest up-to-date implementation. Applications built to use OpenGL will open the available library at runtime and query what functions are available, and use those that are there. Most people will use something called a 'wrangler' library, for example, GLEW, to do that check and provide the calls.

So, you build your OpenGL application using a wrangler library, and at run time it just magically uses OpenGL 3.5 (or whatever) even though Microsoft only ships OpenGL 1.1. Simple, no?

Hilariously enough, it is not the same implementation. It transitioned from software to a wrapper around D3D - 9 in the XP timeframe and 10 from Vista I think.

Fun. So they paid the price a decade ago but did not bump the version at the time.

Even so, I imagine wrapping the 1.1 version would be easier than trying to wrap 2.0 or 2.1, which again would be easier than wrapping 3.x or 4.x. The same argument of not doing unnecessary work applies.

Even so, I imagine wrapping the 1.1 version would be easier than trying to wrap 2.0 or 2.1, which again would be easier than wrapping 3.x or 4.x. The same argument of not doing unnecessary work applies.

They also maintain a fork of ANGLE, to make porting mobile (OpenGL ES 2.0) apps onto D3D a lot easier.

Hilariously enough, it is not the same implementation. It transitioned from software to a wrapper around D3D - 9 in the XP timeframe and 10 from Vista I think.

Fun. So they paid the price a decade ago but did not bump the version at the time.

It did cause a hilarious FUD storm at the time though, with the people-who-spell-it-Micro$oft-and-read-slashdot crowd completely losing their mind and jumping to the conclusion that this meant that OpenGL drivers would be restricted, and GL would always just be an inefficient API-emulation layer on top of D3D.

Come to think of it, if MS had actually gone down that imaginary path and banned GL drivers, then it would probably be more popular now, because it would actually be stable as stable as D3D is :lol:

It did cause a hilarious FUD storm at the time though, with the people-who-spell-it-Micro$oft-and-read-slashdot crowd completely losing their mind and jumping to the conclusion that this meant that OpenGL drivers would be restricted, and GL would always just be an inefficient API-emulation layer on top of D3D.

That's a slight misrepresentation of the past there!

It wasn't entirely a FUD storm, OpenGL was going to end up being relegated to a second class citizen, but not for the reasons you state. The original plan was that when OpenGL was run, the aero theme would switch off (no transparency on the desktop). If you wanted your app to be compatible with aero, you needed to use d3d (or the OpenGL 1.4 -> d3d wrapper). This was the behaviour in the first vista release candidates (I actually remember having serious discussions about porting our 3d app to d3d)

If you were a game developer using gl then, none of this was a concern (you'd be full screen anyway). For 3d app devs though, this was a pretty big concern back in the day (your competitor, with a d3d viewport, would have a nicer looking gui than you).

Microsoft eventually backed down after autodesk/Adobe and others pointed out they needed OpenGL for their products.