Re: OpenGL+GLUT the future

[Ian Crawford <icrawfor@uoguelph.ca>]

> The obvious conclusion of these two trains of thoughts is that the
> best way games development, and playing, on Linux can progress is by
> improving Mesa and by expanding GLUT.

Interesting opinion.  Please don't be offended that I don't agree.
I'll say right now that I don't like GLUT.  I feel that it abstracts
too much from the user.  It's great for demos.  I mean, little sample
programs that will run on any platform are a great means to learn any
type of programming, but I don't think it's cut out for tomorrows
games-to-be.  Is there even a glide version of GLUT?

> GLUT 3.7 already handles joysticks, spaceballs and the keyboards in a
> platform independant manner, why not add platform independant sound
> support to GLUT (PenguinSound)?

GLUT needs more than that.  There's also networking, cut scenes, native
support for common 3D model formats...  On another note, is there an
object oriented version of GLUT?  I just don't think it's a good basis
for game development.

> PenguinGUI can be a layer over GLUT the same way MUI is in GLUT already.

I think that's building up too much.  We're starting to look at some
big performance digs.

> And Brian Paul could certainly do with a hand making Mesa faster...

I agree, but a software renderer can only do so much.  What mesa
really needs is good hardware support for a wide variety of hardware,
and this is a work in progress (yay!).