[Development] The Dynamic OpenGL on Windows Change

[Sean Harmer]

On 27/02/2014 14:33, Robert Knight wrote:
>> On Windows some older hardware and driver combinations
>> do not provide a sufficiently well working OpenGL implementation yet they
>> do have a working DirectX implementation which ANGLE then wraps to
>> provide an OpenGL ES 2 implementation
> Do you have any idea of numbers or how old "old" is? What about Chrome
> / Mozilla's experiences
> with WebGL for example? I believe Chrome did or were using ANGLE for
> WebGL on Windows?

We don't have any firm numbers which is why Gunnar was asking for 
feedback on this a couple of months ago. What we do know is that the 
Intel OpenGL drivers have massively improved in the last 12 months and 
now are quite capable of rendering what Qt Quick 2 sends down the 
pipeline. Of course some people are unable to upgrade to these versions 
due to uncooperative corporate IT departments or for other reasons such 
as certified combinations of system components etc.

I'm not debating the need for an ANGLE build to support these and other 
valid cases. What I am debating is that having the dynamic selection 
between ES 2 and desktop OpenGL with the current implementation is worth 
the costs as outlined previously.

Cheers,

Sean

-- 
Dr Sean Harmer | sean.harmer at kdab.com | Managing Director UK
Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, a KDAB Group company
Tel. Sweden (HQ) +46-563-540090, USA +1-866-777-KDAB(5322)
KDAB - Qt Experts - Platform-independent software solutions