From scratch OpenGL and shaders with raw Xlib

Re:From scratch OpenGL and shaders with raw Xlib by Pannoniae on Saturday March 30, 2024 @10:51AM (#39875433)

The only problem that WebGPU itself (as a desktop API) is outright horrible. For someone coming from OpenGL - with all its warts - the sheer bloat and confusion coming from there is a downgrade. Just see the whole fiasco around WGSL - a shading language which is kind of like SPIR-V but also not really because it's theoretically human-writable, the syntax is worse than anything the C++ committee could dream up, etc....

I don't think there is any good replacement for OpenGL as of now (2024). I hoped there would be higher-level Vulkan wrappers coming out to bridge the gap but even AMD's attempt (V-EZ) got abandoned fairly soon.

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Re:From scratch OpenGL and shaders with raw Xlib by jsheard on Saturday March 30, 2024 @11:06AM (#39875548)

FWIW the native implementations do let you opt-out of the WGSL fiasco by ingesting SPIR-V instead. From what I gather Apple were the ones who lobbied for a new shading language, so Google and Mozilla kept the door open to existing languages in their implementations.

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Re:From scratch OpenGL and shaders with raw Xlib by Jasper_ on Saturday March 30, 2024 @11:47AM (#39875961)

What are you confused about? I'd perhaps say that you'd have the same confusion with any other API. Your confusion is perhaps about unlearning OpenGL rather than learning WebGPU.

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