Does anyone have any actual data on how many current users would be excluded?
To be quite honest, keeping up with the current field of 3D in as many aspects as possible (this includes viewport rendering) is far more important than a few users who feel entitled to the newest software (new blender versions) while not using more current hardware.
It’s absurd really. If you can use blender now, and are happy with it, then no matter what the version you use and are happy with will not go anywhere… But blender should be FREE (as in freedom) to keep up and even surpass the competition when it can. It shouldnt have to be maimed by the “lowest common denominator”, and believe it or not when you give incentive for people and yes other software (including OS) to update… they will usually take it.
All that said, there are some arguments to be made for holding back just enough to be compatible with the other OS but also at some point (usually an extreme one) if the OS refuses to meet the standards of today, then why allow it to stymie your growth. In the last generation of game consoles, multi-platform titles would exclude nintendo’s offering purely because it didnt advance at all…and was still stuck on old hardware (as to make more profit).
Old versions of Blender are not going anywhere, they are usable, no one is left out in the cold…but everyone gets the short end of the stick if the growth potential is limited by the lowest and often smallest link.
That all said, I agree with those who feel aiming for the bare minimum is a bit too timid and harmful when it comes to the long term rate of development. If a version needs to hold off to be safe with the current 3 operating systems, ok thats an argument I can understand but thats about it. Nothing else seems like a valid excuse or reason.
I’d like to know what kind of new features the BGL wrapper may get in this change. Currently Sverchok uses the GL display list to cache functions for rapid redraw, but if we could get to use indirect mode and VBO that might be interesting too
The thing is, you don’t really know what you are talking about
Beer Baron, is there also a normal mode somewhere in you? Or is this the only way in which you are able to communicate with the world? I only see you being permanently agressive, offensive and flaming.
When i suggest to upgrade to the latest version, which is 4.5 at the moment, then i take the development time into account. It’s not that the devs snips with the fingers, and tadaa, here it is. The new OGL code in Blender will most probably arrive when OGL 5 / NG is ready. It’s already announced.
Either way, OGL 2 is waaays to old to be a useful update. And that’s the point.
The argument is that upgrading to 2.1 at minimum will make it much easier to use extensions to get OpenGL 4.0-like functionality in Blender (because we get rid of a lot of the ancient cruft in favor of things like the entire pipeline being shader-based).
I don’t get why people think a lot of users will be left behind, OpenGL 2.1 is still pretty dang conservative as far as requirements go and chances are people with machines that can’t support it are already having trouble running the latest versions.
A PC is generally not something you buy once and keep forever (and people are having to upgrade because Windows XP is now a malware platform), so the BF has some freedom in keeping Blender as a program for everyone while bumping requirements now and then.
To keep wasting developers time hacking for every feature in later versions? Hacking that is likely to come buggy? If you’re going to update do it all the way and avoid trouble.
‘…no matter how noble Ton’s “3D for everyone” goals are. It’s simply not feasible, just like “skydiving for everyone” or "world-class yacht championships for everyone’.
I’d like to make a comment on that if I might. And, I’ll be the first to admit I’m almost lost in the tech discussion here. In my mind art is not skydiving or being so filthy rich you can afford a world-class yacht. And, Ton’s noble experiment of 3-D art for everyone has been realized for many years. 2.49 ran on integrated Intel graphics for many of us including some kids in poor countries with the electricity on for two hours a day you have to suspect. And, many of them more talented then some of us on here if not most.
And, even when moving into the ‘New Blender’ he didn’t leave us behind. So Ton’s place in that arena has been secured forever. He brought the ability to create 3-D graphics to the masses. Since then I have gotten a new computer as a Christmas gift since I’m on a fixed income now. One I can only hope outlast me.
Then it seemed to me Ton realized sadly he would have to leave some folks behind simply to advance Blender as a viable alternative to Maya and the programs most of us simply can’t afford. But, with a minimum of bleeding if you will. I also have to imagine this put him at odds with our talented developers many times. Not to mention this forum.
Back when 2.48 was on my desktop I didn’t know what Maya was. I was simply excited to model and animate something for the little granddaughter with a free program and for a old 2D half ass artist that was something. And, Ton’s vision was responsible for that.
At some point technology is going to outdate our computers every two years or less I would think. So where does the man draw a line. Hell for that matter Maya is going to be drawing a line. What studio is going to update workstations on that schedule.
So while my post won’t be relevant to many and laughable or offensive to some maybe that is the point. Blender had to change but the community has also changed. Ton brought 3D graphics to those of us who had nothing before Blender.
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Considering that most bargain basement second-hand machines should run Blender under the new requirements, the argument to keep OpenGL 1.1 around doesn’t hold any water anymore, even when bringing in the idea of people in the third-world using Blender.
I don’t think there’s going to be much change at all in terms of user activity on these forums, as perhaps over 99 percent of users will still be able to use Blender 2.74. To be frank, the Blender community is perhaps one of the only places in the world of CG where it’s still considered controversial to drop support for such ancient concepts as the fixed-function pipeline, at this point it just makes the Blender user look silly in the eyes of a lot of Maya, Max, Modo, and C4D users.
To keep wasting developers time hacking for every feature in later versions? Hacking that is likely to come buggy? If you’re going to update do it all the way and avoid trouble.
Like it or not, BA would perhaps lose half of the community if it was made to require a new machine that cost around 1K or more a few years ago, and I’m skeptical that we would get enough users from other apps. right away that would fill the hole in the donation rate and userbase that would result.
A 2 year old lowest end graphics card is about 10€ used. A bottom low current brand new card starts at 30€.
And almost anything is better than something that only supports 2.1, not to talk about 1.2.
The cheapper CG I can find in nvidia on the market is a geforce 210, 25€.
This CG supports Opengl 3.3
I know, I’m in france, in some countrys it’s expensive etc, but, if we look at the smallest card in the market, in nvidia, it’s openg gl 3.3.
I understand what Psy-fi said and I’m ok with it.
I just tell that the minimum card available is this one.
Right now I agree with opengl improving but is a minimum of 3.0 . This means that the 8 Series (nForce 730a, 8800 gtx and more later). We may also see that the requirements and machines that were used to xp at the time. In the case of well and maintain opengl 2.1 would have to greatly improve internal blender. What I find when using Mudbox 2014 is the amount of improvements blender lacks. Study animation with blender and could not study sculpture and painting in blender because it lacks a lot of work.
The minimum should have been from a long time OGL 3.3x
hmm…
cinema 4d - min. gl 2.1
houdini - min. gl 2.0
modo - min. gl 2.0
dont waste your time here Psy-fi - just do it 
I think the weakest player here is Intel gpu (in notebooks), wikipedia will show that their last OpenGL 1.5 GPUs came out 5 years ago:
I reiterate my initial position that regardless if openGL 1.x or 2.1 is chosen as bare minimum Blender should support MULTIPLE versions of openGL and simply allow users to toggle as other softwares do:
- Houdini: OpenGL 1.1-3.3
- Max: software*, opengl(ver unlisted), dx9, dx11
- maya: 1.x min?(default render); Viewport 2.0: Dx11/Opengl(ver not listed)
Minimum feature set can be tied to 2.1 however as things are backwards compatible(and then shader based), perhaps it is ALSO possible to support 1 or more recent OpenGL versions with PERFORMANCE related feature implementations?// Read: few more VBO like checkboxes that would allow users to sculpt with a lot higher polycount, animate with some gpu caching(like maya 2015) or be able to deal with complex architectual scenes like max.
Thank you
My stance: Devs know best and this thread = >waste of dev time.
Horrible standard to limit yourself by. I know for a fact Modo is upgrading their viewport with a new gl version. In fact one of userbases biggest complaints was that its viewport rendering was old.
The fallacy in that list that you are pointing at is that neither of those applications considered the game market or those fields/workflows that benefit from working with a higher end real time viewport. They were more interested in what something looked like after being rendered in an external engine, mostly for film and product design. Now that Modo is targeting games and the market is changing to be more GPU centric and demand more real time visualization, its being addressed.
Blender shouldnt be the last one to do so, especially since the game’s market is a huge part of where Blender has its appeal.
Fun fact, the game industry brings in more annual revenue for its primary market than Film, TV and Music industries combined for their primary market.
if OGL 2.1 has all the features of 4.x (for blender’s purposes) then why all the fuss? what’s it to the user if the feature is a core feature or an extension?
by the way, my laptop was manufactured in 2010 and its OGL version is just 2.1
…so OGL 2.x isn’t as extinct as most would like to believe
What laptop do you have exactly? Are you saying you have Intel HD graphics prior to the Intel HD 3000 and 2000, these can range from 3.3 to open GL 4. As a graphic artist, relying on Intel HD for gpu rendering doesnt seem very smart btw.
Lets play with the notion that targeting users who get the wrong kind of hardware for the hobby/field, then it seems smarter to ask for a Maya like approach… which allows two kinds of viewports to exist, a current gpu based one (Viewport 2.0) and the default run of the mill full compatibility viewport. While more work, it would at the very least cover all bases, otherwise my feeling is to say “suck it up” and get the appropriate hardware… ( I know full well this isnt the most friendly response, but poor hardware choices by an entitled user base shouldnt be a restricting factor in software development, in my opinion…emphasis on the word: Opinion). I personally tend to prioritize the maximum potential and growth of software, believing full well that if users/OS want to use the software they will now have the incentive to do so.
i wasn’t a cg artist at the time. i literally stumbled upon blender and i gave it a shot 
if it hadn’t worked, i would have simply tossed it aside and gone with c4d. i’d seen a friend of mine use c4d smoothly on similar hardware. So, that compatibility was a deciding factor for me. It was one of the reasons why i didn’t even consider 3ds max
funny thing is i’m pretty sure you don’t have any specific feature in your wishlist that absolutely requires OGL 4.x
you’re just attracted to the version number like everyone else.
opengl doesn’t work that way. most new features start out as extensions (think of them as addons)… eventually they make it to “core” (trunk).
it makes absolutely no difference to the user whether the feature is implemented as an extension or a core feature on their hardware! IT’S ALL THE SAME!! 2.1 = 4.x!!!
Actually, I’m pretty sure that OpenSubDiv by Pixar makes use of realtime geometry/displacement shading that requires OpenGL 4 or higher (more likely to be implemented in Blender as an extension to an older version like 2.1).
If you need realtime feedback on displacement using the GPU, then chances are the software that uses such shading at present will not run on your laptop. More likely it might be that some more advanced shading features in the new Blender viewport may require versions newer than 2.1 (the GLSL view right now already requires full shading support).