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Comment by iffyuva | Hacker News Reader

talking about mobile space, i believe OpenGLES is used in embedded platforms instead of OpenGL, which is a stripped down version.

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Yes, that's what everyone has been using so far, and that's what everyone will keep using for at least several more years (they've just started adopting OpenGL ES 3.0, so they won't change soon).

However, Nvidia is actually going to use the full OpenGL 4.3 in the next Tegra, next year, since it's using the full (but probably more optimized) Kepler PC architecture, so it has support for OpenGL 4.3. Nvidia is going from OpenGL ES 2.0 straight to OpenGL 4.3. For comparison, not even Intel's Haswell has OpenGL 4.3 support (still stuck at 4.0 only). Tegra 5 will also support CUDA 5.0.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6845/nvidia-updates-tegra-road...

Only because it's easier to support OpenGL ES. If a GPU is available that supports full OpenGL, that would give greater flexibility features to mobile developers.

Not many would use full OpenGL, which is optimized for CAD developers. The ES subset actually represents modern programming practices, with only a few extensions missing for the more recent features of the pipeline (hull shaders and such).

OpenGL ES 3.0 lacks geometry shader support, which means it's behind even DirectX 10 a bit. OpenGL 4.3 received full backwards compatibility with OpenGL ES 3.0, so developers can still only develop for OpenGL ES 3.0 if that's what they want. But depending on how popular Kepler GPU's get in mobile, and if it's worth their time, they can use extra features in their games for those devices.

I think OpenGL 4.3 support would be a lot more helpful in making cross-platform games that work pretty much the same (but on a different scale of performance, of course) on both PC's and tablets, such as Battlefields 3 (the demo seems recorded so the video quality is not great):

http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/11/nvidia-shows-off-stunning-...

I also wouldn't be surprised if Epic Games ports the (mobile) Unreal Engine 4 to mobile Kepler-based chips, first. EA seems to be doing that with Frostbite already:

http://www.phonearena.com/news/EAs-Battlefield-and-Need-for-...

I get it, but 4.3 seems to still include a lot of legacy stuff that have plagued OpenGL for awhile now. Pushing a new version of ES that was equivalent to Dx11 in the shaders supported might be better. Or perhaps they need to be at 4.3 to support CUDA?

I agree that pushing for OpenGL ES would probably be best, but that also means waiting 4 or more years before OpenGL ES 4.0 is probably going to be available, if the transition from 2.0 to 3.0 is any guide.

Plus, at least from Nvidia's point of view, which already had support for OpenGL 4.3 in Kepler from the desktop space, so they didn't have to do a lot of work to get it in mobile, this is a no-brainer, as it gives them some competitive advantage that probably won't be replicated very soon. I figure even if Imagination wanted to do it, it might take them another 2-3 years before they have it.

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