Quote Originally Posted by elanthis View Post
Of course there is _huge_ gain to the changes. Try writing an engine that can easily support 200 different materials (a.k.a., shaders) in a single scene with a unified deferred shading system, a complete particle system with artist-friendly editor, material editing GUI, artist-friendly effects system, multi-pass shader support, and the other usual stuff like GPU skinning and post-processing chains all while using GLSL's original linkage model. Hint: it don't work all too well.
For the record, I am writing an engine that supports a ton of shaders using a light prepass system. Deferred was too limiting for what I want to do. And it's completely in 2.1 plus some extensions, works well. GPU-generated terrain, post-processing chains, all that jazz. Developed on r600g for that matter.

Now, particle system or pretty artist GUIs I don't have and likely won't, GPU skinning will come later.

Granted, yes, the new syntax GLSL imposes for the new linkage model is absolutely completely awful, and whoever designed it should be stabbed with a rusty screwdriver. You're confusing the features themselves with Khronos' incompetence at API and language design, though.
Heh.