ETC2 Texture Compression Looks Good For OpenGL

[Ansla]

I believe it's not listed separately because it's covered by ARB_ES3_compatibility.

PS: is there a similar list for ES3?

[Kayden]

Is ETC2 really required by GL 4.3 as stated in the article? I don't see it listed here: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/tree/docs/GL3.txt

Yes, it is. For varying degrees of proof, see: wikipedia, Khronos press release, and most importantly, the spec (whole entire section devoted to ETC2). :)

[asdx]

All nice and good, but does this has the potential to make S3TC obsolete?

i.e. so that we can have an alternative to S3TC and users never have to worry about installing anything else, so that things (games) "just work" by default on modern distros with FOSS drivers, etc.

Will this ever happen?

[Ansla]

It will not make S3TC obsolete for existing games, though it might make it obsolete for future titles several years from now. But by the time those new titles come out the S3TC patent will be close to expire anyway, so it will not really make a difference.

[Setlec]

wasn't the patent supposed to be already expired?

[Ansla]

It expires in 2017 if I remember correctly, the discussion was whether it was ever valid at all.

[Setlec]

oh yeah, that's right the issue was about the patent's validity...

thanks Ansla.

[elanthis]

It will not make S3TC obsolete for existing games, though it might make it obsolete for future titles several years from now. But by the time those new titles come out the S3TC patent will be close to expire anyway, so it will not really make a difference.

s/several years/5-10 years/

Hardware has to be released supporting this. No hardware yet released that does so, and it'll be a year or three before they do, mostly likely. Then you need to wait until a vast majority of the target demographic has said hardware. GPUs tend to have a lifetime of around 5 years for gamers; the 8800gt still has some users according to the Steam Hardware survey, and that came out in 2006 (6 years ago).

There's a reason almost nobody uses OpenGL 4 and that D3D11 is only just finally starting to be used in major games (and generally with downlevel feature sets either supported or used exclusively). The specs that come out today aren't usable by developers until after full support for those specs has saturated the market.