a question about OpenGL in QB64pe:

[The Joyful Programmer]

I recently started learning SDL3 and I primarily use it with the Vulkan graphics API. The main graphics demo I created with SDL3 and the Vulkan graphics API is a sphere with layers of cubes. The demo has many features including MSAA (MultiSample Anti-Aliasing), motion blurring, tinting, fly through, Orthographic, and others. I absolutely love Vulkan way more than OpenGL, even though it is extremely more verbose, meaning there is an extreme amount of coding that needs to be done to do render a single triangle. Roughly over 1k statements.

WOW! I looked into Vulkan but implementing it was never gonna happen! (For me at least!) Hats off to you sir! 

John

Finding QB64 in 2009 brought a great deal of euphoric nostalgia into my heart and I wanted to see how far I could push the BASIC programming language. Digging deep into QB64's source code in 2014 and figuring out how to add keywords into the language (I added a filled circle statement) was even more euphoric. This added euphoria caused me to start longing to get back into the more advanced coding arena, though all the coding languages I enjoyed were no longer viable, popular, and/or had nothing left for me to overcome (Assembly Language, Adobe Flash ActionScript 2.0 & 3.0, Visual Basic, Dark Basic, Web Development [HTML, CSS, JavaScript], etc...).

In 2018, after tinkering around with C++ a little bit, I was bitten. The realization hit that C++ was always the programming language for me, and I felt silly for pushing it away since 1995 when I first discovered it. However, truly learning it was rough starting out due to not knowing the best resources for learning it. One of the major things that C++ has taught me was how to find the most authoritative information on a technology for learning. This took me back to when I started learning 8-Bit Machine/Assembly Language on the Apple ][ back in 1985, where the most authoritative information came from the advanced books on it that everyone said I would never understand.

Learning the Vulkan graphics API is no different than learning Assembly Language. Instead of doing most everything for you, they require you to set everything up yourself. While this means an extensive amount of coding needs to be done to do the simplest thing, they do offer more access to the hardware so you can push them to the limit and beyond ("To infinite and beyond!"). Wielding great power requires great sacrifices, and the greatest sacrifice is verbosity with those two technologies.

OpenGL was falling way behind and simply could not keep up with the more modern GPUs due to their many differences. It had become more and more difficult to give users an easy and generic way to code while doing everything for the developer. Khronos realized it wasn't viable to keep increasing the size of the OpenGL graphics API, and that much of the responsibility should be off-loaded to the developer. Another complete rewrite of OpenGL to work for modern GPUs while providing the most power possible would break OpenGL's purpose statement. Thus, Vulkan was born. A new graphics API with a new purpose statement. Problem solved.

Now, to add salt to the wound: Intel's Software Developers manual, which includes information for all the x86 line of processors is around 5'100 pages. The Vulkan manual from Khronos is over 6'000 pages.