Removing DX8, CG and WinCE from Irrlicht

[CuteAlien]

As mentioned in another thread compiling with DX8 or CG enabled is currently failing. Nvidia stopped developing CG and DX8 was basically only kept around for the X-Box support. But given the lack of maintainers neither Nadro nor me are keen on continuing to keep those features alive. So unless someone is depending on either of those and steps up and takes maintainance over they will be removed from Irrlicht next week.

[The_Glitch]

I say go for it I use D3D9. Might use newer versions but I'll ask nadro if there is really any reason to though.

Cubemaps Yet??

[Seven]

No impact here

[hendu]

Good riddance.

[Ovan]

what about software/burning driver ?
today opengl is everywhere !

[CuteAlien]

@Ovan: Those do compile so far. The burning developer still maintains his driver (he added some bugfixes last week). The other software driver is mainly to have a 2D GUI for stuff like driver-selection. So even if the 3D part breaks we could just replace it by dummy functions. That it has some working 3D elements is just a bonus for now. If it ever hinders development we can consider what to do with it, but so far no problem afaik.

[devsh]

Christmass has come early this year

[Ovan]

windows always include opengl 1.1 software rendering (until 3d card driver isn't installed)
linux always include opengl software rendering with mesa
mesa work on linux/windows/wii/.../xbox and whatever
dx, ogl, ogl-es is always available with the targeted platform the driver selection gui can be done with it

yes software rendering can be useful but if I remember, if some 3d driver feature is not yet implemented, it's caused by this software driver
like texture array / 3d texture / ... and other stuff that I don't remember

[mongoose7]

The software driver has alignment issues. I thought ARM required alignment.

[CuteAlien]

CG removed, DX8 a little more work.

But another thing I'd like to remove: WinCE support. I have no idea if that compiles or works as I never figure out how to even develop for those devices. And Microsoft has long ago given up on Windows CE, so I guess we really shouldn't try to keep it alive for them. Or anyone here who still uses WinCE?

@Ovan: I have no knowledge about features not implemented because of software drivers. The corresponding functions for advances features can always just be dummy-functions for software. We do that already a lot.

[Granyte]

i doubt any one will use winCE or any one using Wince anyway i unlikely to need a recent irrlicht version

but i guess we should add support for newer winRT devices rather than maintaining this

[Mel]

Well done, even if nice, those features are outdated and just enlarge the engine. Are you going to integrate the flexible vertex format and the instancing into the trunk any time soon? Also, 3D textures, texture arrays and cubemaps somebody?

I think you could make a separate trunk for mobile applications (iOS, Android) and other for the PC applications (Win, Linux/Mac) and (if possible) consoles?

[CuteAlien]

@Mel: We have trunk and ogl_es branch already. Thought the plan is to merge them. We have no consoles currently - by removing DX8 the x-box 1 support will also be gone (as that needs dx8). Thought maybe Thomas creates a new branch for that in case he wants to continue to work on that. Flexible vertex format is not going to get in soon. Merge shader branch is still a future thing.

[Granyte]

Texture array,volumes and cubemaps are in the work so far i have

dx9 cubemaps, volumes
dx11 cubemaps, volumes, array
ogl array

opengl was done by someone else on the forum i just copied it made the others work the same way and because of my lack of knowledge about ogl i don't know how to make the other formats on ogl.

also i currently have no way of loading a cubemap or a volume array from the disk you preattymuch have to load it slice by slice and pass them to the driver for assembly it works for my purpose but for other people it's unlikely to work properly

[devsh]

I have array and volume in my opengl version