How many users could run software that uses OpenGL 3.x?

Can I expect users to be able to run software that uses OpenGL 3.x?

Ca开发者_开发百科n Linux users who have open-source graphics drviers run OpenGL 3.x? I know that Mesa3D 7.8 only supports OpenGL 2.1.

I also know that OS X Snow Leopard supports some but not all OpenGL 3.0 features. I don't know the situation on Leopard.

I don't know the situation on XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

I'd like to start learning OpenGL, and my interest lies more in scientific and engineering applications than games. I know I'll be reading code that uses OpenGL 1.x, but I'd like to write code using the newest specification I can expect user's systems to support. I'm wondering whether I should start learning 2.1 or 3.3. I was thinking of getting either the 4th edition of the OpenGL Superbible to learn 2.1 or the 5th edition which is coming out July 30 to learn 3.3. (I have a bachelor's in physics, so my math background is pretty good.)

Edit: I found this related question with answers that are relevant to my question.

As Martin Beckett already pointed out, the situation is really rather bad as far as support for OpenGL 3.x is concerned. Many "modern" graphic chipsets widely used in notebooks (yes, Intel, I'm looking at you) do not even fully support OpenGL 2.x; some even lack features as old as multisampling.

The only way to make your software run on as many systems as possible is to use things like GLEW to decide which features to use at runtime (i.e. no need for conditional compiling).

As far as learning OpenGL is concerned, 2.1 is definitely a good choice, because it enables you to understand both older code using the fixed-function pipeline and more modern code relying on shaders. Afterwards, getting to grips with the most important 3.x features (e.g. frame buffer objects, vertex array objects) will be rather easy.

I can happily inform you that the open source drivers now officially fully support OpenGL 3.0, and Intel will be supporting OpenGL 3.1 as of the next release of Mesa, now renamed to Mesa 9.0. They added official support for OpenGL3.0 as of Mesa 8.0.

The Intel OpenGL support for Windows is currently at 4.0, so that shouldn't be a problem for you.

Regarding AMD and NVidia support, there is full OpenGL4.3 support for both closed source drivers, on both Windows and GNU/Linux. Regarding Open Source drivers, Radeon will officially be bumped to OpenGL3.0 support as of Mesa 9.0, combined with the 3.6.0 kernel release.

It is probably worth mentioning that the drivers supports subsets of OpenGL3.2/3.3/4.0/4.1/4.2/4.3, but the "supported version" can't be bumped until ALL features are implemented. Please see the official document for more detailed information.

These are exciting times for OpenGL!

The Windows XP drivers for Intel's GMA 950 only support OpenGL 1.4, sans GL_EXT_framebuffer_object. Oddly enough on the same exact hardware (a Mac mini) both Linux and OSX manage to support GL_EXT_framebuffer_object.

I don't know the situation on XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Bad - most cards claim to support openGl 2.0 or 2.1 but unless they are Nvidia don't expect any features beyond 1.1 to work

IIRC windows vista/7 supports opengl 1.1 in software or 1.4 with a directX wrapper. The graphics driver is free to support whatever it wants but except for Nvidia the quality is poor.

As long as you do only Scientific and Engineering applications, I would suggest you to use Modern OpenGL. Normally an Engineer can afford to buy a Modern Computer with a nice Graphics Card, if he needs it. For Science the application does often only need to run on one Computer, so compatibility with old computers shouldn't be your biggest concern, but being forward compatible with new hardware is never a wrong decision.

Writing a game is very different. Here is it very important to maximize the audience so that you can sell the maximum amount of copies. Requireing too much resources would reduce the target audience very much.