Horde3D

Thanks for the permission. I haven't really checked the Horde3D_IOS before, but I'm impressed that how much work it has. It is a shame that it didn't get into main trunk. Off course the devicecaps list is quite long so that would/will complicate the documentation/samples.

About file format support. As I see Horde3D_IOS supports pvr(format 2), and ktx. Pvr format is now at version 3, I'm already supporting it so I would use format 3 only. And I also thinking about putting file loader stuffz (dds, pvr, ktx) in a separate file.
Currently png,jpg,.. handling is in utImage, there could be an utTexture that handles these structured(stores cubemap,mipmaps) image/texture files.
Also there are quite number texture format is supported pvrtc1-2,atc,etc1,t3dc, and 16bit formats. Do we really need to support all of these? Or only support the mainstream? GLES3 also brings etc2 and astc which will be widely supported.

What do you think?

The reason why it hasn't been merged into the main branch is that it's quite untested, and AFAIK shadows didn't worked as expected. The shaders were a quick hack and probably not optimized in performance (if they are fully functional at all).
The texture loading support was only merged from some other Horde3D ES implementation. I haven't tested them at all.

If ES 3.0 provides a minimal standard texture compression that may be already available in ES 2.0 I would include at least those texture formats. Additional ones may be a nice feature but definetly no must have. I would only support those, where asset tools are also widely available. IMHO there is no sense in supporting texture formats nearly nobody is able to make assets for.

about compressed formats:
http://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/d ... _Aug12.pdf

etc2/atc is mandatory in gles3.0 and GL4.3. One of the codec (RGB8_ETC2) is a superset of ETC1 which is supported on all android devices. ETC1 is rgb only (no alpha), for textures with alpha we could use R5G5B5A1/R4G4B4A4 on es2 (this is still 16bit per pixel not 4bpp as etc1,pvrtc) so this is not a huge gain, I don't think it is worth to add them (at least we don't use these). we simply use r8g8b8a8.

astc is a new format which is optional, but as this will hopefully be implemented by all vendors this should be added as well.

Sadly on iOS only PVRTC-I is supported (ETC1 is not).

So I would choose to support etc1 and PVRTC-I on es2.
etc2/eac and astc on es3.0 (or on es2.0 with extensions).
bc1-7 for d3d11. bc1-3 is s3tc/dxt1-3-5 so this is already supported.

On Fileformat.
dds has good tools but it is for dx formats only (so no etc1,pvrtc,etc2,... AFAIK)

PowerVR has good free tools for generating "pvr" textures, which supports all formats we need (even d3d formats like bc1-7). http://www.imgtec.com/powervr/insider/s ... /index.asp. You have to create an account to be able to download. They have libs to generate textures in an non-interactive environment (to generate packages for example).

Mali: I haven't used this. http://malideveloper.arm.com/develop-fo ... sion-tool/
But it creates ktx formats. it supports es3.0 formats, there is already an astc compressonator.

So maybe we should support all of these 3 formats.

I agree