NVIDIA releases OpenGL 4.0 drivers

NVIDIA is proud to announce the immediate availability of OpenGL 4 drivers for Linux as well as OpenGL 4 WHQL-certified drivers for Windows. Additionally, support for eight new extensions is provided:

* ARB_texture_compression_bptc – provides new texture compression formats for both fixed-point and high dynamic range floating-point texels.
* EXT_shader_image_load_store - allows GLSL- and assembly-based shaders to load from, store to, and perform atomic read-modify-write operations to texture images.
* EXT_vertex_attrib_64bit - provides OpenGL shading language support for vertex shader inputs with 64-bit floating-point components and OpenGL API support for specifying the value of those inputs.
* NV_vertex_attrib_integer_64bit - provides support for specifying vertex attributes with 64-bit integer components, analogous to the 64-bit floating point support added in EXT_vertex_attrib_64bit.
* NV_gpu_program5 - provides assembly programmability support for new hardware features provided by NVIDIA’s OpenGL 4.0-capable hardware in vertex, fragment, and geometry programs.
* NV_tesssellation_program5 - provides assembly programmability support for tessellation control and evaluation programs.
* NV_gpu_shader5 - provides a superset of the features provided in ARB_gpu_shader5 and GLSL 4.00. This includes support for a full set of 8-, 16-, 32-, and 64-bit scalar and vector integer data types, and more. Additionally, it allows patches (as used in tessellation) to be passed on to the geometry shader, used as input to transform feedback, and rasterized as a set of control points.
* NV_shader_buffer_store – extends the bindless graphics capabilities of the NV_shader_buffer_load extension. This extension provides the ability to store to buffer object memory, and to perform atomic read-modify-write operations, using either GLSL- or assembly-based shaders.

The drivers and extension documentation can be downloaded from http://developer.nvidia.com/object/opengl_driver.html

Happy coding!

Barthold
(with my NVIDIA hat on)

Nice, AMD and nVidia going strong with OpenGL driver support! Now if only Intel could catch up and we could get some OpenGL 3.x / OpenGL 4.x for Mac OSX...

But, things are improving for OpenGL, keep up the good work!
(and I hope we'll see atomic read/modify/write back in OpenGL 4.1... I have hope :)).

NV_shader_buffer_store and EXT_shader_image_load_store look very nice.

EXT_shader_image_load_store even fulfils one of the proposals on the wiki, "write to specific samples within a shader".

Regards
elFarto

*** Great work! ***

I'm surprised to see this fine granularity of int support but we don't have half support. Are half supposed to be directly supported in the hardware? Or maybe if was just on old chips that didn't have a full support of single-float?

We might have some clues here on wasn't coming for OpenGL 3.4 and 4.1!

With these drivers we also fixed the issues reported with our earlier OpenGL 3.3 drivers. If you were one of the bug reporters, I'd like to know if your issue is indeed now fixed.

Thanks,
Barthold
(with my NVIDIA hat on)

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Originally Posted by barthold

ARB_texture_compression_bptc

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On the site it's listed as only supported on OpenGL 4.0 hardware. Is there any technical reason for not making this available on 3.3 hardware? As an owner of a GTX285, I'm immensely disappointed.

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Originally Posted by Prune

Quote:

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Originally Posted by barthold

ARB_texture_compression_bptc

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On the site it's listed as only supported on OpenGL 4.0 hardware. Is there any technical reason for not making this available on 3.3 hardware?

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Yes, these formats require decompression hardware that will generally only be found on OpenGL 4.0-capable hardware.

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If you were one of the bug reporters, I'd like to know if your issue is indeed now fixed.

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I confirm that with 197.44, you can retrieve the uniform offset of all uniforms in a shared-layout uniform block, even if the uniforms itself are not referenced by the shader.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by barthold

With these drivers we also fixed the issues reported with our earlier OpenGL 3.3 drivers. If you were one of the bug reporters, I'd like to know if your issue is indeed now fixed.

Thanks,
Barthold
(with my NVIDIA hat on)

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Sampler object fixed too!

Thanks guys for confirming the bug fixes.

Barthold
(with my NVIDIA hat on)