General
{/categories}OpenCL on the Fast Track
Oct 31, 2008
HPCwire has posted a blog on the fast paced OpenCL efforts underway at the Khronos Group. Version 1.0 of OpenCL is currently scheduled to be released in early December at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 in Singapore. “If they succeed, that’s got to be some kind of industry spec development record—basically from prototype to final in 6 months” wrote Michael Feldman, editor of HPCwire. Khronos will be presenting an OpenCL technical briefing and reception at SC08 on Monday, November 17. Anyone who is interested can attended at no charge. Appetizers and cold beer will be provided!
(0) Comments •Intel and Yahoo Widget Channel STB based on OpenGL 2.0 technology
Oct 27, 2008
IDF in Taipei showed first working demo of Intel’s and Yahoo’s efforts on the Widget Channel front. On display during the keynote was a set-top-box made by GIGABYTE. This box is capable of playing back both 720p and 1080p video with its onboard H.264, VC-1 and MPEG2 hardware decoder. Its GUI is based on OpenGL ES 2.0 technology.
(0) Comments •NVISION 08: GeForce 8 Features for OpenGL
Sep 25, 2008
Mark Kilgard explains the latest DirectX 10-class features of OpenGL supported by the GeForce 8, 9, and 28x series of NVIDIA GPUs. Much of this functionality is already part of OpenGL 3.0. Also learn about the EXT_direct_state_access extension for selector-free access to OpenGL objects.
(0) Comments •Four FireGL v5600s driving 8 OpenGL-accelerated displays for Linux flight simulation
Sep 23, 2008
The most recent Catalyst 8.9 Linux driver enables use of multiple FireGL and FirePro cards to act as a single X server that spans multiple displays, each using OpenGL acceleration. This 10 minute video shows four FireGL v5600 cards driving eight monitors running FlightGear under Ubuntu 8.04. It joins a similar MultiView example from Siggraph 2008.
(0) Comments •SGI further opens its OpenGL contributions FsF and Khronos Group herald new license
Sep 19, 2008
SGI today announced it is release a new version of the SGI Free Software License B. The license, which now mirrors the free X11 license used by X.Org, further opens previously released SGI® graphics software that has set the industry standard for visualization software and has proven essential to GNU/Linux® and a host of applications. Previous SGI contributions to the free and open source community are now available under the new license. Contributions include the SGI® OpenGL® Sample Implementation, the GLX™ API and other GLX extensions. GLX provides the glue connecting OpenGL and the X Window System™ and is required by any OpenGL implementation using X.
(0) Comments •FirePro V8700 OpenGL accelerator to boost performance by 40%
Sep 16, 2008
AMD’s new flagship FirePro V870 workstation graphics card promises to be about 40% faster than the previously fastest FireGL card. It runs 800 stream processors, comes with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and two Display Port and one dual link DVI interface. It supports OpenGL 2.1 (3.0 early next year) including VBOs (GPU buffer that works with frequently used geometry in memory, instead of pushing the data back to the CPU to calculate changes), as well as DirectX 10.1.
(0) Comments •OpenGL Man Page Docbook Sources Released
Sep 15, 2008
Khronos has released the OpenGL man page Docbook XML source files, enabling outside developers to create man pages in additional output formats beyond that in the OpenGL SDK, or man pages for OpenGL bindings in other languages. See the discussion in the opengl.org message boards here for more details on how to access and use the man page source.
(0) Comments •Maestro 3D Dental desktop scanner now available using OpenGL
Sep 05, 2008
Maestro 3D is a three-dimensional scanner for dental and desktop applications, open and integrable in third party CAD/CAM solutions, complete with S.D.K. (Software Development Kit). Maestro 3D control software and user interface are build using AGE3D Engine. AGE3D is based on OpenGL/Direct3D, it has been created for the development of 3D applications with particular attention to the rendering of 3D data and development of games.
(0) Comments •Khronos posts OpenGL BOF slides from Siggraph 2008
Aug 18, 2008
Almost 300 developers and industry leaders gathered to hear the details about OpenGL 3.0. Feedback was positive - great functionality has been added to the specification and the mechanisms put in place to move the specification forward quickly. In particular, Blizzard’s insights into why OpenGL 3.0 met their commercial needs - and the fact that NVIDIA announced immediate availability of OpenGL 3.0 drivers drew rounds of applause.
(0) Comments •Nick Haemel (AMD) blog post: OpenGL 3.0 - A Big Step in the Right Direction
Aug 18, 2008
With the SIGGRAPH OpenGL BOF now past, Nick Haemel from AMD has written a blog post about OpenGL 3 and the reasoning behind the choices made. “After testing an approach that would have a drastic effect on the API, requiring complete OpenGL application rewrites and not introducing any of the long awaited features modern GPUs are capable of OpenGL 3.0 takes two important steps to moving open standard graphics forward in a major way. The first is to provide core and ARB extension access to the new capabilities of hardware. The second is to create a roadmap that allows developers to see what parts of core specifications will be going away in the future, also providing the OpenGL ARB with a way to introduce new features faster.“
(0) Comments •SIGGRAPH 2008 Student Volunteer program blogs on OpenGL-related news - Wed & Thurs
Aug 18, 2008
SIGGRAPH 2008 Student Volunteer program working with OpenGL.org and FireUser.com have posted thier final blog reports from the SIGGRAPH 2008 Conference and Exhibition.
Wednesday
- CUDA Quadro Plex 2200 D2 does real-time ray tracing
- Whisper quiet OpenGL workstations from AMAX
- DreamColor 30-bit display using Display Port
- OpenGL sessions make big impressionThursday
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- modo 302 has top notch modeling and unwrapping tools with real-time OpenGL rendering
- XSI’s ICE node-based programing enables visual programming of multi-threaded real-time interactive FXAsdGraph3D Excel Addin v1.2.1 freeware released!
Aug 18, 2008
AsdGraph3D is an OpenGL-based Excel Addin that plots 3D points, lines, line segments, surfaces or water-tight solids directly from user-specified cell ranges within MS Excel worksheets (of one or several open workbooks). Unlike other 3D plotters, AsdGraph3D works seamlessly within Excel, i.e., no flipping back and forth between Excel and a separate, disjoint 3D plotting package. Version 1.2.1 includes both AsdGraph3D Standard (freeware) and AsdGraph3D Professional.
(0) Comments •OpenGL BOF went over well, no pitch forks seen
Aug 15, 2008
idr was here has a nice round-up on the OpeGL BOF. The author, Ian Romanick found “contrary to the /. reports, nobody was furious.“ One commenter compares the release of OpenGL 3.0 similar to what KDE went through: “it’s a repeat of the business with KDE 4.0. KDE 4.0 was simply the finalization of the libraries and API’s so that application developers could start building their applications against a stable base.“ As the dust settles, OpenGL 3.0 is looking a lot stronger than it did on day one.
(0) Comments •SIGGRAPH 2008 Student Volunteer program blogs on OpenGL-related news - Mon & Tues
Aug 14, 2008
OpenGL.org and FireUser.com are working with the SIGGRAPH 2008 Student Volunteer program to give students the opportunity to blog about what they are seeing at the SIGGRAPH 2008 Conference and Exhibition. Below are OpenGL-related summaries from Mon and Tues.
Monday
- Stereoscopic 3D (available via Quad Buffering in OpenGL) has a huge presence at the show, particularly stereoscopic 3D for gaming and film / broadcast.
- HP and Dell and Lenovo all announce OpenGL-based 3D mobile workstations.Tuesday
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- Maya 2009 adds a new particle system that doesn’t require writing expressions. It also has a built-in stereo camera rig. Stereo 3D support is apparently being added to all Autodesk products.
- Two student took a tour of the AMD booth to check out OpenGL accelerated real-time lighting, the Radeon Froblin demo, and the new FirePro line.SPECviewperf 10.1 to measure performance of apps using VBO
Aug 14, 2008
The upcoming SPECviewperf 10.1 will add the ability to measure performance for applications incorporating vertex buffer objects (VBOs) and the latest OpenGL shaders. The new SPECapc benchmarks will evaluate performance of Siemens PLM NX5, 3ds Max 2009, Maya 2009, and Lightwave 3D.
(0) Comments •‘Modern OpenGL: Its Design and Evolution’ course at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008
Aug 14, 2008
The inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 conference in Singapore is sponsoring a half-day course on Modern OpenGL on December 13th. A long-time implementer of OpenGL (Mark Kilgard) and the system’s original architect (Kurt Akeley) explain OpenGL’s design and evolution. OpenGL’s state machine is now a complex data flow with multiple programmable stages. In this course, OpenGL practitioners can expect candid design explanations, advice for programming modern GPUs, and insight into OpenGL’s future.
(0) Comments •OpenGL 3.0 a solid first step to streamlining
Aug 14, 2008
The register has a good followup to the ‘firestorm’ centered around the recent release of OpenGL 3.0. In an interview with Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group which heads up OpenGL, shows great promise within a short time period. Trevett personally hopes OpenGL 3.1 can be delivered in six months’ time, as opposed to the two years it took to craft 3.0. In OpenGL 3.0 we have introduced a deprecation mechanism for the first time in OpenGL’s 16-year history. The deprecation mechanism will let OpenGL planners flag up features that’ll be removed from the next version of the 2D and 3D graphics rendering and visualization spec.
(0) Comments •OpenSceneGraph 2.6 Released
Aug 11, 2008
OpenSceneGraph Professional Services announces the release of OpenSceneGraph 2.6, the industry’s leading open-source scene graph technology, designed to accelerate application development and improve 3D graphics performance. OpenSceneGraph 2.6 written entirely in Standard C++ and built upon OpenGL, offers developers working in the visual simulation, game development, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling markets, a real-time visualization tool that eclipses commercial scene graph toolkits in functionality, stability and performance. OpenSceneGraph 2.6 runs on all Microsoft Windows platforms, Apple OS X, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and FreeBSD operating systems. Updates include:
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New osgWidget library for scene graph based graphics user interface elements (beta release).
KdTree support, with automatic KdTree generation on load and use of KdTree during line intersections which massively improves intersection speeds.
Precision improvements t!The Khronos™ Group announced today it has released the OpenGL® 3.0 specification
Aug 11, 2008
The Khronos™ Group announced today it has released the OpenGL® 3.0 specification with strong industry support to bring significant new functionality to the open, cross-platform standard for 3D graphics acceleration. OpenGL 3.0 includes GLSL™ 1.30, a new version of the OpenGL shading language, and provides comprehensive access to the functionality of the latest generations of programmable graphics hardware. The OpenGL working group has also defined a set of OpenGL 3.0 extensions that expose potential new functionality for the next version of OpenGL that is targeted for release in less than 12 months, and a set of extensions for OpenGL 2.1 to enable much of the new OpenGL functionality on older hardware. Additionally, OpenGL 3.0 introduces an evolutionary model to assist in streamlining the specification and to enable rapid development of the standard to address diverse markets. Finally, the OpenGL working group has announced that it is working closely with the emerging OpenCL standard to create a revolutionary pairing of compute and graphics programming capabilities. The new OpenGL 3.0 specifications are freely available at www.khronos.org/opengl.
A thread dedicated to discussing this release has been started here. This thread is a place for people to offer up some constructive criticism of the latest release.
(0) Comments •ATI FirePro V5700 and V3700 OpenGL accelerators set new price/performance standards for CAD and DCC
Aug 07, 2008
The new FirePro V5700 features 512MB of frame buffer memory, dual link DVI and DisplayPort, and a true 30-bit display engine. The FirePro V3700 features 256 MB FB memory, two dual-link DVI and costs only $99! Both support OpenGL 2.1 and both are certified for CAD and professional DCC application performance.
(0) Comments •OpenGL Bootcamp at the Big Nerd Ranch October 2008
Jul 23, 2008
Big Nerd Ranch announces the October 2008 session of OpenGL Bootcamp. This intensive 5-day training course will arm you with the knowledge to make your 2D and 3D visualizations fly! As problem sets explode in complexity, radical gains in performance have resulted from moving traditional graphics processing from the CPU to graphics hardware. If you are doing any work concerning graphics, then you must know OpenGL and this class is the fastest way to master the ideas and techniques of OpenGL programming. By taking full advantage of hardware acceleration, shaders, blending, textures and video we’ll help you get the most out of your data. Learn how OpenGL works, what functionality it does and does not provide, various optimization methods for both static and dynamic data, and much more. The course will provide libraries and frameworks for abstracting the operating system and allowing the student to focus solely on learning OpenGL.
(0) Comments •AMD GPU computing and rendering sessions related to OpenGL at Siggraph 2008
Jul 23, 2008
This years Siggraph 2008, will host several speaking session from AMD on GPU acceleration and rendering, relevant to the OpenGL audience. For a complete schedule please visit the Siggraph page with this link.
(0) Comments •Live video fused with a 3D world in Google like fasion, but it’s not Google
Jul 18, 2008
Sentinel Ave LLC, funded by the U.S. Defense Department, has posted a demo of its client software (YouTube version here) showing the viewer flying through 3D cityscapes with live videos embedded in them. The software, AVE Video Fusion, “combines Google Earth-like features with live camera videos projected on a 3D model” as noted in a video caption.It is written from scratch using C++ and OpenGL and claims to run on PCs with no custom hardware.
(0) Comments •NVISION 2008 is coming to San Jose, California, August 25-27
Jul 07, 2008
THE FIRST-EVER VISUAL COMPUTING MEGA-EVENT NVISION will gather together top visual computing professionals, world-class gamers, innovative artists and designers, and cutting-edge researchers to share their ideas, experiences, and passions, all into a 55 hour technical conference. Know OpenGL like the back of your hand? Scale GPUs or develop programs in your sleep? Then continue to read more about our Professional track at NVISION, and find out how to register today.
NVISION for Professionals delivers three days of direct interaction between NVIDIA technical management and you. NVISION is the only event where you have complete access to NVIDIA’s core architects and engineers over several days. These practical seminars and hands-on training sessions are designed to integrate these latest technologies into your current development cycle. Come to NVISION to go beyond learning what is state of the art and dive into how to exploit the power of the NVIDIA technology you currently have. Talk GPU Physics with PhysX team, ray tracing with mental images engineers, and high-performance computing with the CUDA team. And NVIDIA’s Chief Scientist David Kirk will present, for the first time, NVIDIA’s view of the future of graphics.
Here’s a sneek peek at just a few of the Visual Computing Professional sessions:
- OpenGL and the Future. OpenGL 2.1 presentation plus Q&A with our performance experts.
- Multi-GPU Scaling: Dual NVIDIA GPUs are shipping in laptops today. Do you scale to four GPUs and beyond?
- NVIDIA Scene Graph (NVSG): Learn about NVSG techniques and NVSG-based applications.For more of the complete Visual Computing Professional track click here.
To find out more visit NVISION2008.com or register before July 31st for early bird registration and save $50!
(0) Comments •AS3D Single Chip 3D Projector from Projectiondesign utilizing OpenGL
Jun 20, 2008
3D stereo is one of the major capabilities of OpenGL and professional openGL applications. OpenGL provides a convenient quad buffer interface to provide “stereo in a window”. Presenting high quality 3D content is still an issue.
Now projectiondesign has released a 3D Projector suitable for 3D presentations to small and medium audiences. The 3D Projector presents high resolution Images (1400x1050 Pixel) at a white screen with Shutter Glasses. The technology is based on a System called Cube3D² developed by the german company digital IMAGE and recently licensed through projectiondesign. The new projector, based on projectiondesign F10 platfrom will accept passive and active input signals and can directly drive shutter glasses with an internal IR Emitter. Additional Emitters will be available for bigger audiences. The Image can be presented on a white screen without any special coating. The advantages of a single chip active projector for stereo are basically the equality of the both images. So the brightness, color and geometry of both images is perfectly identical. Additionally active shutter glasses in combination with high speed DLP Technology results in almost no ghosting or crosstalk. The small projector is perfect for mobile presentations and operated as a normal projector ! due to its size and weight, but also capable of drivin powerwalls, CAVES and othe Virtual reality installations. Price and availability will be announced by projectiondesign.In Germany and austria the projector will be available through digital-image.
(0) Comments •NeoAxis Engine 0.56 Released
May 30, 2008
NeoAxis Engine Version 0.56 has been released with many changes and bug fixes. The most important features in this release are: - New Scene Graph with octree and quadtree support with performance improvements. - Fast automatic reconstruction of the Scene Graph contents for optimal performance. - New implementation of both DirectInput and XInput adding support for joysticks, gamepads and steering wheels including Xbox360 gamepads. - New Mono runtime support as an option to the regular .NET framework support. NeoAxis engine is an easy to use general purpose game engine based on Ogre3D and .NET technologies. The OGRE render library has support for OpenGL and the OpenGL Shading Language.
(0) Comments •Review of AMD’s ATI FireGL V8600 which supports OpenGL 2.1
May 19, 2008
The ATI FireGL V8600 is currently AMD’s second fastest FireGL high-end workstation graphics card, which supports OpenGL 2.1. People at Phoronix have reviewed the card and benchmarked it under GNU/Linux and Windows. For testing they used SPECviewperf 9.0.3.
(0) Comments •Altia, Inc. releases the OpenGL ES target for the Altia DeepScreen code generator
Apr 23, 2008
Altia DeepScreen is an embedded software tool that automatically generates tight, deployable C graphics code from the Altia Design graphical user interface (GUI) builder used for creating custom Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs). Please visit our Altia DeepScreen graphics code generation product page for more information on how DeepScreen can automatically generate custom ANSI C code for your OpenGL system.
(0) Comments •OpenGL 2.0 based graphics engine Horde3D v0.15 released
Apr 03, 2008
A new release of the OpenGL 2.0 based graphics engine Horde3D is available for download. It brings a plenty of new features, among which an extension mechanism with an exemplary advanced terrain implementation, support for switching rendering techniques at runtime and updated samples are the most important ones.
(0) Comments •Imagination Technologies POWERVR OpenGL and OpenVG capable parts used in new Intel(r) Centrino(r) Atom(tm)
Apr 02, 2008
Imagination Technologies a leader in System-on-Chip Intellectual Property (‘SoC IP’) confirms the new Intel(r) Centrino(r) Atom(tm) processor technology includes Imagination’s POWERVR(r) SGX graphics and POWERVR VXD multi-standard HD video technologies. POWERVR SGX is an OPENGL 1.1/2.0 and OpenVG capable part. These graphics and video technologies, as part of the Intel(r) System Controller Hub in Intel Centrino Atom processor technology, enable the user to enjoy a richer Internet multi-media experience while consuming low power.
(0) Comments •Unity Game Engine will fully support OpenGL hardware acceleration on iPhone
Apr 01, 2008
Unity Technologies announces their intent to fully support OpenGL hardware acceleration on the iPhone. Unity3D evangelist Tom Higgins says “We have full access to hardware-accelerated OpenGL 3D graphics and also have full processing power; in short, all the power the iPhone has.“
(0) Comments •AMD GPG Developer Tools Group has released an Open Source COLLADA OpenGL FX Viewer
Mar 13, 2008
Based on OpenSceneGraph 2.2 the viewer is ideal for rendering COLLADA FX output from RenderMonkey 1.8. As well as including a binary viewer, the release has comprehensive instructions on how to build the viewer using OpenSceneGraph 2.2, and the COLLADA DOM. The project is a useful starting point for developers wanting to support COLLADA OpenGL effect content in their asset pipeline.
(0) Comments •OpenGL Graphics Through Applications
Mar 10, 2008
OpenGL Graphics Through Applications is a practical introduction to Computer Graphics with an emphasis on understanding through practice. Throughout the book, theory is followed by implementation using C / C++ to support student centred learning and complete programs are provided on the publishers website.
(0) Comments •glTail.rb offers real logfile visualization using Ruby and OpenGL
Feb 21, 2008
Using OpenGL and Ruby, you can now view real-time data and statistics from any logfile on any server with SSH, in an intuitive and entertaining way. Some features include Real-Time, Multiple logfiles on multiple servers, Configurable layout, Multiple logfile parsers, (Apache Combined, Rails, IIS, Postfix/spamd/clamd, Nginx, Squid, PostgreSQL, PureFTPD, MySQL, TShark, qmail/vmpop3d), and Custom events. Written in Ruby using net-ssh & ruby-opengl. Released under the GPLv2, you can download it here.
(0) Comments •ARM Leads the Mobile Market Into Console-Quality 3D Gaming using OpenGL 2.0
Feb 21, 2008
ARM announced at the Game Developers’ Conference, San Francisco, Calif., the ARM(R) Mali-JSR297(TM) software for 3D graphics, the first product to enable developers of Java applications to take advantage of the latest hardware graphics features found in OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics processing units (GPUs), such as the ARM Mali200(TM) GPU. The new features in the Mali-JSR297 software reside beneath the gaming applications that users download to their phones and open up the full power of OpenGL ES 2.0, the API used in leading games consoles such as the Sony PlayStation 3 and which is supported by the Mali200 GPU.
(0) Comments •Impressive Eye Candy: 3D OpenGL Transitions
Feb 21, 2008
OpenOffice.org Impress 2.4 has introduced ten cool new 3D OpenGL-rendered transitions. Shane M. Mathews developed this feature under the Google Summer of Code 2007 program with mentors Thorsten Behrens of Sun Microsystems (at the time) and Radek Doulík of Novell. There are also more transitions coming.
(0) Comments •VRMesh 4.1 OpenGL API-based mesh modeler for use in land surveying and reverse modeling released
Feb 11, 2008
VirtualGrid Company announces the release of VRMesh v4.1, a free-form OpenGL API-based 3d mesh modeler for point cloud and triangle mesh processing. This release adds some new features to increase the performance of VRMesh for use in civil engineering, and enhances some key features to streamline the process of complete reverse modeling, rapid prototyping, and conceptual design from sketch. Therefore, VRMesh has the abilities to quickly clean up large-sized point clouds, remove extraneous points, align several scans together, and reduce large point clouds into manageable size for use in downstream applications, such as Autodesk® Civil 3D®. And also, it can automatically convert very large point clouds to accurate 3D polygonal meshes with preserving color information for visualization in NavisWorks JetStream®
(0) Comments •AMD has released new Catalyst 8.1 drivers
Jan 21, 2008
AMD released an update to the Catalyst software suite making it version 8.1. This version introduces MultiView support, a feature AMD says provides “full hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering across multiple graphics adapters setup in an extended desktop display configuration.” The update is available for select Windows OS’s and Linux.
(0) Comments •NVSG SDK 4.0 Final Released
Jan 17, 2008
The NVIDIA Scene Graph Software Development Kit (NVSG SDK) provides the ideal platform for Vehicle Styling, Volume Rendering, Broadcast Graphics, and Vis-Sim applications. This is a final 4.0 release and includes numerous bug fixes and updated functionality, documentation and examples. Recent updates include: a PLY loader and OBJ saver, updated Cg 2.0, wxWidgets example, support for all G80 Texture Targets, and significantly updated Skinning support (CPU and GPU-based skinning, COLLADA support). NVSG is available free from the NVIDIA Developer Site
(0) Comments •Dryad tree creator would not have been possible without OpenGL, is now free
Jan 10, 2008
Stanford computer scientist Vladlen Koltun decided to build a better virtual world, one 3D tree at a time. Now he wants to give those trees away. Dryad is a new, intuitive way for individual users to create unique trees by simply using a mouse to move through the 100-attribute tree space in a fashion similar to navigating city streets on Google Maps. Dryad would not have been even remotely possible without OpenGL, letting you create hundreds of realistic, high-quality procedural trees that can be manipulated and browsed in real-time requiring extensive use of image based lighting, shaders, VBOs, FBOs, and more. Dryad trees are truly 3-D; they can be spun around or viewed from any angle and can be downloaded in the OBJ format and loaded into any major modeling program. The Dryad software is available at no cost.
(0) Comments •Licensing Momentum Establishes ARM Mali Graphics Technology in the Mainstream
Jan 08, 2008
ARM announced that 18 ARM Partners are using products from its Mali(tm) graphics portfolio. ARM(R) Mali55(tm) and Mali200(tm) graphics processing units (GPUs) have been licensed by nine SoC vendors, including Micronas Inc., and Zoran (who have incorporated it into their APPROACH(R)5C multimedia processor), since their launch at 3GSM in 2007. In addition, the ARM Mali-JSR184(tm) 3D graphics engine has been licensed by nine leading OEM licensees including Samsung Electronics. In addition to providing content developers with the state-of-the-art programmable features in OpenGL ES 2.0 Mali products also support SVG and Flash through OpenVG for improved text, navigation, UI and web-browsing experiences.
(0) Comments •l’Institut Desgraff de Sherbrooke recently opened its doors offering OpenGL courses
Dec 21, 2007
l’Institut Desgraff de Sherbrooke recently opened in Sherbrooke Quebec, offering among other courses 3D OpenGL programming and SoftImage XS training. From their website “The Desgraff institute is a new private learning center in Sherbrooke Quebec Canada. Part of Multi-Media Desgraff, a company specializing in the field of 2D and 3D multi-media computer graphics, such as the development of video games. The institute has the advantage of offering course in the fields in which it specializes itself!“
(0) Comments •Micro PC Talk has posted some benchmarks comparing OpenGL on Vista and XP
Dec 18, 2007
An overview of benchmarks has been posted at Micro PC Talk. Some of the benchmarks are showing OpenGL being much slower on Vista than on a comparitive XP machine.
(1) Comments •OpenSceneGraph Reference Manual v2.2 Book Now Available
Dec 17, 2007
Blue Newt Software and Skew Matrix Software are pleased to announce the publication and immediate availability of OpenSceneGraph Reference Manual v2.2. Their book documents the current release of the cross-platform OpenGL-based scene graph API. The 640-page book is available as a PDF file or softbound. Bob Kuehne (Blue Newt Software) and Paul Martz (Skew Matrix Software) co-edited the book.
(0) Comments •Call for Authors: ShaderX7
Dec 17, 2007
After the success of ShaderX, the ShaderX2 books, ShaderX3, ShaderX4 (Game developer frontline award), ShaderX5 and soon ShaderX6, we are looking for authors for ShaderX7. The book will cover advanced rendering techniques that run on the DirectX and/or OpenGL run-time with any shader language available. It will include topics on: Geometry Manipulation; Rendering Techniques; Handheld Devices Programming; Effects in Image Space; Shadows; 3D Engine Design; Graphics Related Tools; Environmental Effects. Proposals are due by February 28th, 2008. Please send them to wolf at shaderx.com. An example proposal, writing guidelines and a FAQ can be downloaded from www.shaderx6.com/ShaderX6.zip.
(0) Comments •Devshed tutorial on Working with Colors in OpenGL for Game Programming with SDL
Dec 11, 2007
A.P.Rajshekhar has put together a tutorial on DevShed.com about working with colors in OpenGL for game programming SDL. If you are just getting started in OpenGL, this tutorial will get you going in the right direction.
(0) Comments •XNA, DirectX & OpenGL® Fieldguide
Dec 11, 2007
An interesting post in Scriptionary.com has appeared outlining the major differences and pros and cons of OpenGL, DirectX and XNA. XNA is a product based on the Microsoft .NET framework v2.0 and sits on top of Microsoft Direct3D. Because of this, XNA is only suitable for Microsoft Windows platforms and the Microsoft XBox platform.
(0) Comments •Digital Media Professionals have announced new courses covering OpenGL ES and OpenGL SL in 2008
Dec 10, 2007
DMP has announced three courses for 2008. In February they are offering a getting started course ‘OpenGL ES Programming’, in March they will offer an advanced ‘OpenGL ES Programming’ course and in April they will offer another getting started course in ‘GLSL Programming’. For more information please visit the Khronos events and courses page.
(0) Comments •NVIDIA posts OpenGL SDK related white papers in one easy to find area
Dec 06, 2007
NVIDIA has posted a collection of white papers on OpenGL SDK related topics in one easy to use space on their developers website. A great page to bookmark for future reference.
(0) Comments •OpenSceneGraph announces new training courses in Washing ton DC
Nov 29, 2007
OpenSceneGraph recently announced a new training course to be held in Washington DC. This training event is co-instructed by Bob Kuehne (Blue Newt Software) and Paul Martz (Skew Matrix Software). The training will be held in the heart of Washington DC with easy train, metro, and parking, all near the location. The three days are broken into two courses: January 22-23 will teach you everything you need to know in order to move from basic OSG usage to detailed and comprehensive library features. January 24 will cover creation and rendering of large terrain/urban databases in OSG. Registration is now on and space is limited, so don’t delay, sign up today.
(0) Comments •Google Andriod include 3D Graphics Acceleration with the OpenGL ES 1.0
Nov 15, 2007
New Google Andriod software stack for mobile devices include 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification.
(0) Comments •Luuk van Venrooij announces the Genesis Device Engine
Nov 15, 2007
Luuk van Venrooij announced today a beta release of the Genesis Device Engine. The Genesis Device Engine is a free (LGPL) 3d game engine written in Object Pascal for the Windows platform. Inspired by such games as Oblivion, Crysis, Enemy Territory Quake Wars and S.T.A.L.K.E.R, the goal is to create a simple and flexible game engine for creating First Person Shooter games that take place in very large worlds. Luuk has developed the Genesis Device Engine on his own, doing everything from coding to demo content.
(0) Comments •OpenGL-Based Eye-Sys v1.0 Visualization App Launched
Nov 14, 2007
Eye-Sys®, a new OpenGL-based visualization application, has been launched today and is available for evaluation and licensing. Eye-Sys features an SDK that allows OpenGL programmers to extend its capabilities for creation of real-time, data-driven visualization systems. Movies, screenshots, case studies and an evaluation form are available on the Eye-Sys website.
(0) Comments •Mercury Computer Systems and NVIDIA provide Data Computation on the Fly with Open Inventor(TM) and OpenGL shaders
Nov 14, 2007
Mercury will integrate NVIDIA’s Tesla(TM) GPU compute power inside the Open Inventor(TM) by Mercury Computer Systems 3D development toolkit for highly demanding computing tasks in the data analysis, interpretation, and simulation E&P workflows. Mercury’s visualization solution also includes advanced support of OpenGL shaders to further enhance the 3D visualization perception for the end user, while allowing strong interoperability with the NVIDIA CUDA toolkit for on-the-fly computing. Open Inventor(TM) by Mercury Computer Systems is an object-oriented, cross-platform 3D graphics toolkit for rapid prototyping and development of industrial-strength interactive 3D applications using C++, .NET or Java. It provides the power and functionality of OpenGL at an object-oriented level including advanced support of OpenGL shaders to further enhance the 3D visualization perception of the end user.
(0) Comments •ALT Software demonstrates new technology integration at MILCOM featuring their OpenGL drivers
Oct 30, 2007
ALT Software, DiSTI, Green Hills Software and RTI will demonstrate at MILCOM (October 29-31, booth #305, Orlando, FL) a technology integration that promises to radically change the design and implementation of real-time, safety-critical distributed systems for defense and aerospace applications. ALT Software provides DO-178B certifiable OpenGL display drivers for embedded computing platforms that employ hardware accelerated graphics. ALT’s drivers are certifiable up to Level A, the highest level of this FAA and EASA recognized software quality standard.
(0) Comments •NVIDIA launches Developer Survey 2007
Oct 24, 2007
NVIDIA just announced the launch of their annual web-based Developer Survey for 2007. The survey helps NVIDIA steer their efforts in providing help, documentation, and tools for graphics developers. Don’t let the interests and goals of OpenGL developers go under-reported! Participate here.
(0) Comments •Imagination Technologies Licenses Another POWERVR SGX graphics core to Texas Instruments
Oct 23, 2007
Imagination Technologies Group plc reports that Texas Instruments Incorporated has licensed under a multiple-use license arrangement a second member of Imagination’s POWERVR® SGX graphics core family for use in its future OMAP™ application processor product family. Using POWERVR SGX, TI can deliver class-leading OpenGL ES 2.0 ‘shader’ 3D and OpenVG accelerated graphics that rival PCs or consoles for performance, all the while minimising power consumption.
(0) Comments •Acrobat 3D PDF contest for CAD, AEC OpenGL and Modeling professional
Oct 17, 2007
Adobe and the Acrobat User Community are hosting their first PDF contest. The purpose of this contest is to create a library of example 3D PDFs that expose the capabilities of Acrobat 3D and 3D PDF. The contest is geared towards CAD and CAE developers, AEC designers, Industrial designers, 3D modelers, and CAD technical publishers. Any CAD user can covert their existing CAD files to 3D PDFs for entry using the free Acrobat 3D trial download. Linux CAD and 3D modeling users can use the trial OpenGL capture utility.
(0) Comments •The Khronos Group announces OpenMAX AL 1.0 and OpenSL ES 1.0 Specifications
Oct 02, 2007
The Khronos Group is pleased to announce that it has publicly released provisional versions of the OpenMAX™ AL 1.0 and OpenSL ES™ 1.0 specifications to enable widespread developer feedback and rapid industry implementation of these important new standards that are designed to bring portable, state-of-the-art audio, video and image acceleration to mobile handsets and embedded devices. Numerous Khronos members have participated in the creation of these standards including AMD, Beatnik, Broadcom, Coding Technologies, Creative, Ericsson, Freescale, Nokia, NVIDIA, QSound Labs, Symbian, STMicroelectronics, Samsung, Sky Mobile Media, Sonaptic and Texas Instruments. Multiple implementations are underway with both APIs expected to be implemented in commercial devices in 2008.
(0) Comments •OpenGL 3.0 french presentation
Sep 17, 2007
Icare3D website publish an introduction to OpenGL 3.0 in French. This introduction allow to make a good idea on what OpenGL 3.0 will bring to developers and what changes will have to be done in existing applications. (source codes included have been taken directly from pipeline newsletter).
(0) Comments •New release of Catalyst Linux driver includes OpenGL performance improvements
Sep 13, 2007
ATI-AMD has an updated release of the Catalyst Linux driver. This release introduces some OpenGL Game Performance Improvements for ATI Radeon™ Graphics Accelerators (Beta Support) includes significant OpenGL performance improvements for a variety of ATI Radeon™ graphics accelerators for OpenGL consumer based games such as Doom 3 and Quake 4.
(0) Comments •PowerVR announces SGX chip with OpenGL ES 2.0 in silicon
Sep 07, 2007
During Siggraph 2007, PowerVR held a presentation in which Kristof Beets, a known technology evangelist for the company outlined their current and future plans and products. One of those products is SGX, a next generation 3D IP chip that marks coming of OpenGL ES 2.0 in silicon, optimised for OpenVG 1.1 and supporting Direct3D Mobile. The chips features include fifth generation Tile Based Deferred Rendering, Universal Scalable Shader Engine - one word for scalable architecture (1-8 pipelines), Vertex, Pixel and Geometry Shaders. This was joined by programmable Anti-Aliasing, internal 32-bit IEEE FP unit(s), Parallax bump mapping and Shadow maps.
(0) Comments •Osmosys Inspires 3D Graphics Revolution with a future look at OpenGL and OpenVG
Sep 07, 2007
Osmosys S.A. today launched its Enhanced Graphics enGine (EGG(TM)) at IBC2007. EGG, is a revolutionary graphics engine and library that allows video content creators and designers alike the freedom to provide interactive TV graphics, with fluid motion, 3D effects, and full animation on platforms that were previously limited to a 2D world. EGG is designed to ensure that it will port to future APIs such as OpenGL (standard or embedded subset), OpenVG and DirectX. Thus, moving applications written using EGG to future hardware and software environments will be straightforward. Osmosys is a leading provider of Java-based middleware, applications, systems and services to the interactive television market.
(0) Comments •DMP, Digital Media Professional announces new seminar room and new OpenGL ES courses
Aug 31, 2007
DMP, Digital Media Professional has recently established a new seminar room for the training of Khronos API’s. The room offers comfortable chairs, a specious desk space for each student, a ceiling mounted projector, a white board for easy instructor presentation, 12 computers with 17 inch LCD’s and excellent air conditioning. There is even an in-class coffee maker. DMP has also announced two new OpenGL ES classes in November. For further information, please visit the Khronos Events page.
(0) Comments •Interview with Neil Trevett by Zenji Nishikawa after Siggraph 2007
Aug 29, 2007
After Siggraph 2007 in San Diego, Neil Trevett Vice President Embedded Content, NVIDIA and President, Khronos Group did a long interview with Zenji Nishikawa, a Japanese journalist. The article covers the short and long term outlook of OpenGL. It is quite detailed and well worth a look, however it is in Japanese only. We have included a link using Google’s translator which is rough, but will give you an idea of what the article is all about.
(0) Comments •Khronos Group posts slides from Siggraph 2007 BOFs
Aug 28, 2007
The Khronos Group today posted slides from several of the Birds of a Feather sessions that were held at the 2007 Siggraph in San Diego. Included in the slide collections are OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenKODE, OpenVG and OpenMAX. There is also a collection for the Japan BOF. You can view the slides on the Khronos Groups Developer Library in PDF format.
(0) Comments •Interview with Petri Talala Vice President, Mobile Business Futuremark Corporation on Benchmarking and OpenGL
Aug 20, 2007
3d-test.com has posted a new interview with Petri Talala, Vice President, Mobile Business Futuremark Corporation on Benchmark testing and OpenGL. “Our new offering related to content creation in embedded base opens new era for Futuremark in a sense that we have started to offer great tool to SW companies, game studios and content developers.I[...] Currently most of the embedded devices are offering poor 3D performance. But this will change very soon. Even today some of the high-end phones such as Nokia N95 and iPhone include HW based GPU for mobile 3D and this allows very high-quality graphics capabilities. There is more and more mobile phones out there that supports even SW or HW based OpenGL ES API.“
(0) Comments •Shade Your World Contest
Aug 20, 2007
GameDev.net, in conjunction with NVIDIA and SoftImage, are celebrating the release of NVIDIA FX Composer 2 by asking you to get your shade on! The challenge is simple: Use NVIDIA FX Composer 2 to create an amazing shader. Show us scenes that sparkle, surfaces that shock, materials that are out of this world – or maybe so close to it you can’t tell the difference. And while you’re at it, see if you can make it artist-friendly, too. To the top three entries in each category, NVIDIA are laying on some shiny prizes. First place in either category gets you a GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card. Second place gets you a copy of the 3D artwork package Softimage XSI Foundation (currently the only package on the market to support both HLSL and CgFX, even Direct3D 10 shaders, in their sandbox tool). Third place gets you a copy of the new graphics-voodoo book GPU Gems III. For complete details, visit the GameDev site.
(0) Comments •OpenGL vs. DirectX on createdigitalmotion
Aug 20, 2007
Peter Kirn at createdigitalmotion.com has written a piece giving an interesting look at DirectX vs OpenGL. Quoted from the article: “A lot of users understandably wonder about the difference between the two APIs. They might be surprised to discover there’s really little practical difference at this point in terms of what end result you get. OpenGL 2/2.1, not OpenGL 3, is roughly equivalent to DirectX 10 as far as supporting flashy new features. Thanks to extensions to the OpenGL spec, in fact, OpenGL developers often get earlier access to functionality than DirectX 10 developers do, or at least get it on more platforms more quickly” wrote Peter Kern. For more information visit the lively discussion over at the OpenGL forums.
(0) Comments •The OpenGL ARB Unveils Details of Upcoming OpenGL 3
Aug 09, 2007
The OpenGL ARB unveiled the name and more details of the new version of OpenGL formerly know as Longs Peak - now officially OpenGL 3 - on August 8th 2007 at the Siggraph Birds of a Feather (BOF) in San Diego, CA. OpenGL 3 will be a great increase in efficiency in an already excellent API. It will provide a solid, consistent and well thought out foundation for the future evolution of the OpenGL standard. OpenGL 3 is a true industry effort with broad support from all vendors in the ARB. The OpenGL 3 specification is on track to be finalized at the next face-to-face meeting of the OpenGL ARB, at the end of August. This means the specification can be publicly available as soon as the end of September, after the mandatory 30 day Khronos approval period has passed. Also presented today were the changes to the OpenGL Shading Language that will accompany OpenGL 3. For more details see the OpenGL BOF presentations here. We invite you to discuss this news in this thread on our forums.
(1) Comments •New service model to support Khronos API integration
Aug 08, 2007
Ardites Ltd announced a software consultancy and service model to support hardware vendors, device manufacturers and application developers to effectively utilize the Khronos APIs. With profound experience in key technologies and mobile multimedia eco-system challenges, Ardites is capable of reducing the time-to-market, support multiple operating systems and improve the performance and security of the end product. By providing training, designing, integration, implementation and testing services, Ardites complements the Khronos ecosystem.
(0) Comments •ImgTec PowerVR focus on OpenGL and OpenVG
Aug 08, 2007
Imagination Technologies are celebrating their PowerVR Insider program at SIGGRAPH this year, with its success since its launch last year a high point for the Kings Langley-based company. PowerVR insider is ImgTec’s resource for programmers, engineers and anyone else involved in the world of mobile and embedded 3D graphics. There’s a big focus on the open technologies that ImgTec implements in its silicon designs licensed to customers, including OpenGL ES and OpenVG.
(0) Comments •SPEC Graphics Performance Group Expands Scope under New Charter
Aug 07, 2007
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corp.’s board of directors has approved a new charter that expands the scope of its graphics performance characterization group, formerly known as SPEC/GPC. Under the new charter, the renamed Graphics & Workstation Performance Group (GWPG) can investigate standardized benchmarking projects in areas such as OpenGL ES, rendering, digital video and photography, power consumption, and a full range of workstation applications.
(0) Comments •Come Together, Right Now: Siggraph 2007
Aug 06, 2007
Your friends might be digging out their swimmies and cleaning up the barbecue but if you’re reading this, summer means something else entirely to you. It means Siggraph and a wonderful week in sunny San Diego spent in dark rooms laughing at teapot jokes.
Siggraph, the world’s largest support group for graphics lovers kicked off August 5 and runs through August 9 at the San Diego Convention center. There are several very important themes this year for the Khronos Group as it enables multimedia development on every computer platform from handhelds to super computers.
- OpenGL The OpenGL ARB Unveils Details of Upcoming OpenGL 3
- COLLADA will have another great BOF this year, with demonstrations of FX Composer 2.0, C4 Engine, 3DS Max, Maya, AgentFX, Verse, Poser, XSI, Anark Studio, COLLADA RT and Photoshop CS3.
- OpenKODE is gaining traction as handheld developers look for ways to port their applications across the wide variety of handheld platforms out there.
- OpenMAX APIs are being further developed to address the multiple requirements of multimedia on multiple platforms.
In fact, almost every working group within Khronos has news.
We hope to see you this week. Be sure to bookmark this webpage as we will be bringing you all the latest breaking news!
(0) Comments •Big Nerd Ranch Europe announces early bird signup extension for OpenGL Bootcamp
Aug 02, 2007
MacNN is announcing that Big Nerd Ranch Europe has announced a one week extension to the early bird offer for its OpenGL Bootcamp. Students signing up before August 10 will save 200 euros on the net class price (the normal price is 2800 euros). OpenGL Bootcamp is an intensive 5-day training course on the graphics technology taught by Rocco Bowling. You can register here.
(0) Comments •Embedded Systems 3D Game SDK Version 0.4.1 released
Jul 30, 2007
The Embedded Systems 3D Game Software Development Kit, short ES 3D Game SDK, is an Open Source 3D Game Engine / SDK for embedded devices / mobile phones. The new v0.4.1 includes hardware and simulated lighting for the terrain renderer. Also, several improvements and bug fixes are included in this release. The SDK is tested against the OpenGL ES library from Hybrid Graphics (Rasteroid 3.1), Imagination Technologies (PowerVR) and Nokia (OpenGL ES 1.1 Plugin). For OpenKODE, the Acrodea SDK is used and tested.
(0) Comments •3D graphics hardware IP uses OCP bus interface
Jul 25, 2007
Providing scalable high performance low power 3D graphics cores to the embedded space for handheld devices, mobile phones, vehicle navigation systems, amusement game consoles and other embedded graphics applications, DMP has adopted the Open Core Protocol as the standard bus interface for their components.
(0) Comments •FX Composer 2 RC1 Released
Jul 20, 2007
FX Composer is a powerful integrated development environment for shader authoring. With support for OpenGL and DirectX, COLLADA FX, and CgFX, HLSL, as well as .obj, .3ds, .dae, .fbx, and .x formats, FX Composer provides true cross-platform API functionality. This release candidate of FX Composer 2 includes various bug fixes and minor improvements, including better support for older Shader Model 2-class GPUs.
(0) Comments •New features added to the MADLIX on-line 3D gallery
Jul 19, 2007
MADLIX lets users insert 3D-content in web pages, blogs, Google pages, community presentations and more. MADLIX uses OpenGL and runs with all Java enabled webrowser. The updated MADLIX site features a new and improved 3D viewer with model preview, faster loading and Facebook integration. In Facebook users can share models using the MADLIX 3D-wall. The content pipeline has been updated with an on-line publisher available for all Java enabled platforms supporting the COLLADA 1.4.1 specification.
(0) Comments •OpenGL SuperBible, 4th Edition now available
Jul 16, 2007
The fourth edition of OpenGL® SuperBible, the newest member of the Addison Wesley OpenGL Technical Library, is now available! OpenGL SuperBible, Fourth Edition, begins by illuminating the core techniques of “classic” OpenGL graphics programming, from drawing in space to geometric transformations, from lighting to texture mapping. The authors cover newer OpenGL capabilities, including OpenGL 2.1’s powerful programmable pipeline, vertex and fragment shaders, and advanced buffers. They also present thorough, up-to-date introductions to OpenGL implementations on multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, UNIX, and embedded systems. The reference pages for all of the OpenGL 2.1 commands are included! The source code is available now without the book here.
(0) Comments •SPARC(R) OpenGL(R) Support on ATI Radeon(TM) 9250 Released by Xi Graphics
Jun 27, 2007
Xi Graphics, Inc. announced that its extensive Accelerated-X(TM) Summit Series product line of X Window System (“X”) graphics sub-system software packages now has 2D and OpenGL 3D support for the ATI Radeon 9250 graphics card on SPARC computer platforms from Sun Microsystems. The new Xi Graphics X server/driver offering is high-performance, high-quality commercial software that is compliant with industry standard specifications for X (through X11R6.5) and for OpenGL (through v1.5).
(0) Comments •How to get Autodesk Revit models into Acrobat 3D version 8
Jun 26, 2007
Tim Huff from Adobe Inc has a great blog entry on how easy it is to get Autodesk Revit models into Acrobat 3D version 8. This will be done using a cool new technology to Acrobat 3D, OpenGL Capture. In Acrobat 3D version 7, it was a bit of a challenge to get your full Revit Models into it. In version Acrobat 8 we updated the Capture Routines to work better with Revit’s graphic sub system. To find out what this all means to you, we highly suggest you take a quick trip to Tim’s great blog entry and have a read. You’ll be happy you did.
(0) Comments •Big Nerd Ranch Europe announced the first offering of Rocco Bowling’s five-day OpenGL Bootcamp
Jun 25, 2007
Big Nerd Ranch Europe announced today the first offering of Rocco Bowling’s five-day OpenGL Bootcamp at the old monastery Kloster Eberbach near Frankfurt, Germany, for September 10-14, 2007. In modern application development OpenGL has become the standard-bearer in the visualization of 2D and 3D images in a wide spectrum of fields, from visually enhanced user experiences in general, to medical research and pharmaceuticals, rich data visualization, in addition to video gaming. Today, everyone doing any work concerning graphics must know OpenGL. Through the vision and dedication of the OpenGL community and the OpenGL ARB, OpenGL excels in cross-platform portability and scalability, adaptable to a variety of hardware environments from individual workstations to supercomputers. For more information, see the Khronos website here.
(0) Comments •Doomsday 1.9.0-beta6 to support only OpenGL
Jun 25, 2007
The Doomsday Engine Development blog has announced it will drop support for Direct3D. Doomsday 1.9.0-beta6 will see support for Direct3D dropped. For architectural reasons, development on the rendering plugins (drOpenGL and drD3D) has proved quite troublesome, not just the fact that whatever was implemented in one had to be done to the other (typically first in OpenGL and later in Direct3D). On our modern systems, there is very little to pick and choose between OpenGL and Direct3D and both have very good vender support (not like the early days of hardware acceleration when typically one of which your card/drivers just didn’t ‘like’). Given that OpenGL is cross-platform (and the API is nicer IMO) it is the obvious choice to continue development with.
(0) Comments •DIRECTX 10 is bad for gamers
Jun 25, 2007
Dustin Sklavos at Notebookreview.com has written an interesting perspective on Gaming and DirectX vs OpenGL.
Excerpt: “DirectX 10 hasn’t lived up to any of its promises, and in fact has been a titanic disappointment. More than that, the features that are supposed to be unique to DirectX 10 can also be exposed in OpenGL. Given how few people readily jumped on the Vista bandwagon, it’s safe to suggest there might be a slight paradigm shift to favoring OpenGL, especially now that DirectX has had its components largely broken up.A rejuvenated interest in Mac gaming more than likely means rejuvenated interest in OpenGL, which is NOT platform dependent as DirectX 10 is. A rejuvenated interest in OpenGL means the potential for DX10 features outside of Windows XP. In short, DX10 is, at least at the moment, bust, and the features it boasts so proudly may indeed wind up making the journey back to Windows XP in the form of updates to OpenGL.“
(1) Comments •OpenGL Pipeline Newsletter Vol 4 covers Long Peak, shaders, debugging and more
Jun 20, 2007
The fourth edition of OpenGL Pipeline--the quarterly newsletter covering all things the OpenGL standards body has “in the pipeline”--covers a bunch of exciting news and tips: from updates about OpenGL “Longs Peak” to mobile shaders and debugging.
Topics in this issue include:
- Climbing OpenGL Longs Peak, Camp 3: An OpenGL ARB Progress Update
- Shaders Go Mobile: Announcing OpenGL ES 2.0
- Longs Peak Update: Buffer Object Improvements
- Another Object Lesson
- Transforming OpenGL Debugging to a "White Box" Model
Clutter now includes OpenGL ES support
Jun 19, 2007
Clutter is an open source software library for creating fast, visually rich graphical user interfaces. Clutter has many many new features now including OpenGL ES support. Clutter uses OpenGL (and soon optionally OpenGL ES) for rendering but with an API which hides the underlying GL complexity from the developer. The Clutter API is intended to be easy to use, efficient and flexible.
(0) Comments •Congratulations Blizzard on your Best Game award at WWDC07
Jun 13, 2007
Congratulations go to Blizzard from OpenGL on your Best Game award at WWDC07. Blizzard has kept Mac gaming alive through the difficult years and are now driving the development of OpenGL, not only on Mac OS X by constantly pushing the stack to its limits and helping us improve OpenGL, but also by actively participating in the OpenGL ARB.
(0) Comments •Tungsten enhanced Chromium enables parallel OpenGL graphics rendering
Jun 13, 2007
Tungsten Graphics on Wednesday announced plans to produce a version of its TG Enhanced Chromium software to run on Intel-based Macs. Tungsten Graphics anticipates releasing it by the end of August, 2007. Chromium is an open source project that enables clustered computing groups to do parallel OpenGL graphics rendering. TG Enhanced Chromium is Tungsten Graphics’ own version, with some of its own additions to the code. With TG Enhanced Chromium, Intel Mac-based workgroups will be able to drive multi-panel displays for scientific visualization applications — a “graphics wall,” as it were.
(0) Comments •Vatan Engine SDK
Jun 13, 2007
The Vatan engine is a powerful and high-performance 3D OpenGL Game engine for rendering, sound and physics. The Vatan engine also features an ingame Editor, VEdit that allows designers to manipulate everything in the scenery, from grass, to fog, sun position, sky settings(cloud densitys,wind) ,bloom settings, water reflection\refraction, foams, buildings, paint textures in the terrain, modify heightmap, setting up and configure the AI , etc. It’s possible to switch between the editor and the game, and test the gameplay immediatly with the press of a key. Game logic can be done using Lua Scripts to access the game engine core.
(0) Comments •OmniMap API - Real-Time Geometry Correction Library
Jun 12, 2007
Free OmniMap API beta now available, Beta testers needs for OpenGL dome-correction libraries. Want to dome-enable your real-time OpenGL application? The OmniMap™ Geometry Correction Library API provides developers with an easy-to-integrate solution to make real-time OpenGL applications compatible with OmniFocus ™ projection systems. It takes advantage of the latest accelerated graphics hardware and OpenGL 2.0 extensions to increase performance over previous geometry correction software solutions.
(0) Comments •Parallels Promises 3-D Windows Games on Intel Macs
Jun 12, 2007
Parallels Inc. will add 3-D graphics support to its virtualization software for running Windows programs on Intel-based Macs, the company said yesterday. This will let Mac users play top-tier PC games. Desktop 3.0 for Mac, which the Renton, Wash., company said would launch “in a couple of weeks,“ will support both DirectX and OpenGL titles in Windows virtual machines.
(0) Comments •ActiveSolid Professonal v2.5 adds associative angular and radial dimensions
Jun 12, 2007
ActiveSolid Professional is an Open-GL based dual mode (both end user application and ActiveX control) 3D modeling, mark-up and visualization application. The entire application including its user interface can be embedded inside any ActiveX hosts such as Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office applications.
(0) Comments •Stellarium announces v0.9.0
Jun 07, 2007
The Stellarium team are proud to announce the release version 0.9.0 of Stellarium, the open source planetarium for your computer. Stellarium uses OpenGL to show a realistic sky in 3D, just like you would see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Just set your coordinates and go.
(0) Comments •Parallels sends 50 new features to beta testers
Jun 07, 2007
Parallels has announced that its private beta community has begun testing the first Release Candidate of the next version of its eponymous virtualisation software, which enables Macs to run Windows within OS X. Parallels Desktop 3.0 contains over 50 new features, including SmartSelect, a cross-platform file and application integration feature, support for DirectX and OpenGL 3D graphics and easy backup and restore via Snapshots.
(0) Comments •OpenGL Pipeline Q1 2007 now available in PDF format
Jun 06, 2007
The Q1 2007 release of the OpenGL Pipeline newsletter is now available in PDF format. This issue covers Climbing OpenGL Longs Peak – An OpenGL ARB Progress Update, Polygons In Your Pocket: Introducing OpenGL ES, a First Glimpse at the OpenGL SDK, Using the Longs Peak Object Model, ARB Next Gen TSG Update, GLSL: Center or Centroid? (Or When Shaders Attack!), OpenGL and Windows Vista™, Optimize Your Application Performance. Click here to get your copy now!
(0) Comments •Galacticsoft releases new version of 3D Sci Fi Movie Maker
Jun 01, 2007
Galacticsoft have released a new version of 3D Sci Fi Movie Maker. 3D Sci Fi Movie Maker is a fun creative tool design to help you make your own Sci Fi Movie classics. It’s ideal for making Sci Fi Homage clips for youtube, or for use in indie movie production. 3D Sci Fi Movie uses OpenGL technology to create amazing 3D Graphics. 3D Sci Fi Movie Maker runs under Windows 98/XP/Vista, and requires a computer with a graphics card that uses OpenGL technology.
(0) Comments •OpenGL 2.x and 3.0 APIs arrive this year
May 25, 2007
Longs Peak and Mount Evans represent major API upgrade. What is going on with OpenGL right now is very exciting. This year will see two new versions of this venerable API. The first version due in July 2007 is Longs Peak (OpenGL 2.x). This is a major clean-up of the code after almost a decade and a half. Approximately three months after that we will see the release of Mount Evans (OpenGL 3.0) which will run specifically on hardware born after November 8th, 2006. We are talking about DirectX 10-class hardware, bringing all the features of unified 3D architecture to the world of OpenGL. Mount Evans is compatible with Longs Peak, but you will require OpenGL 3.0 class hardware to run everything.
OpenGL 3.0 will offer features such as instanced rendering, stream out of vertex data to a buffer, texture buffer objects, numerous new texture formats and so on. Most importantly the Khronos Group is linking OpenGL and OpenGL ES, a mobile 3D graphics API via COLLADA and glFX, so what is supported in OpenGL 3.0 will see the light of the day in ES version as well.
(1) Comments •OpenGL a growing concern
May 25, 2007
In an interview with Nvidia’s Roy ‘The Boy’ ‘Terrific’ Taylor, SplashDamage, developers of the upcoming FPS Quake Wars, let on that they think DX10 will get a run for its money. Since the Khronos Group took over the running of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board last Autumn, they have managed to get chip-makers like Nvidia to open up DX10-esque hardware features in the OpenGL system. “The extension mechanism has also allowed manufacturers of high end cards to gracefully expose DirectX 10 features on Windows XP,“ Splash said. “OpenGL is still the only viable 3D solution for cross-platform development on the PC,“ we are told, and that includes XP, Vista, Linux and OSX.
(0) Comments •gDEBugger V3.1 Adds Support for Windows Vista™
May 24, 2007
gDEBugger, an OpenGL and OpenGL ES debugger and profiler, traces application activity on top of the OpenGL API, lets programmers see what is happening within the graphic system implementation to find bugs and optimize application performance. The new V3.1 Adds Support for debugging and profiling OpenGL applications on Windows Vista™. Also, gDEBugger OpenGL state variables Comparison Viewer now automatically compares all current state variables values to the OpenGL default render context values. This version also includes significant performance improvements.
(0) Comments •General
{/categories}ALT Software announces integration of DO-178B OpenGL graphics libraries and safety-critical RTOS, Deos™
Nov 17, 2008
ALT Software announced today the technology integration of ALT’s DO-178B OpenGL graphics libraries and the safety-critical RTOS, Deos™ (DDC-I Embedded Operating System). This technical product collaboration is fully certifiable to Level A, the highest FAA standard for flight critical software, and is proven in the market with combined deployed solutions.
(0) Comments •OpenGL Tutorial website launches
Nov 04, 2008
A new tutorial site called DevNucleus has opened. It will contain several various tutorials relating software development. Currently it features articles on the Glux library, OpenGL, Win32 and other various topics.
(0) Comments •GLEW 1.5.1 adds support for OpenGL 3.0 and new extensions
Nov 04, 2008
The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library (GLEW) is an open-source cross-platform OpenGL API extension loading library. GLEW supports the majority of OpenGL extensions on a variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Irix, and Solaris. GLEW 1.5.1 adds core OpenGL 3.0 functionality and 31 new extensions.
(0) Comments •OpenCL on the Fast Track
Oct 31, 2008
HPCwire has posted a blog on the fast paced OpenCL efforts underway at the Khronos Group. Version 1.0 of OpenCL is currently scheduled to be released in early December at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 in Singapore. “If they succeed, that’s got to be some kind of industry spec development record—basically from prototype to final in 6 months” wrote Michael Feldman, editor of HPCwire. Khronos will be presenting an OpenCL technical briefing and reception at SC08 on Monday, November 17. Anyone who is interested can attended at no charge. Appetizers and cold beer will be provided!
(0) Comments •OpenGL Mathematics (GLM) 0.8.1 released
Oct 31, 2008
The new version of GLM has been released. GLM is a platform independent C++ mathematics library for 3D software based on the OpenGL Shading Language. Furthermore, GLM provides optional extended feature such as quaternion, transformations, matrix inverse, etc. This release has been developed against GLSL 1.3 specification.
(0) Comments •Cg Toolkit 2.1 Released
Oct 30, 2008
The Cg Toolkit provides a free cross-platform shading language compiler and runtime API for programmable shading. Write your shader once and deploy it to any API or platform. Cg Toolkit compiles Cg shaders and CgFX effects to OpenGL assembly extensions, GLSL, DirectX 9 assembly, HLSL9, and DirectX 10’s HLSL10. Cg Toolkit supports Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and Solaris.
(0) Comments •NVIDIA posts NVISION 2008 presentations on OpenGL, OpenGL 3.0, Cg, and CUDA
Oct 30, 2008
NVIDIA has posted slides from the joint NVISION 2008 presentations on OpenGL, OpenGL 3.0, Cg, and CUDA. This four part set covers OpenGL and the Future, GeForce 8 Features for OpenGL, Cg 2.1 - “C for Graphics” for All 3D APIs and Platforms and finally OpenGL and CUDA. The presentation was made by Michael Gold, Mark Kilgard, and Barthold Lichtenbelt of NVIDIA.
(0) Comments •OpenCL Technical briefing and Reception at SC08
Oct 28, 2008
OpenCL is an open, royalty-free standard being created by the Khronos Group for programming heterogeneous parallel computing across GPUs and CPUs. OpenCL is being driven by industry-leading companies including AMD, Apple, ARM, Codeplay, Ericsson, Freescale, Imagination Technologies, IBM, Intel, Nokia, NVIDIA, Motorola, RapidMind and Texas Instruments. This informal gathering will provide one of the first opportunities for the HPC community to gain an insight into the architecture and direction of this exciting development. Please register early as seating is limited - we look forward to seeing you in Austin!
(0) Comments •Ogre Technologies announces Glux - an OpenGL Utility & Auxiliary Library
Oct 28, 2008
Ogre Technologies has announced Glux; The OpenGL Utility & Auxiliary Library. It aims to be a more up-to-date replacement for Glux. It is also written in C++, making it not accessible for C users, however. Ogre Technologies mentions that Glux is in a very early stage and only has support for Windows at this time, but will support other OS’ (such as Linux, Mac OS, Mac OS X, ...) in the future. Glux should take care of windowing in your OpenGL applications and also offers some extra functions.
(0) Comments •OpenGL 3.0 Linux beta drivers available
Oct 27, 2008
NVIDIA released beta Linux drivers for OpenGL 3.0 today, as well as an update to the Windows OpenGL 3.0 drivers. These drivers have the following new features and improvements:
- Linux support - OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 functionality support between the Linux and Windows releases are identical.
- Now allows rendering to a FBO with mixed-size attachments
- VAO bug fixes and performance improvements
- EXT_texture_swizzle support
- Transform feedback missing functionality is implemented
- Various other bug fixes
Details and driver downloads are here.
(0) Comments •Hybrid Rendering with CUDA and OpenGL
Oct 22, 2008
Ray tracing researchers David Luebke and Steven Parker discuss hybrid ray tracing and rasterization rendering techniques that combine CUDA and OpenGL. OpenGL is used for buffer and texture setup. CUDA does the ray tracing. And then OpenGL does post-processing and display.
(0) Comments •Driving Ultra High Resolution Displays with OpenGL
Oct 14, 2008
Ian Williams explains in this presentation how to drive ultra high-resolution displays. Ian discusses OpenGL quad-buffered stereo, the newly published WGL_NV_gpu_affinity extension for GPU affinity when driving multiple GPUs concurrently, and how to configure OpenGL swap groups to coordinate the buffer swaps of multiple GPUs with the NV_swap_group extension.
(0) Comments •gDEBugger Tutorial is Now Available
Oct 14, 2008
Graphic Remedy is proud to announce the release of the gDEBugger tutorial. The new gDEBugger Tutorial supplies all the information needed to start working with gDEBugger; installation and project creation, basic functionality and a great number of tasks that can be performed with gDEBugger. The tutorial explains, in clear and simple language illustrated by screenshots, how to make use of gDEBugger’s features to their full extent, whether the task is general as cleaning up OpenGL usage or more advanced as locating graphic pipeline bottlenecks or redundant state change function calls. The gDEBugger tutorial is available here. It will be included in future versions of gDEBugger.
(0) Comments •Catalyst 8.10: OpenGL Extensions and New Features
Oct 14, 2008
Geeks3D has published the OpenGL extensions list of Catalyst 8.10 for a Radeon HD 4850. There are 115 extensions including 8 new ones. Catalyst 8.10 improves vertex texture fetching and adds geometry instancing support.
(0) Comments •Big Nerd Ranch announces iPhone Bootcamp with drawing in OpenGL
Oct 06, 2008
Big Nerd Ranch is offering an iPhone Bootcamp which includes dealing with drawing using Core Graphics, Core Animation, and OpenGL. iPhone Bootcamp is designed for developers who want to write applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Pre-requisites for the course are good knowledge of C and one object-oriented language. There are five courses being offered from October through February 2009. Complete details can be found on the event page.
(0) Comments •Free Open Source iPhone & iPod Touch OpenGL ES 3D Engine
Oct 06, 2008
The first release of SIO2 is now available, using OpenGL ES as the drawing API. Written in pure C using a bit of obj-c & C++ to glue things together, SIO2 is a light and flexible 3D engine for the next generation of mobile devices. This first release includes everything required to get started:
- realtime physic (Bullet)
- realtime MP3 (.ogg) using OpenAL & MPEG4 playback (.ogv)
- world editor WYSIWYG (Blender)
- scripting language (LUA)
- exporter, realtime lighting
- accelerometer & multi-touch support as well as many other features.
It is build around the official iPhone SDK (2.0 and up) for Mac OS X. Video tutorials, code samples, documentations, forums etc, are available to help you create your own 3D applications for iPhone & iPod Touch. A video showing some of the features is available on YouTube.
(0) Comments •GLee adds support for OpenGL 3.0
Oct 06, 2008
The GLee extension library has added support for OpenGL 3.0. GLee takes the pain out of managing OpenGL extensions and core functions. It’s compatible with Windows, OS X and many unix variants, including Linux. In addition to OpenGL 3.0 support, version 3.0 adds 36 new extensions, bringing the total to 398.
(0) Comments •SGI posts new advanced OpenGL course
Sep 25, 2008
SGI has posted a new advanced OpenGL course for October 2008. The Advanced OpenGL Programming course is intended for software professionals and students who already have experience with OpenGL programming and want to learn advanced concepts.
(0) Comments •CUDA and OpenGL Interoperability
Sep 24, 2008
Michael Gold at NVIDIA explained the APIs for CUDA and OpenGL interoperability at NVISION 2008. Learn how to mix OpenGL and CUDA in a single application.
(0) Comments •OpenGL-based NVSG Update at NVISION 2008
Sep 24, 2008
NVSG, the NVIDIA Scene Graph, is an OpenGL-based scene graph API using OpenGL to implement shadows, shader effects, skinning, out-of-order transparency, improved full-scene antialiasing, stereo, broadcast video output, ray tracing, and more. Peruse Holger Kuz’s update on NVSG presented at NVISION 2008.
(0) Comments •NVIDIA SDK 10.5 Updated
Aug 18, 2008
NVIDIA has updated their SDK 10.5. This all-new collection of OpenGL and DirectX 10 code samples teaches developers how to make the most of GeForce 8 Series GPUs. The OpenGL and DirectX SDKs include a browser, clear code samples, detailed whitepapers, and videos.
(0) Comments •‘Modern OpenGL: Its Design and Evolution’ course at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008
Aug 14, 2008
The inaugural SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 conference in Singapore is sponsoring a half-day course on Modern OpenGL on December 13th. A long-time implementer of OpenGL (Mark Kilgard) and the system’s original architect (Kurt Akeley) explain OpenGL’s design and evolution. OpenGL’s state machine is now a complex data flow with multiple programmable stages. In this course, OpenGL practitioners can expect candid design explanations, advice for programming modern GPUs, and insight into OpenGL’s future.
(0) Comments •NVIDIA provides early OpenGL 3.0 driver now
Aug 14, 2008
Windows XP and Vista developers can now download a new beta NVIDIA driver for their GeForce 8 series (or higher) GPUs. This driver is aimed at developers to start coding to the new OpenGL 3.0 and GLSL 1.30 features. These features are not enabled by default. They can be enabled using the nvemulate utility, as described here.
(0) Comments •ATI Catalyst 8.7: OpenGL Extensions List
Jul 22, 2008
Geeks3D has updated its OpenGL extensions section with all extensions exposed by a Radeon HD 3870 with the latest ATI Catalyst 8.7 Windows Vista 64-bit graphics drivers. Three new extensions have been added.
(0) Comments •NVIDIA updates GLExpert among other developer tools
Jul 18, 2008
NVIDIA recently updated GLExpert, a component of NVPerfKit that helps OpenGL developers by identifying errors and performance issues. You will also find a link to GPU Performance Tuning with NVIDIA Performance Tools, a talk showcasing the latest suite of OpenGL GPU performance analysis tools from NVIDIA, including NVPerfKit 2 (featuring NVPerfSDK and GLExpert) and NVShaderPerf 2.
(0) Comments •Faogen 2.0 preview version
Jul 17, 2008
Faogen Fast Ambient Occlusion Generator. It uses OpenGL API to access video card GPU to accelerate computation of ambient occlusion and bent normals both as per-vertex data and in texture images. 2.0 version provide updated ambient aperture and bent normals shaders with ability to customize them through editing of GLSL code of two simple functions. Other features include improved precision on large scale models, adjustable background for AO texture images, lighting animation control and few bugfixes. Bent normals rendering instead of vertex normal uses special vector, which points in the average direction of unoccluded samples. This technique is simple and can be used even on pre-shader hardware. Ambient aperture rendering is more complicated and adds cheap dynamic shadows to view.
(0) Comments •gDEBugger V4.2 Adds full support for Frame Buffer Objects (FBOs)
Jun 27, 2008
The new gDEBugger V4.2 adds full support for Frame Buffer Objects (FBOs). It enables developers to view allocated FBOs and Renderbuffer objects, FBOs attachment points (depth, color and stencil) and Renderbuffers data as an image and raw data. This version adds full support for OpenGL context sharing. Shared objects are now displayed in each and every render context that shares them. In addition, NVIDIA GLExpert driver (v2.0) was integrated into this version. gDEBugger, an OpenGL and OpenGL ES debugger and profiler, traces application activity on top of the OpenGL API, lets programmers see what is happening within the graphic system implementation to find bugs and optimize OpenGL application performance. gDEBugger runs on Windows and Linux operating systems.
(0) Comments •FurMark 1.4.0 - OpenGL Benchmark
Jun 24, 2008
FurMark is an OpenGL benchmark that stresses the GPU with fur rendering. The benchmark offers several options allowing the user to tweak the rendering: fullscreen / windowed mode, MSAA selection, window size, duration. The benchmark also includes a GPU Burner mode (stability test). This new version fixes some minor bugs and adds command line parameters as well as a Xtreme Burning mode to overheat the GPU!
(0) Comments •H3DAPI 2.0 Beta released at EuroHaptics 2008
Jun 13, 2008
H3DAPI, the open source haptics platform which uses OpenGL for graphics rendering, celebrates it latest version release today! H3DAPI 2.0 beta is up for download at H3D.org, with new features that give graphics-haptics developers and programmers even more freedom, so they could easily add the sense of touch to a graphical environment.
(0) Comments •The Irrlicht Engine based on OpenGL released v1.4.1 with COLLADA improvements
Jun 12, 2008
The Irrlicht Engine is an open source high performance realtime 3D engine written and usable in C++ and also available for .NET languages. It is completely cross-platform, using D3D, OpenGL and its own software renderer, and has all of the state-of-the-art features which can be found in commercial 3d engines. Included are Improvements to the COLLADA 1.3 loader, support for Milkshape 1.8 files, Enhanced .3ds, .obj loaders, Microsoft .x file animation playback improvements; Added X11 support on OSX; Several speed optimizations and tons of bugfixes, API enhancements and other small improvements.
(0) Comments •New next generation OpenGL engine website opens
Jun 09, 2008
The Trinity Engine, powered by OpenTK/GL is a fully shader driven next generation 3D engine. 100% managed code, meaning it can run on any platform supporting ms .net or Mono. It is wrote against the latest version and extensions available for gl. Despite all it’s power, it is quite easily the easiest to use ‘next gen’ engine available, but NEVER at the cost of flexibility. Demos, pricing and documentation will be available shortly. It is worth noting, the engine is aimmed at the bedroom programmer, price wise, we have no intention of competing against the big boys. Yet.
(0) Comments •23M/SIMTRAM OpenGL based Simulator ready for Beta Test
May 30, 2008
After six months of setup and preliminary trials, 23msim.com announced today the beginning of the Beta testing phase of 23M/SIMTRAM, a unique simulation software specifically dedicated to trams and rail transportation in general. 23M/SIMTRAM is based on the OpenGL graphics library for the real-time reproduction of vehicle dynamics and includes high quality full-3D visual as well as specific transportation elements, such as lights, pedestrians, stops, door opening and other operations, allowing -among the others- an easy creation or modification of scenarios and vehicles. The goal of the 23M/SIMTRAM project, which started in 2006, is to create a realistic, accessible and expandable tram simulation software, dedicated to the fans, to the virtual collectors or simply to people fascinated by trams, subways or transportation in general. Being the standard in the simulation community, OpenGL was the natural choice for this software
(0) Comments •SolidKit Library for Microsoft Windows using OpenGL released
May 19, 2008
The SolidKit Library is a programming library for development of 3D/2D applications in C++ for Microsoft Windows platform using OpenGL and MFC (although using the MFC is optional). The library provides data-model-independent C++ classes for view navigation (for example camera pan, rotation or zoom), objects manipulation (moving or rotating objects). The library also provides Constructive solid geometry for triangle meshes, various 3D mathematics functions, provides classes for reading/writing JPEG, GIF, BMP and PNG raster images files using memory formats directly usable by the OpenGL API functions.
(0) Comments •OpenSceneGraph announces back-to-back courses In June
May 09, 2008
Registration is now open for two OpenSceneGraph (OSG) training courses
