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OpenGL Headline News
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.
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.”
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 impression
Thursday
- 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 FX
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.
Category: Developers • Permalink
AsdGraph3D 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.
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.
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
- 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.
‘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.
Category: General • Developers • Permalink
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.
Category: Developers • Permalink
