Get the from http://developer.nvidia.com/object/opengl_3_driver.html. I’m sure AMD will follow suite in short order. IHV support is incredibly important to the ongoing success of the OpenGL standard, so a big thank you to them.
NVidia releases beta OpenGL 3.1 drivers
Computer Graphics
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Mar 242009
OpenGL 3.1 officially released
Computer Graphics
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Mar 242009
The spec is available at http://www.opengl.org/registry/doc/glspec31.20090324.pdf
Some of the highlights:
- ARB_draw_instanced is now core (instanced draw in vertex shaders with an instance ID built-in)
- EXT_copy_buffer is now core (data copies between buffer objects without round-tripping to SRAM)
- ARB_texture_buffer_object is now core (using buffer objects as the backing store for texture images)
- ARB_texture_rectangle is now core (non-power of two textures with non-normalized texture coordinates and additional restrictions)
- ARB_uniform_buffer_object is now core (using buffer objects as the backing store for many uniforms)
- New signed normalized texture format
- Modified NV_primitive_restart is now core (server-side primitive rasterization restart)
- All of the OpenGL 3.0 features marked deprecated in Section E of the OpenGL 3.0 specification are gone from the OpenGL 3.1 specification, with the exception of line widths greater than one.
In addition, GLSL 1.4 has been released in tandem with OpenGL 3.1. The spec is available at http://www.opengl.org/registry/doc/GLSLangSpec.Full.1.40.05.pdf. Some of the highlights include support for uniform buffers, rectangular textures, texture buffers and instanced drawing. In addition, all OpenGL “fixed function” built-in variables, namely built-in vertex shader inputs, built-in state uniforms (with the exception of depth range parameters) and all built-in varyings have been removed.
Of course, in both cases, the removed functionality has been moved to ARB extensions (ARB_compatibility), as was described in detail in the deprecation model section of the OpenGL 3.0 specification.
Mar 232009
From http://www.khronos.org/news/events/detail/gdc_san_francisco_2009 and Khronos announces highlights from the News Conference and Developers Sessions at GDC 2009:
Streamlined OpenGL 3.1 Specification Released
Just nine months after OpenGL 3.0; Adds cutting-edge GPU functionality
The press release also mentions that OpenCL 1.0 implementations are close to shipping, which is extremely impressive considering that the specification was not released too long ago. In any case, this is going to be an interesting week for the OpenGL and OpenCL communities.
Mar 222009
I wanted to commemorate, after watching the finale of what has undeniably been one of the most successful and powerful television show in the past 5 years, the end of Battlestar Galactica. On the finale itself, all I have to say is Bravo. It was a masterpiece of storytelling and it dared our imagination. As a whole, Battlestar Galactica took millions of us through a 5 year long journey amongst the stars and the lives of incredibly real yet larger than life characters.
It will be remembered. The lives that have touched ours, despite having been created by the talent and dedication of writers, composers, actors, artists and so many others, will be remembered.
So say we all.
Mar 082009
Riven X 0.7.3 is now available. It fixes an issue on Tiger where saved games would not be selectable in the open saved game dialog.
Download Riven X 0.7.3 (5.1 MB).