Computer Graphics

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Ian Romanick reports on the OpenGL SIGGRAPH BoF

Friday, August 15, 2008 in Computer Graphics | No comments

From his blog:

The OpenGL BoF went really well, I think. Nobody showed up with torches or pitchforks. Of course, the free beer may have helped. The most useful part of it for me was the mingling period after all the presentations. I talked with quite a few people and, contrary to the /. reports, nobody was furious. Whew!

He also talks about some SIGGRAPH sessions he attended, with links to relevant papers.

Thanks to people like him and Rob Barris diligently working on the OpenGL forums, this whole storm-in-a-glass should be over soon, and we can then start focusing on the new interesting stuff and what’s coming in less than a year.

OpenGL forum post hints at timeline for AMD OpenGL 3 drivers

Thursday, August 14, 2008 in Computer Graphics | 2 comments

As seen on the OpenGL forums:

A representative from AMD indicated that they are targeting Q1 2009 for a complete 3.0 release, with some number of betas expected between now and then. It was also pointed out that they are planning to implement the GL3 extension pack (geom shader, texbo, instancing).

I hope the pessimists are taking notes.

NVIDIA releases beta OpenGL 3.0 driver

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 in Computer Graphics | 1 comment

If you are running Windows XP or Windows Vista and you have NVIDIA hardware, you can now download beta drivers with Open GL 3.0 support.

That was pretty fast, wasn’t it?

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/opengl_3_driver.html

StarCraft II Effects & Techniques SIGGRAPH ‘08 paper

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 in Computer Graphics | No comments

In my previous entry, I linked to a new post on Timothy Farrar’s blog where links to a few SIGGRAPH ‘08 papers. One of them was written by Dominic Filion and Rob McNaughton of Blizzard Entertainment about certain details of the StarCraft II engine.

This paper is interesting beyond the technical content because Blizzard has not been a frequent source of papers in the computer graphics industry, despite their dominant position. With their involvement in the OpenGL Working Group, is this a sign Blizzard intends to be more active in industry groups and academia? Certainly something to keep track of.

http://ati.amd.com/developer/SIGGRAPH08/Chapter05-Filion-StarCraftII.pdf

More good information from Timothy Farrar

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 in Computer Graphics | No comments

Timothy Farrar has more good information on ATOM about certain features still missing from the core OpenGL 3 specification. It’s a good read, and with bonus links to interesting SIGGRAPH 08 papers.

http://www.farrarfocus.com/atom/080813.htm

OpenGL 3.1 within 6 months, according to Neil Trevett

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 in Computer Graphics | No comments

From The Register:

Neil Trevett, president of the cross-industry Khronos Group leading OpenGL, told The Reg on Tuesday that his consortium hoped to start the process of streamlining OpenGL with version 3.1.

Trevett also personally hopes OpenGL 3.1 can be delivered in six months’ time, as opposed to the two years it took to craft 3.0, which was released on Monday.

The key to delivering the changes is the introduction of a deprecation mechanism for the first time in OpenGL’s 16-year history with this week’s release.

The rest of the article isn’t as interesting and basically repeats the flamebait I have already blogged about. I should also point out that the article’s title implies gamers have revolted. This is obviously completely off mark; gamers are people who play games, not people who make games, and the former group certainly couldn’t care less how games work, so long as they are pretty, fun and perform well on reasonable hardware.

A good overview of OpenGL 3 by Timothy Farrar

Tuesday, August 12, 2008 in Computer Graphics | No comments

Check it out, it’s a good read.

http://www.farrarfocus.com/atom/

A few good reasons why OpenGL is not dead

Tuesday, August 12, 2008 in Computer Graphics | 4 comments

There has been a lot of noise on various news sites and forums concerning OpenGL 3 and how the GL Working Group has killed OpenGL. I consider most of that noise just that, noise. The dissatisfaction of API fanboys that has little to do with the reality of hardware and software vendors.

With that being said, here’s a a list of reasons why OpenGL is not dead:

  • Apple
  • Linux
  • Samsung
  • Autodesk
  • Google
  • Blizzard
  • id
  • NVIDIA
  • AMD
  • Intel
  • Matrox
  • Sony

You get the idea. Microsoft Windows is not the only operating system that needs a 3D graphics API. Are companies like Apple and those that have financial and strategic interests in Linux, or mobile handset manufacturers, really going to say “Oh snap, the fanboys have declared OpenGL dead, so huh… we’re not going to offer 3D hardware acceleration on our platform anymore. Sorry.”?

As for the reason I included Blizzard, id, NVIDIA, AMD and Intel in that list, it should be obvious: they contributed and are contributing massively to the development of OpenGL. Why in the world any company would spend significant man-hours (and hence dollars) on something it plans on killing? Projects do get killed, sure, but I doubt anyone has ever started a project with the intention of killing it from the start.

So to all the of API fanboys out there: beware the CAD monster. As for me, I will be discussing the new specifications over the course of the upcoming days, and am looking forward to OpenGL 3 drivers from the various hardware and software vendors in the industry.

Addendum: please see the comments for a clarification of what I mean by API fanboy. There are some very smart people who have criticized constructively the new specification, but those people have not made emotionally-charged and irrational comments such as “OpenGL is dead”. I am sorry if I offended anyone by not being clear enough the first time.

Link to the new ARB extensions

Tuesday, August 12, 2008 in Computer Graphics | No comments

Along with the OpenGL 3 and GLSL 1.3 specifications, the OpenGL Working Group has also released a number of ARB extensions which bring any OpenGL 3 core functionality to OpenGL 2.1 if possible. Although the OpenGL 3 specification’s ARB extension annex doesn’t list them, they are available on the OpenGL Extension Registry. Below are direct links to the extension specifications. Most of them are the ARB form of NVIDIA’s Shader Model 4 EXT extensions.

Annotated OpenGL 3 and GLSL 1.3 specifications

Monday, August 11, 2008 in Computer Graphics | No comments

If you have read my previous entry, you’ve seen the links to the change-annotated versions of the OpenGL 3 and GLSL 1.3 specifications. If you are an OpenGL veteran, those versions will provide for a better read, highlighting the new content, thus allowing you to focus on the important stuff.

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