And we have some sort of news — dare I say finally? OpenGL 3.0 updates will be presented at the OpenGL BOF at SIGGRAPH 2008, although neither a room nor a time have been announced. Keep your eyes on this page for updates.

SIGGRAPH 2008 runs from August 11^th till August 15^th 2008 in Los Angeles, California; let’s keep our fingers crossed for some good news from the Khronos camp.

OpenGL 3.0 seems to become more and more of a promise that’s bound to be broken; like a friend who promises you to give back the money you loaned him, always tomorrow.

The expected API promises many new features, enhancements and is the first total rewrite of the existing OpenGL Standard. The API promises an interface compatible with the next generation of computer graphics programming and is set to compete with Microsoft’s DirectX 10.

Well, that’s the plan at least. OpenGL 3.0 has been delayed tremendously since its scheduled release in October of 2007. On October 30^th of 2007, ARB member Barthold Lichtenbelt (NVIDIA employee) made an official announcement on the OpenGL.ORG forums claiming that the release date was postponed until further notice because “[the OpenGL Working group] don’t want to spend time fixing mistakes made in haste.”

The announcement settled fine with most of the OpenGL community since at least there was news. But after 7 months of neither news nor updates, some of the community is giving up on (or dismissing) the possibility of a new API at all.

But is it really possible to give up on OpenGL? The API is pretty much the only viable hardware accelerated option on platforms other than Microsoft Windows, and even on Windows many developers are reluctant to switch from XP to Windows Vista in order to take advantage of Direct3D 10.

The Khronos Group have been putting out updates on the other software which they maintain the standards of with the exception of their most popular/anticipated one, OpenGL.

So what does that mean? Either OpenGL is being actively developed on and public discussion is prohibited per NDA, or development has halted and there is reluctance in releasing the bad news. My hopes are up for the former option since the OpenGL API is without a doubt the most flexible Graphics API available today.

Of course, there is a third option which is quite scary and different. Khronos has been publishing information on a new API called OpenKODE which bundles several APIs in a DirectX-like manner of platform abstraction. Maybe the OpenGL API will become a part of this which would set back the development even more, but this is (as are the other options) a wild guess.

If there’s one thing to consider, it’s the fact that OpenGL is a standard (a definition), not an implementation. Which means that the actual source code for 3.0 would have to implemented by: A. the independent hardware vendors or B. the platform developers. So even if the OpenGL 3.0 API would be released today, the actual libraries wouldn’t be available yet since the implementation would be missing.

All in all, I think we’re still very far away from seeing a workable OpenGL 3.0 implementation that’s supported ‘cross-platform. For now we’ll just have to do with OpenGL 2.1 or Direct3D 10, which in many cases, is a limited set of options that’s impossible to choose from.

If you use the extended version of the Livetr Theme (the one with Gravatars), you might have noticed that the Gravatars don’t quite look so nice since they’re compressed into a smaller image size. Below follows a JavaScript snippet which you could use to make the Gravatar pop out of the page when hovered over.

Screenshot:

I knew that the GPL was a viral license, but never knew it could cause delusional fevers.

I don’t have to justify posting this, right?

Recently, or more specifically the last week, there have been some major issues with the website ranging from performance to the website being inaccessible. My apologies for this and I’ve been assured by my host that these issues will be resolved soon.

But regardless of what my host may claim, I’m looking for yet another spot to host this website since downtime isn’t really my thing (see the image to the right for how I’ve been feeling about this). One week of miserable ups and downs is enough to make me set my sights to something else. If you know a reliable host that won’t cost me an arm and a leg, let me know by sending me an email (contact AT scriptionary DOT com) or posting a comment to this post. I’ll do endorsement/trade deals too if you’d like.