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Just launched OpenGLBook.com, a website on learning OpenGL 4.0 programming in online book format. The first two chapters are online, new chapters to be released periodically.
John Carmack, of DOOM, Wolfenstein, and Quake fame, has spoken out on the issue of Direct3D vs OpenGL in an interview with the folks at bit-tech. Check out the article here. Note that Carmack is still using OpenGL in his game engines because of cross-platform compatibility reasons, but prefers Direct3D’s more modern API.
It’s sad to see OpenGL in such a state of disrepair that even a contributor (id Software) to the specification denounces the standard.
P.S. Happy π day.
The Khronos group has released the final WebGL 1.0 specification today at the Game Developers Conference, here are the relevant links to check out:
As of March 3, 2011 2:45PM, the online specification has not yet been updated to reflect the final changes (still says “draft”).
It’s almost weekend, and time for a lighthearted post on the two realtime 3D computer graphics libraries that are available on Windows in 2011: OpenGL and Direct3D. The reason I mention the year is simply because of the fact that two years from now, this information will be as untrue as the Wikipedia article* on this matter due to rapid hardware and software developments. But for now, let’s bash it out.
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Sandy Bridge is Intel’s new microarchitecture, slated for release in January of 2011. Sandy Bridge processors will effectively phase-out the current lineup of processors, based on the LGA 1366 socket, with processors fitting a brand new socket, LGA 2011.
While I understand the need for technology to move forward, and am an avid user of Intel CPUs myself, I can’t help but feel underwhelmed by the reviews, especially on the IGP (integrated graphics processor) front, the part that concerns me greatly.
The tech that Intel chose to use on the die is the HD 3000, and it’s little brother the HD 2000. Let’s hope it’s nothing like the GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) X3000 and family, the scourge of the entire IGP world. Please, Intel, please.
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As an OpenGL junkie I just have to dedicate at least one post to this topic.
By now you’ve undoubtedly heard of OpenGL ES, the OpenGL based library used on embedded devices such as cell phones and gaming consoles. OpenGL ES is what gives many Android based phones and iPhones their 3D gaming capabilities that rival the desktop machines of only a few years ago in terms of power. It seems like these days we’re all carrying a little computer in our pocket.
One of the only areas that didn’t have hardware accelerated 3D graphics up to this point was the web browser. There have been many talks about 3D browser graphics throughout the years and many more plug-ins, but nothing concrete or long lasting. This is about to change with the development of WebGL, which is a library based on OpenGL ES accessible through ECMAScript (which is basically a fancy name for JavaScript).
Yes, you’ve read that correctly: you’ll be able to use hardware accelerated graphics through JavaScript.
This opens up a myriad of possibilities for online games that were previously almost exclusive to Adobe Flash, which is a proprietary platform and requires a browser plug-in. WebGL on the other hand will be as native to your browser and as standardized as HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. And being based on OpenGL ES, you’ll have access to all the goodies that come with it such as Buffer Objects (VBOs, etc.) and GLSL shaders.
The WebGL context will be bound to the HTML 5 <canvas> element, which will serve the exact same function as a device context in OpenGL — you pretty much can’t get more generic and platform independent than that.
Currently, a widely supported WebGL implementation is still in the future but it’s coming closer by the day since we already see implementations in the beta versions of Firefox 4 and Google Chrome 5. This means that if you’re interested in WebGL and want to get an advantage, you can already pick up a copy of on of these browsers, read the draft specification, read some documentation and tutorials, and start building WebGL applications.
There are already a few (very impressive) examples out there showcasing the potential of WebGL, I’ve listed a few below and if you know any more, drop a link in a comment.
Today Intel released it’s new issue of “Intel Visual Adrenaline” featuring a three page interview with Tom Forsyth about Intel’s upcoming Larrabee GPU, which is x86 based and fully programmable.
Click here to read the PDF, scroll down to page eight (8)
Larrabee will support a rasterization pipeline as well as raytracing but Forsyth mentions raytracing to be more of a technical feature than a mainstream implementation. Regardless of this, for graphics programmers this should be good as there will finally be a piece of hardware that actually supports realtime raytracing.
Direct3D as well as OpenGL will be supported in addition to the much anticipated programmable route, either through C++ or pure assembly, which should open up the card for people interested in parallel computing.
Sadly there’s no definitive answer from Forsyth on how many cores Larrabee will actually contain. I guess we’ll have to wait for that a bit longer.
PS, if anyone is at GDC listening to Abrash and Forsyth tomorrow, let me know what you got from it.
I haven’t been active at all in the OpenGL circles recently but apparently OpenGL 3.1 was released yesterday. Check out the specs by clicking here at Khronos.ORG.
I have been extremely skeptical about OpenGL 3.0 since it was more like an OpenGL 2.2 and did not implement any of the promised object oriented features that competing APIs like Direct3D implement. Thankfully, this release of OpenGL 3.1 seems to be better at first glance as it not only deprecates but removes the old functionality which has been in the way for so long.
It looks like Khronos has heard and listened to its outraged end-users and finally created a better specification. At least, upon first glance, that’s what it looks like.
With the release of OpenGL 3.1 also comes a new version of GLSL, version 1.40. Most excitingly, NVIDIA has released OpenGL 3.1 drivers immediately after the release of GL, showing that they’re way ahead in the game already (as opposed to AMD or Intel).
It is amazing to me that no major outlets such as Slashdot have picked up this this story and one has to find out about 3.1 by accident or RSS feeds.