OpenGL, the decade-old mother of all graphics application programming interfaces (APIs), is getting two significant updates to bring it into the 21st century.
OpenGL Advances with the Times
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Eugenia Loli
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“OpenGL, the decade-old mother of all graphics application programming interfaces (APIs), is getting two significant updates to bring it into the 21st century.”
The author must not keep track of OpenGL very closely. OpenGL drivers from nVidia and ATi have had extensions for pixel shader and vertex programs for quite some time. All the OpenGL Architecture board is doing is unifying and standardizing the extensions.
OpenGL ES is not an “update to bring it into the 21st century.” It’s a stripped down version with a smaller footprint to fit on PDAs and cell phones. Would you call an embedded version of Linux an “update to bring it into the 21st century?” Of course not!
I hate it when idiots pass themselves off as “experts” and get in the news and magazines. You wind up with glaringly stupid nonsense like the Y2K hysteria. I was physically ill everytime some “Professor of Computer Science and Technology” got on the evening news stating that Y2K would cause your toaster to fail, elevators to stop at the wrong floor, watches to run backwards, etc., etc., etc. – you name, they spouted it as “truths” that the media parroted mindlessly.
Well I wouldn’t immediately dismiss the idiot claim but…
OpenGL ES is not an “update to bring it into the 21st century.” It’s a stripped down version with a smaller footprint to fit on PDAs and cell phones.
In this case I’d have to disagree. One thing the 21st century has brought us is an increasing number of embedded devices with 3d hardware. There weren’t that many of those in the 20th.
Would you call an embedded version of Linux an “update to bring it into the 21st century?” Of course not!
I suppose – push the cutoff date back a couple years and maybe. Work in the embedded space is going to be a major emphasis in years to come though.
What is the use of having open gl on such a small screen?
“”What is the use of having open gl on such a small screen?””
Same reason Apple uses Quartz, to pass off graphical tasks onto dedicated hardware, thereby freeing up main processor time for more general tasks.
“In this case I’d have to disagree. One thing the 21st century has brought us is an increasing number of embedded devices with 3d hardware. There weren’t that many of those in the 20th.”
There weren’t, but there were other systems that required the same footprint as most modern embedded devices. There are more “mini-GL” specs out there than you can shake a stick at. OpenGL ES is just an attempt to make a standard for mini-GL. I was dealing with mini-GL libraries almost a decade ago.
so what happened to OpenGL 2? Or did I miss it completely, LOL.
You missed it completely. There are four pages to the article. Page Two mentions OpenGL 2.0.
Don’t feel bad though, I didn’t see that there was more than one page initially.
As for the article itself, it’s more a sort of “overview” of the state of OpenGL with lots of references to further reading. One item that did stand out was this:
OpenGL 2.0 implements what’s called a direct-compile model—that is, 2.0-compliant drivers will ship with built-in compilers. This means that a given graphics hardware/driver combination will take its OpenGL source code and compile it directly into machine code that runs on the graphics hardware.
This bodes well for getting optimal OpenGL performance with a minimum of effort, and in a portable way.
>OpenGL 2.0 implements what’s called a direct-compile
>model—that is, 2.0-compliant drivers will ship with built-in
>compilers. This means that a given graphics hardware/driver
>combination will take its OpenGL source code and compile it
>directly into machine code that runs on the graphics hardware.
>This bodes well for getting optimal OpenGL performance with a
>minimum of effort, and in a portable way.
The article is a bit misinforming here, it is not OpenGL source code that will get compiled. It is the pixel and vertex shader source code that drivers will have a compiler for.
Holy cow did i miss it completely! Thanks Digitaeon!
3D games, like say many of the N-Gage and some of the GB-SP titles.
It should also make it easier to write cross platform games, as you have a single standard graphics API, and you do not have to recreate all your grahics (for 3D anyway) for each sized screan.