Khronos Releases OpenGL 3.0 Specifications For Programmable Graphics Hardware

The Khronos Group today released the OpenGL 3.0 specification with strong industry support to bring significant new functionality to the open, cross-platform standard for 3D graphics acceleration.

 

OpenGL 3.0 is a new version of the OpenGL shading language. It includes GLSL 1.30 and provides comprehensive access to the functionality of the latest generations of programmable graphics hardware.

 

OpenGL 3.0’s evolutionary model assists in streamlining the specification and enables rapid development of the standard to address diverse markets. Also, the OpenGL working group has announced that it is working closely with the emerging OpenCL standard to create pairing of compute and graphics programming capabilities.

 

The OpenGL 3.0 specification enables developers to leverage graphics hardware, including graphics on Windows XP and Windows Vista as well as Mac OS and Linux.

 

According to Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research, a graphics market analyst based in California, the installed base of graphics hardware that will support OpenGL 3.0 exceeds 60 million units.

 

AMD (News - Alert), Intel and NVIDIA, major contributors to the design of OpenGL 3.0, today announced to provide full implementations within their product families.

 

"We are very pleased to see the release of OpenGL 3.0, which includes numerous features and extensions that will help us and other ISVs bring amazing gaming content to OpenGL-based platforms," commented Gavriel State, founder and CTO of TransGaming, Inc.

 

OpenGL 3.0 has features including the Vertex (News - Alert) Array Objects to encapsulate vertex array state for easier programming and increased throughput. It has non-blocking access to Vertex Buffer Objects with the ability to update and flush a sub-range for enhanced performance.

 

OpenGL 3.0’s full framebuffer object functionality including multi-sample buffers, blitting to and from framebuffer objects, rendering to one and two-channel data, and flexible mixing of buffer sizes and formats when rendering to a framebuffer object.

 

The 32-bit floating-point textures and render buffers for increased precision and dynamic range in visual and computational operations.

 

It has conditional rendering, based on occlusion queries, to increase performance. The compact half-float vertex and pixel data saves memory and bandwidth. It can transform feedback to capture geometry data after vertex transformations into a buffer object to drive additional compute and rendering passes.

 

OpenGL 3.0’s four new texture compression schemes for one and two channel textures provides a factor of 2-to-1 storage savings over uncompressed data. The sRGB framebuffers enable faithful color reproduction for OpenGL applications without adjusting the monitor's gamma correction;

 

Texture arrays of OpenGL 3.0 provide efficient indexed access into a set of textures.

 

The new version of the OpenGL Shading Language, GLSL 1.30 provides front-to-back native integer operations including full integer-based texturing, integer input and outputs for vertex and fragment shaders and a full set of integer bitwise operators. It also improves compatibility with OpenGL ES, adds new interpolation modes, includes new forms of explicit control over texturing operations, provides additional built-in functions for manipulating floating-point numbers and introduces switch statements for enhanced flow control within shader programs.

 

The set of extensions of OpenGL 3.0, geometry shaders, further instancing support, and texture buffer objects, can be used by developers and, after industry feedback.

 

Khronos today also released a number of extensions to OpenGL 2.1 that enables some of the new features in OpenGL 3.0 to be used on older generations of hardware. These extensions include enhanced VBOs, full framebuffer object functionality, half float vertices, compressed textures, vertex array objects and sRGB framebuffers.

 

OpenGL 3.0’s new OpenGL API enable products to support specific market needs while not burdening every implementation with unnecessary costs. OpenGL 3.0 also introduces a deprecation model to enable the API to be streamlined while providing full visibility to the application developer community, enabling the API to be optimized for current and future 3D graphics architectures.

 

"OpenGL 3.0 is a significant evolutionary step that integrates new functionality to ensure that OpenGL is a truly state-of-the-art graphics API while supporting a broad swathe of existing hardware," said Barthold Lichtenbelt, chair of the OpenGL working group at Khronos. "Just as importantly, OpenGL 3.0 sets the stage for a revolution to come - we now have the roadmap machinery and momentum in place to rapidly and reliably develop OpenGL - and are working closely with OpenCL to ensure that OpenGL plays a pivotal role in the ongoing revolution in programmable visual computing."