Items tagged with OpenGL
While much of the emphasis involving game development these days seems to revolve around DirectX 12, the competing Vulkan API has been lurking in the shadows, ready to strike at a moment's notice. Up to this point, there hasn't been a deluge of Vulkan-powered titles available, with DOOM, Dota 2, and The Talos Principle being the the most high-profile offerings. Soon, a massive addition is going join that list by way of Cloud Imperium Games' Star Citizen. This case is a bit different than most, though, because CIG doesn't just plan to support Vulkan, it plans to only support Vulkan. DX12? Get out of here! These plans were revealed by Star Citizen's lead graphics designer, Ali Brown....
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Tomorrow's VR (virtual reality) applications are going to usher in a new era of graphics based on the Khronos Group's Vulkan API. To make sure the industry is properly equipped to benchmark such things, Basemark today announced its new GPU Vulkan benchmarking software, which it's developing in close cooperation with some big name companies like Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Imagination Technologies, Qualcomm, and Renesas. You can think of the Vulkan API as the spiritual successor to OpenGL. What's different about Vulkan is that it's a low-level API that gives developers direct control of GPU resources. In that way, it's similar to Mantle (AMD), DirectX 12 (Microsoft), and Metal (Apple), but unlike those,...
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The short life of AMD’s Mantle graphics API is nearly over, thanks to Windows 10 and DirectX 12. AMD announced that developers should begin concentrating on DirectX 12 while promising full support for games that are already heavily invested in Mantle, like EA and Visceral Games’ Battlefield Hardline. The announcement comes as AMD attends the Game Developers Conference (GDC 15) in San Francisco, California. “Proud moments also call for reflection, and today we are especially thoughtful about Mantle’s future,” AMD’s vice president of visual and perceptual computing, Raja Koduri, said in a statement. “In the approaching era of DirectX 12 and the Next-Generation OpenGL Initiative, AMD is helping...
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News and rumors about Valve's (possibly) upcoming Source 2 engine have been buzzing for months, but a recent update to DOTA 2 contains the most persuasive evidence yet that a major engine is in the works. After the last patch, the game now contains a number of programmed default paths, directories, and file names that didn't previously exist. Source-related DLLs and executables (engine.dll, vconsole.dll) have been updated to "engine2.dll" and vconsole2.dll." The tileset editor has a default Source path. There's also now an option to save files as "Source 1.0 Map Files" where no previous option existed. Here's the funny thing -- while most people think of a game screenshot as...
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We recently had the chance to sit down with some folks at NVIDIA to discuss high performance graphics APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). With all of the noise recently surrounding AMD’s Mantle, DirectX 12, DirectX 11 and even OpenGL, NVIDIA wanted to clear the air somewhat, and explain the company’s position and plans to optimize and support current-gen and future APIs. As you’ve probably surmised in the myriad of discussions regarding Mantle and DirectX 12 recently, API efficiency is extremely important to ensure high performance in a given application. In our talk, NVIDIA explained that it is committed to improving the efficiency of current-gen, industry-standard...
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When Microsoft's Windows 95 was released a staggering 18-years-ago, I considered it to be exciting. While I was only 12-years-old, I had quite a bit of experience up to that point with Windows 3.x, and the general design improvements of 95 made the OS feel like a major improvement - it truly felt like "next-gen" computing at the time. If Windows 95 didn't seem all-too-exciting to everyone, the CD-ROM packed a little bonus that helped make the experience just a wee bit better. It was a 3D game called Hover!, and at a time when Doom was one of the most popular 3D games around, you can probably understand why people were so quick to latch onto it. The gameplay in Hover! was admittedly simple even...
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For nearly three years, Nvidia's Quadro line has relied on GF100 hardware. These cards, based on the original Fermi / GTX 480 architecture, have grown increasingly long in the tooth. NV launched new high-end parts a year ago, with the K6000 and K5000, but left the other cards mostly alone. Today, that changes. The Quadro K4000, K2000, 2000D (the same card, but with dual-DVI instead of DVI + DisplayPort, and K600 are the new entrants in the Quadro line, replacing the 4000, 2000, and 600 respectively. The upgrades are significant. The K4000 is a 768-core GPU with 3GB of DDR5 and an 80W TDP, as compared to the vanilla 4000 with 256 cores, 2GB of RAM, and a 142W TDP. The K2000 moves to 384 cores...
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Google launched the latest version of Chrome late last week with support for multiple new features. While Google no longer labels Chrome with a version number or admits such a thing exists, information under the "Stats For Nerds" link in the browser's task manager confirms that this is Chrome 9.0.597.84. There are no default UI changes, at least not when updating from Chrome 8.2. One of the new features Google is introducing with Chrome 9 is disabled by default. It's called Chrome Instant and it extends Google Instant functionality across the entire browser. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Google Instant refers to the search engine's relatively new ability to return search results...
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Six months ago, we covered a story in which Nvidia's chief scientist, Bill Dally, made a number of sweeping claims regarding the superiority of GPUs. Six months later he's again attacking traditional microprocessors with another broad series of accusations. As before, in our opinion, he uses far too broad a brush. Dally's basic claim is that modern CPUs are held back by legacy design. That's not particularly controversial, but he doesn't stop there. Referring to modern CPUs, Dally says:They have branch predictors that predict a branch every cycle whether the program branches or not -- that burns gobs of power. They reorder instructions to hide memory latency. That burns a lot of power. They carry...
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The Khronos Group that maintains the OpenGL API launched two new flavors of the specification at the Games Developer Conference (GDC) this week. OpenGL 4.0 is designed to update the API to DirectX 11-level functionality, while the 3.3 release is meant to allow previous generations of OGL hardware (presumably 3.x-compliant cards) to take advantage of OpenGL 4.0 functionality. Khronos lists the following features as new in version 4.0: Two new shader stages that enable the GPU to offload geometry tessellation from the CPU;Per-sample fragment shaders and programmable fragment shader input positions for increased rendering quality and anti-aliasing flexibility;Drawing of data generated by OpenGL,...
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AMD Next-Generation OpenGL® ES 2.0 Graphics Technology Achieves Industry Conformance— Khronos™ Group Certifies AMD OpenGL ES 2.0 Technology, Designed for Mobile Phones, Handheld 3D Gaming and GPS Devices —SUNNYVALE, Calif. — June 11, 2008 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that it has reached a new milestone in the mobile graphics industry as the first 3D graphics technology provider to achieve OpenGL® ES 2.0 conformance certification. AMD OpenGL ES 2.0 mobile graphics technology, which will be included in AMD processors, is based on the same AMD Unified Shader Architecture powering the Microsoft® Xbox 360™ video game console.OpenGL ES 2.0, an industry-specified application...
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While you're waiting for your Crysis downloads to finish (Don't be fooled, it's just a pre-load and store. You have to wait until 11/16 for the ability to activate), you might want to check out the new Lightsmark OpenGL demo. It's even got real-time global illumination and real-time Penumbra shadows... and stuff. "Natural lighting makes artificial graphics life-like. Computers get faster, but rendering more polygons doesn't add value if lighting looks faked, so insiders know that the next big thing is proper lighting aka Realtime Global Illumination. Typical workloads in realtime rendering will shift. Lightsmark simulates it. Global Illumination renders often take hours....
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