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OpenGL 2.0 Released

Posted by michael on from the now-20%-more-pixels dept.

berny@work writes "OpenGL has finally released version 2.0. The benefits include Programable Shaders, in particular: Shader Objects, Shader Programs, OpenGL Shading Language and changes to the Shader API. If you are interested take a look at the tutorials and the case studies that are linked to from the OpenGL site."

5 of 353 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Versus DX successor by Nos. · · Score: 5, Informative

    Its used for a lot of popular games including Doom 3, Return to Castel Wolfenstein, Quake series, etc. See http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/games/ for a list of the windows games using OpenGL

  2. Re:Does this work with older cards? by Dreadlord · · Score: 5, Informative

    The new functionalities were in the previous versions as extensions AFAIK, OpenGL 2.0 adds them to the standard.

    So (unless I missed something that wasn't previously an extension), you just need a new driver for your card and you'll be set.

    --
    The IT section color scheme sucks.
  3. Re:that's great but... by tomee · · Score: 5, Informative

    Supporting OpenGL 2.0 is the job of the drivers, which didn't support it so far simply because the specification didn't exist. The cards have all the capabilities necessary to support OpenGL 2.0, which makes sense if you understand the development process of OpenGL: The card makers come up with some new feature, and they can immediately implement it in the form of an extension and release it with their driver. After some time, the new features become generally supported, so the ARB looks over the extensions and makes an ARB extension out of it that the card makers have to implement again. This means that the new features of OpenGL 2.0 are actually just the features that the cards already have put together into one API.

  4. Re:Why no comparison with D3D? by Performer+Guy · · Score: 5, Informative

    You really have no idea what you're talking about do you. OpenGL vs D3D flamewars have been raging for years, FYI D3D started out well behind OpenGL feature for feature and gradually added OpenGL features, each generation of D3D we had to listen to Microsoft claim that all the interesting features of OpenGL were already in D3D and OpenGL had no advantage, only for them to add more in the next release.

    D3D is a proprietary windows programming API owned by Microsoft and designed for games with some incredibly ugly and arduous API semantics, OpenGL is an open, extensible cross platform industry standard controlled by a board of interested industry specialists that anyone may join. The rendering and dispatch API semqantics have been optimized by the vendors in a standard way. If there was a need for any particular feature the vendors would add it as an extension either individually (something they can do and have done on their own) or they could collaborate on shared extensiosn for a common API. Red herring features that do not make any sense or map to real hardware have no place in a programming interface explicitly designed to sit close to the metal like OpenGL.

  5. Re:Go, OpenGL ARB! by t35t0r · · Score: 5, Informative

    Deader than a dodo bird? That's quite a statement to make especially when you have: http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/scienti fic/ http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/modelin g/ http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/cad/ http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/simulat ion/ http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/vrml_we b3d/ http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/games/ not to mention that some of the most immersive 3d environments are created by SGI hardware all based around the OpenGL API. Now if you want to simply talk about games, sure there are more DirectX games since MS monopolized the desktop market. Anyways I think serious gamers should do something productive. I only play ut2k4 to blow off some steam.