OpenGL Version 4.3 Released

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Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday August 7, 2012 @04:28PM from the onward-and-upward dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Khronos Group has released the specification for OpenGL 4.3 at the SIGGRAPH 2012 conference in Los Angeles. New functionality includes: compute shaders that harness GPU parallelism for advanced computation, shader storage buffers, improved debug message output, high quality ETC2 / EAC texture compression as a standard feature, memory security improvements, robustness improvements, texture parameter queries, and more." The Khronos Group also released the OpenGL for Embedded Systems 3.0 specification, which is backwards-compatible with version 2.0. The new specification includes enhancements to the rendering pipeline, "a new version of the GLSL ES shading language with full support for integer and 32-bit floating point operations," and improved texturing functionality, among other things.

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Progress by SplashMyBandit · 2012-08-07 16:44 · Score: 5, Interesting

Thank goodness the Khronos Group took over from the old OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB). There has been great progress in OpenGL since then, catching up to Direct3D which had come from behind. With this OpenGL we can have this goodness on all desktop (Windows including XP, Linux, Mac, Unix) and mobile computing platforms (iOS, iPad, Android). Personally I'm most looking forward to the improved debug message output - hopefully that should save me some time tearing my hair out trying to resolve my mental model of what is going on vs. the realities/subtleties of GPU programming.
1. Re:Progress by ShoulderOfOrion · 2012-08-07 17:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yes, if you do graphics/animation work (Blender and the like) or 3D CAD, or any of a number of other applications that need accelerated 3D graphics. Particularly if you'd like those apps to be cross-platform, not just on the desktops but on tablets, smartphones and the like.
2. Re:Progress by SplashMyBandit · 2012-08-07 17:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Do you have a phone or tablet? then OpenGL matters. If you use an operating system other than Windows, then OpenGL matters. If you like movies, then OpenGL matters. If you fly (OpenGL has implementations certified for flight instruments) then OpenGL matters. OpenGL is used for far more than just games, and far more widely than just the personal desktop.
3. Re:Progress by 91degrees · 2012-08-07 20:42 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Phones and tablets use OpenGL ES though. Which is related but different.
  
  A new version of OpenGL isn't particularly relevant just yet. There was also an announcement of a new version of OpenGL ES
4. Re:Progress by Joce640k · 2012-08-07 21:41 · Score: 2
  
  Do those CAD programs use OpenGL ES?
  OpenGL's biggest mistake was in actively trying to keep OpenGL ES off the desktop. They had a chance to dump a load of legacy API and make a clean start but they caused fragmentation instead (OpenGL on desktop, OpenGL ES everywhere else).
  
  --
  No sig today...
5. Re:Progress by pavon · 2012-08-08 04:10 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Well OpenGL ES wasn't good enough for the desktop. In addition to removing a bunch of old cruft they also removed a bunch of advanced features that embedded systems at the time couldn't handle. OpenGL ES 3.0 improves the situation quite a bit, and is at least a proper subset of OpenGL 4.3, but is still missing important features needed to get the best performance out of games.
Apple and OpenGL by Cutting_Crew · 2012-08-07 16:54 · Score: 5, Interesting

When is apple going to get with the program related to 3D graphics? With Lion, they finally released drivers for OpenGL 3.3. Now, they are currently about 4 generations behind this new release. You would think, that with their success of their devices with fairly nice GPU's, that they would try to court gamers and developers. Let's face a hard truth. The most successful apps past and present are games. I know they want their drivers to be stable and all but they are way behind. I don't understand why they can't work with amd and nvidia on getting some stable driver releases...especially now with retina displays.

Perhaps someone can explain what there thinking is here because I feel like they are missing out on some opportunities.
1. Re:Apple and OpenGL by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-07 17:00 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Well, I don't want to get too technical, but the situation is that Apple is retarded.
2. Re:Apple and OpenGL by perpenso · 2012-08-07 17:20 · Score: 2
  
  Games don't generally require the latest hardware and software. Developers usually want to support anything sold in the last few years.
  
  I think most developers would prefer that Apple fix bugs and inconsistencies in the older versions of OpenGL (and video drivers) rather than implement the latest OpenGL. In other words I think many developers would say Apple is behind in bug fixes not new features.
3. Re:Apple and OpenGL by MightyMartian · 2012-08-07 17:42 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Translation; I'm an Apple fanboy and frequently string bunches of words together in shallow and lame attempts to defend Apple's retarded and idiotic positions.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
4. Re:Apple and OpenGL by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-07 17:46 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Games don't generally require the latest hardware and software. Developers usually want to support anything sold in the last few years.
  Ah, I see somebody has decided to begin talking out of his asshole.
5. Re:Apple and OpenGL by SplashMyBandit · 2012-08-07 18:00 · Score: 2
  
  Especially as Apple removed pbuffer support backward compatibility at the same time. Sure, modern stuff should use FBOs instead, but removing pbuffers busted older stuff (eg. the JoGL Java OpenGL library that I use - fortunately this will be fixed soon).
6. Re:Apple and OpenGL by Ignacio · 2012-08-07 18:33 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  My friends who deal with OpenGL on Mac on a nearly daily basis complain of bugs not a lack of features.
  ...
  HOLY SHIT!
  NOW I get it. Apple leaves the bugs in so that people focus on them instead of asking for new features! Then their product development group just throws whatever random features they feel like into a new product, and then tell the masses that they want to buy it. Brilliant!
7. Re:Apple and OpenGL by perpenso · 2012-08-07 18:52 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  Suffice to say that I have about 6 years of professional experience.
  10+ years here, and that's not counting pre-historic 8- and 16-bit days.
  
  My current company is a fairly large cross platform developer. Unfortunately, we have to support Mac OS.
  Cross platform here too.
  
  The problem is that their archaic implementation of OpenGL is barely capable of running last generation console games.
  There is the difference. Porting from Windows vs porting from console. What I hear from the current Mac dev guys is generally complaints related to bugs. Bugs that are reported, not fixed patch after patch, bugs they have to work around depending on the specific video chipset.
8. Re:Apple and OpenGL by Noughmad · 2012-08-07 19:45 · Score: 2
  
  And all this time I thought the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation was supposed to be Microsoft. Apparently Apple is learning from their book as well.
  
  --
  PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
9. Re:Apple and OpenGL by beelsebob · 2012-08-07 19:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  When is apple going to get with the program related to 3D graphics? With Lion, they finally released drivers for OpenGL 3.3.
  No, they released it for GL 3.2 core, which is 1.1 generations behind the now current. The reason they did this is because they support this version of OpenGL on all hardware that Lion runs on. If you're coding for lion, you can guarentee that OpenGL 3.2 is there, and don't need to write multiple render paths like you do otherwise.
  Now the fun bit, and why it doesn't matter that they don't support GL 4.2 (or now 4.3)... OpenGL specs are in fact bundles of extensions. To make up the OpenGL 4.3 standard, they took a bunch of interesting looking OpenGL extensions, and said "in order to have a complete OpenGL 4.3 implementation you must implement these extensions without the prefixes". If you go code some OpenGL on a Mac, which has hardware that could support OpenGL 4.2, you will discover that the GL 3.2 core context that you have, in fact already includes all the extensions necessary to make up OpenGL 4.2, so while you have a GL 3.2 context, you can in fact do all the things you'd expect to do on that hardware.
  In short, a version number 1.1 less than the version number khronos are currently at makes very little difference to how well applications can be coded.
10. Re:Apple and OpenGL by KliX · 2012-08-07 20:34 · Score: 2
  
  I don't think you're even slightly technical.
11. Re:Apple and OpenGL by DrXym · 2012-08-07 20:56 · Score: 2
  
  Many of the changes in OpenGL of late have been designed so as much work as possible can be offloaded from the CPU onto the GPU through shaders. Failing to keep up with the standard limits what developers can do to make their game as optimal as possible. It's in Apple's own interest to keep up with the spec because developers may increasingly disable advanced shaders or conditionally disable some optimizations simply because the APIs don't support them.
  Aside from that, there are games which do need more powerful hardware. Some people may be content to play Plants vs Zombies or other casual titles. Others want to play Skyrim or something else which does tax the hardware. If the hardware is capable of supporting a later version of OpenGL then it makes no sense that the OS should fail to provide access to it.
12. Re:Apple and OpenGL by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-07 23:26 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Apple was evil long before it was an empire.
13. Re:Apple and OpenGL by Pino+Grigio · 2012-08-07 23:39 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Well, here's the problem: the content pipeline. Most of the man-hours of work involved in putting a game like Skyrim together are artists, modellers, lighting gurus and animators. The actual coding of the engine itself is a big job yes, but content far outweighs it in terms of time. It's very hard to optimise content pipelines to take advantage of different techniques when it comes to 3D. What you tend to find at the moment is that most of it is designed to run with an earlier version, and there are a few effects added in using the later version. This shifts with the ubiquity of the hardware. That is why fixed function is deprecated or totally removed in current games, but GL 4/D3D 11 isn't really in widespread use in the industry as the baseline. It will be of course, just as soon as the percentage of users with that hardware goes above the bean-counters threshold.
14. Re:Apple and OpenGL by martin-boundary · 2012-08-08 00:54 · Score: 2
  
  Let's face a hard truth. The most successful apps past and present are games.
  
  The hard truth is that games aren't the most successful apps. Email, browsing and office apps have been much more successful for a long time. It's easy to miss because browsers and email are usually free, so the simplest comparison is games vs office software, and even there office/word processing wins.
  Games *are* important, but they're nowhere near the top.
15. Re:Apple and OpenGL by bluefoxlucid · 2012-08-08 02:08 · Score: 2
  
  Who cares? DirectX is better anyway. OpenGL 4.3 pff. DirectX is already up to 11!
  
  --
  Support my political activism on Patreon.
16. Re:Apple and OpenGL by Cutting_Crew · 2012-08-08 02:28 · Score: 2
  
  i guess i was counting generations differently. i was counting 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 and now 4.3. No not full releases but changes/optimizations/depreciations nonetheless.
  
  Now go download the free app OpenGL Extensions Viewer . I think you can also get them on your app store of choice. Here are my core features, AMD Radeon HD 6770M OpenGL Engine:
  
  3.0 100% 23/23 features
  3.1 100% 8/8 features
  3.2 100% 10/10 features
  3.3 30% 3/10 features
  4.0 0% 0/14 features
  4.1 0% 0/7 features
  4.2 0% 0/12 features
  4.3 ????????
  
  So really and truly we are look at 4 2/3 generations behind.Not to mention the shading language version is currently 1.50 on my system and the latest is currently, 4.3.
Direct3D vs OpenGL by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-07 17:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

I always wondered why OpenGL never caught on, until I read this explanation at stackexchange.
1. Re:Direct3D vs OpenGL by peppepz · 2012-08-07 18:22 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  OpenGL never caught on? I think you're talking from inside a Windows perception bubble, for everything but Windows is based on OpenGL nowadays. And Windows is slowly losing relevance.
2. Re:Direct3D vs OpenGL by bcmm · 2012-08-07 19:14 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  OpenGL never caught on? That must be why iOS and Android gaming is dead and most new mobile games are written in XNA and released only for Windows Phone 7 these days.
  
  --
  # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
  Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Mesa by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-07 17:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

Great.. :-( one more version for Mesa to be behind of..
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2012-08-07 20:00 · Score: 4, Informative

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Re:OpenGL runs on Windows (did then, does now) by alantus · 2012-08-07 20:43 · Score: 4, Informative

"Windows is slowly losing relevance" - by peppepz (1311345) on Wednesday August 08, @02:22AM (#40915185)
#1 Most Used/Biggest Marketshare on PC Desktops + Servers combined, & it's "losing relevance"? Then MacOS X + Linux never had it @ all, just based on the numbers, & don't argue with me - as the saying goes, "argue with the numbers": See here, "Read 'em & weep" -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
---
Parent said "Windows is slowly losing relevance", the article you refer to shows current market share of operating systems, not change in time, so here are some relevant numbers you can argue with.
From September 2008 to April 2012:
Windows: 90.87% -> 84.13%
Mac: 8.69% -> 14.80%
Linux: 0.41% -> 0.86%
So it seems it is true that Windows is slowly losing relevance. In the same period of time Linux doubled its usage. And I suspect they are not taking into account mobile devices such as cellphones and tablets.

I've used AND created OpenGL screensavers for Windows since Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 - based on the OpenGL 2.1 standard
If your screensavers look anything like your posts, I'm not interested.
lets be clear about the hardware.... by Cutting_Crew · 2012-08-08 02:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

if you have a fairly recent mac chances are the graphics hardware can do ALL the great OpenGL stuff. Thats what makes it even more puzzling. Its not that the hardware on these systems aren't there. There just isn't any drivers. Right now my macbook pro can perform all OpenGL 4.1 commands. But no drivers since Apple has been twiddling their thumbs.