OpenGL 3.0: Spezifikationen verabschiedet

Genauer gesagt wurden die Specs der OpenGL 3.0 API und OpenGL Shading Language 1.30 festgelegt. OpenGL ist damit in der dritten Generation angelangt. Anders als DirectX ist OpenGL plattformunabhängig und für Linux und Mac genau verfügbar wie für Windows.

Neue Features:

• Vertex Array Objects to encapsulate vertex array state for easier programming and increased throughput
• non-blocking access to Vertex Buffer Objects with the ability to update and flush a sub-range for enhanced performance
• 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
• 32-bit floating-point textures and render buffers for increased precision and dynamic range in visual and computational operations
• conditional rendering based on occlusion queries for increased performance
• compact half-float vertex and pixel data to save memory and bandwidth
• transform feedback to capture geometry data after vertex transformations into a buffer object to drive additional compute and rendering passes
• four new texture compression schemes for one and two channel textures providing a factor of 2-to-1 storage savings over uncompressed data
• rendering and blending into sRGB framebuffers to enable faithful color reproduction for OpenGL applications without adjusting the monitor's gamma correction
• texture arrays to provide efficient indexed access into a set of textures
• 32-bit floating-point depth buffer support

Aktuelle Grafikkarten unterstützen OpenGL bereits, bis es entsprechende Spiele geben wird, dürfte es wohl noch etwas dauern.