SGI and the OpenGL steering committee ARB (Architecture Review Board) have announced the availability of the OpenGL® 1.3 graphics library specification. The latest release of this industry-leading, platform-independent API (Application Programming Interface) includes new features and functions that further enhance the quality and realism achievable when creating 2D/3D graphics applications. The first OpenGL 1.3 implementations are expected to be available on various platforms by the end of the year.
The new OpenGL 1.3 specification has received input from the independent OpenGL ARB committee as well as from committed external groups representing the prevailing movements in the graphics hardware industry. The ARB’s role in monitoring and guiding OpenGL development includes evaluating and determining which extensions should be incorporated into the API and how they should ultimately be officially supported. For the new specification, a number of additional features and functions have been ratified and the core functionality of the API has been included. These core features extend OpenGL in the following ways:
- Cube map texturing – to support higher quality environment mapping and lighting
- Multisampling – for order-independent, anti-aliased rendering of points, lines and polygons
- New texturing modes – open up more powerful ways to render textures on objects:
- ‘Texture Add Environment’ mode
- texture Combine Environment mode
- texture Dot3 Environment mode
- ‘Texture Border Filtering’ mode
- Compressed texture framework – allows better quality textures to be stored in less memory, regardless of file format.
Since SGI introduced the OpenGL API in 1992, it has quickly become the definitive platform-independent 2D/3D graphics API, and its adoption continues to grow. Applications in areas such as CAD, manufacturing and energy, content creation, entertainment and game development as well as VRML, medical imaging and others will benefit from the innovations.
Fast support for OpenGL 1.3
3Dlabs, Neil Trevett, Senior Vice President of Market Development:
“3Dlabs is the only permanent ARB member developing OpenGL-based silicon for the PC, and we take our responsibility to advance the OpenGL standard very seriously. With the OpenGL 1.3 specification, the cross-platform API gets a valuable further boost to meet new needs that arise in the face of a wide range of professional applications.”
Nvidia, David Kirk, Chief Scientist:
“With OpenGL 1.3, the graphics industry underscores its firm commitment to delivering a premier-class 3D API for developers and graphics applications. By combining OpenGL with our advanced feature set, we can provide developers with a high-quality, high-performance OpenGL 1.3-based real-time solution for a variety of operating systems, including Macintosh, Windows and Linux.”
Sun Microsystems, Fred Kohout, Director of Marketing for Products in Technical Markets: “Sun is very committed to supporting OpenGL for the Solaris operating environment. The 3D API should continue to enable us to bring professional quality graphics to market at affordable prices. Sun anticipates rapid adoption of OpenGL 1.3 and is developing new products for the graphics and visualisation market that take full advantage of the enhanced capabilities of the new version.”
Support for OpenGL 1.3 has already been announced by a number of other companies, including ATI Technologies, Dell, Matrox Graphics and Xi Graphics.
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