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With the upgrade to IE 11’s core, Windows Phone 8.1 will similarly be gaining WebGL compatibility this year as it is released. Meanwhile Microsoft’s cascading browser development plan for Windows Phone means that Internet Explorer 11 is only now being ported over to Windows Phone through the release of Windows Phone 8.1. This is finally changing on Safari for iOS 8, which will see WebGL support enabled on what’s historically a very conservative platform for Apple. This past year has seen WebGL support on the desktop finally become ubiquitous with the launch of Internet Explorer 11, and now the mobile world is nearing the same with the impending releases of Apple’s iOS 8 and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8.1.Ĭommonly a laggard when it comes to OpenGL support, Apple has supported WebGL for the past couple of versions of desktop Safari, however they are among the last of major browser developers to not support WebGL on their mobile browser. The web-friendly/web-safe version of OpenGL has been complete for a while now, but it has taken some time for browser developers to implement support for it in to all of the major browsers.
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Meanwhile on the WebGL front, Khronos is happy to report that WebGL support is nearing ubiquity. OpenGL 4.5 is being released today as a final specification, and based on prior experience we expect to start seeing desktop GPU implementations of it later this year. This primarily involves situations where the context is being switched amongst multiple threads from the same application. Flush Control on the other hand sees limited command flushing being handed over to applications, allowing them to delay/avoid flushing in certain cases to improve performance with multi-threaded applications. Direct State Access allows objects to have their state queried and modified without the overhead of first binding those objects in other words, bindless objects. Meanwhile from a development standpoint OpenGL 4.5 will bring with it support for Direct State Access and Flush Control. preventing a GPU reset affecting any other running applications). Finally OpenGL 4.5 is also implementing further robustness requirements, these being primarily targeted at improving WebGL execution by enhancing security and isolation (e.g.
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The APIs continue to have their corner cases where similar features are implemented differently, with the addition of Direct3D emulation features simplifying porting by offering versions of these features that adhere to Direct3D’s implementation requirements and quirks. Khronos intends for OpenGL to remain a superset of OpenGL ES, and by doing so allowing OpenGL devices to run applications targeting OpenGL ES, and for OpenGL ES developers to do their initial development and testing on desktops as opposed to having to stick to OpenGL ES-only devices.Įlsewhere OpenGL 4.5 is also adding some further Direct3D 11 emulation features to improve the ability to port between the two APIs. In the case of OpenGL ES, OpenGL 4.5 brings the two APIs back in alignment by updating the API to match the changes from this year’s release of OpenGL ES 3.1. The bulk of these changes have to deal with API alignment, with Khronos making changes to better align OpenGL with OpenGL ES, WebGL, and Direct3D 11. To that end OpenGL 4.5 will see a small but important set of feature additions to the standard. By continually updating OpenGL in such a fashion Khronos has been able to respond to developer requests relatively quickly and integrate features into the OpenGL core as policy/standard issues are settled, however on the broader picture it does mean that as OpenGL 4 approaches maturity/completeness, these features do become a bit more niche as the major issues have since been solved.
OPENGL 4.4 UPDATE UPDATE
As has become customary for Khronos, they are issuing their yearly update for OpenGL 4 at SIGGRAPH, further iterating on the API by integrating some additional features into the OpenGL core standard. Kicking things off, we’ll start with the announcement of the next iteration of OpenGL, OpenGL 4.5. This week will see Khronos delivering news about all of their major OpenGL initiatives: OpenGL, OpenGL ES, and WebGL, taking to the show to announce a new version of their core graphics API while also delivering updates on recent advancements in its offshoots. As the biggest graphics event of the year this show has become the Khronos Group’s favorite venue for delivering news about the state and development of OpenGL, and this year’s show is no exception.
OPENGL 4.4 UPDATE PROFESSIONAL
Taking place this week is SIGGRAPH 2014, the graphics industry’s yearly professional event.