Khronos Releases OpenGL 4.3 Specification

[Cristian_25H]

The Khronos Group today announced the immediate release of the OpenGL 4.3 specification, bringing the very latest graphics functionality to the most advanced and widely adopted cross-platform 2D and 3D graphics API (application programming interface).

OpenGL 4.3 integrates developer feedback and continues the rapid evolution of this royalty-free specification while maintaining full backwards compatibility, enabling applications to incrementally use new features while portably accessing state-of-the-art graphics processing unit (GPU) functionality across diverse operating systems and platforms. The OpenGL 4.3 specification contains new features that extend functionality available to developers and enables increased application performance. The full specification is available for immediate download at http://www.opengl.org/registry/.



Twenty years since the release of the original OpenGL 1.0, the new OpenGL 4.3 specification has been defined by the OpenGL ARB (Architecture Review Board) working group at Khronos, and includes the GLSL 4.30 update to the OpenGL Shading Language.

New functionality in the OpenGL 4.3 specification includes:
- compute shaders that harness GPU parallelism for advanced computation such as image, volume, and geometry processing within the context of the graphics pipeline;
- shader storage buffer objects that enable vertex, tessellation, geometry, fragment and compute shaders to read and write large amounts of data and pass significant data between shader stages;
- texture parameter queries to discover actual supported texture parameter limits on the current platform;
- high quality ETC2 / EAC texture compression as a standard feature, eliminating the need for a different set of textures for each platform;
- debug capability to receive debugging messages during application development;
- texture views for interpreting textures in many different ways without duplicating the texture data itself;
- indirect multi-draw that enables the GPU to compute and store parameters for multiple draw commands in a buffer object and re-use those parameters with one draw command, particularly efficient for rendering many objects with low triangle counts;
- increased memory security that guarantees that an application cannot read or write outside its own buffers into another application's data;
- a multi-application robustness extension that ensures that an application that causes a GPU reset will not affect any other running applications.

"Developer feedback has been key to creating a faster, more capable API that meets emerging needs, such as providing a secure platform for GPU-accelerated web applications using WebGL and compute shaders that harness GPU parallelism for advanced computation," said Barthold Lichtenbelt, working group chair of the OpenGL ARB and director of Tegra graphics at NVIDIA. "NVIDIA released beta OpenGL 4.3 drivers today, so developers can immediately use this new functionality on NVIDIA desktop GPUs." (More information at http://www.nvidia.com/content/devzon...river-4.3.html)

[Nokiacrazi]

Forgive me for being ignorant, but does this, at the end of the day, mean better graphics?

[TheMailMan78]

Originally Posted by Nokiacrazi

Forgive me for being ignorant, but does this, at the end of the day, mean better graphics?

It means more AMD cards just broke.

[pigulici]

Why?

[TheMailMan78]

Originally Posted by pigulici

Why?

AMD driver support for OpenGL sucks for consumer cards. AMD will "update" the driver to support the new standard and break it in the process.

[Ikaruga]

Great! Multi-draw looks interesting.

[RejZoR]

Originally Posted by TheMailMan78

AMD driver support for OpenGL sucks for consumer cards. AMD will "update" the driver to support the new standard and break it in the process.

AMD cards support OpenGL 4.2 like forever. Not that there are bunch of OpenGL games but those that are from the Carmack's den work just fine on AMD cards. Doom 3, Quake 4, Rage, everything worked perfectly fine. So i don't know where you see awful OGL support or massive problems with it...

[pigulici]

Hmm, my Photoshop CS6 it is working well with hd7850 , on opengl...

[tehehe]

I wonder if ETC2 / EAC texture compression is patented just like S3TC is. If so, it makes it useless...

[TheMailMan78]

Originally Posted by RejZoR

AMD cards support OpenGL 4.2 like forever. Not that there are bunch of OpenGL games but those that are from the Carmack's den work just fine on AMD cards. Doom 3, Quake 4, Rage, everything worked perfectly fine. So i don't know where you see awful OGL support or massive problems with it...

Photoshop, Mudbox, Maya were all broke about one driver past. They just NOW fixed it on the last update. Also Carmack apologized during his Keynote at Quakecon for the crappy driver support and optimization for Rage on the PC.

The entire reason I recently went NVIDIA after 15 years of ATI/AMD is because the last few AMD drivers broke OpenGL and I needed it for work. TPU's own Crazyeyes almost went NVIDIA because of the broken drivers. Only reason he didn't is because they fixed them the last update. I make my money with OpenGL support so I couldn't wait.

[Drone]

That's a good news for Linux and mobile platforms (Open GL ES 3.0 also updated). Also for Intel integrated graphics which promise more and more open source support for linux

[RejZoR]

Originally Posted by TheMailMan78

Photoshop, Mudbox, Maya were all broke about one driver past. They just NOW fixed it on the last update. Also Carmack apologized during his Keynote at Quakecon for the crappy driver support and optimization for Rage on the PC.

The entire reason I recently went NVIDIA after 15 years of ATI/AMD is because the last few AMD drivers broke OpenGL and I needed it for work. TPU's own Crazyeyes almost went NVIDIA because of the broken drivers. Only reason he didn't is because they fixed them the last update. I make my money with OpenGL support so I couldn't wait.

You do realize these are consumer grade cards? For professional work you have FirePro cards that have higher QA. And higher price. I also don't know what has Carmacks apology to do with anything. Had no problems with Rage on my Radeon...

[TheMailMan78]

Originally Posted by RejZoR

You do realize these are consumer grade cards? For professional work you have FirePro cards that have higher QA. And higher price. I also don't know what has Carmacks apology to do with anything. Had no problems with Rage on my Radeon...

You don't have to use a FirePro for basic Photoshop rendering.

[RejZoR]

You don't, but they also don't provide any special support for it either...

[Katanai]

Originally Posted by Nokiacrazi

Forgive me for being ignorant, but does this, at the end of the day, mean better graphics?

It could mean. Anyway, I'm also not pleased with the way graphics are evolving at the moment. And it's all the fault of game companies, the hardware is progressing, the software, like you can see here, also, the games, well...

[baggpipes]

Monopolies are bad... I hate how some people think there need to be just directX... Just like Nvidia fan boys always get any opportunity to feel superior....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbovJbKALzA

[Arctucas]

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=366802

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by baggpipes

Monopolies are bad... I hate how some people think there need to be just directX... Just like Nvidia fan boys always get any opportunity to feel superior....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbovJbKALzA

lol, agree, you're damn right
they have been brainwashed by those brand images

[Steevo]

Ermahgerd ohphengeellll fur pont free!!!!!


Bettar mak ah drivur fur u.


*** Following is a list of applications that benefit from this new specification ****












































Thank you.

[95Viper]

I like, either, AMD or NVidia... both have worked for me...

But, dam*, you gotta give 'em credit. NVidia is fast...

NVidia OpenGL Driver Support

Windows driver version 305.53 and Linux drivers version 304.15.00.02 provide beta support for OpenGL 4.3 and GLSL 4.30 on capable hardware.

OpenGL 4.3 Driver Release Notes

You will need any one of the following Fermi or Kepler based GPUs to get access to the OpenGL 4.3 and GLSL 4.30 functionality:
Quadro series: 6000, 600, 5000, 410, 4000, 400, 2000D, 2000
GeForce 600 series: GTX 690, GTX 680, GTX 670, GT 645, GT 640, GT 630, GT 620, GT 610, 605
GeForce 500 series: GTX 590, GTX 580, GTX 570, GTX 560 Ti, GTX 560 SE, GTX 560, GTX 555, GTX 550 Ti, GT 545, GT 530, GT 520, 510
GeForce 400 series: GTX 480, GTX 470, GTX 465, GTX 460 v2, GTX 460 SE v2, GTX 460 SE, GTX 460, GTS 450, GT 440, GT 430, GT 420, 405