This presentation from August 30, GDC Mobile Europe gives an overview of the Khronos Embedded API family - a complete and coherent, royalty-free platform for media acceleration. For OpenGL ES in particular, a growing infrastructure of tools and platforms are creating the world’s largest opportunity for games developers. Already a large percentage of popular JSR 184 engines use OpenGL ES for hardware acceleration. But that there is an opportunity for platforms with native application support to offer significantly higher 2D/3D performance. Finally it discusses how Collada 1.4+ based tools will allow assets and shaders to be conditioned for real-time delivery - including adapting content specifically to the capability of different platforms without losing key asset data.
The OpenVG technical presentation from Siggraph 2005 reviews the API pipeline and parameters. It covers rasterization, sissoring, masking, blending, dithering and image manipulation. Sample code is given for each.
Hybrid Graphics has released Win32 binaries of their OpenVG 1.0 Reference Implementation. The package includes the OpenVG DLL, header files and a sample project. This can be used for validation purposes but is not suitable for development use. Khronos Members can download the source files from the OpenVG Working Group Folder in the Members Only area.
To make it easier for developers and Khronos Members to work together on developing new OpenGL ES and OpenVG applications, we have added options for message board digests and RSS new feeds. Digests are email messages sent to you daily or weekly with summary of posting on your topics of interest. This means you don’t have to explicitly visit this site to see what conversations are going on. RSS feeds provide the titles and summaries for recent topic posting in each message board. Using any RSS savvy web browser or news reader you can scan posting from several message boards in one window, be notified when there are new postings, and use a bookmark to search postings for specific terms.
COLLADA is an interchange format between content creation and 3D processing tools that can be used to create a production pipeline. The Collada presentation from Siggraph 2005 is a comprehensive overview of what Collada does, what it is used for and how it works. The presentation also gives information about the upcoming Collada v1.4 including Collada FX, Collada Physics, Conformance testing, and reconfigurable production pipelines using the Collada DOM with Asset Tags and Conditioners.
- Collada FX allows interchange of complex, multi-pass shader effects, for multiple platforms, for both fixed-function (e.g. OpenGL ES 1.X) and programmable-pipelines (e.g. OpenGL ES 2.X)
- Collada Physics provides an API independent description of basic rigid body and jointed models including collision bounds, and sence partitioning
- The Collada Conformance Suite ensures that developers create reliable, high quality exporters and importers for all DCC applications
- The Collada DOM offers a way to read, write and validate files, handle asset management and develop Conditioners (modules to process subsets of 3D assets) to create a framework that allows users to reconfigure their own production pipelines using standard tools
Falanx Microsystems announced their new Mali200, a fully programmable graphics and media acceleration core for mobile phones that will take full advantage of OpenGL ES 2.0. It offers sophisticated 3D graphics that go beyond Shader Model 3.0, along with advanced DSP and general multimedia acceleration via OpenGL ES and OpenVG. It uses a single-pipeline 2D/3D/Video IP rasterizer core to deliver 2D/3D acceleration, 16X Full Scene Anti-Aliasing, smart texture filtering & compression and 30fps video recording and playback. Mali200 is designed for use in any multimedia device requiring high performance and low power, such as mobile phones, personal media players and laptops. This scalability is further enhanced with support for OpenGL ES 2.0, which is designed to bring desktop quality OpenGL to set-top boxes, auto navigation systems and even state-of-the-art game consoles such as the PLAYSTATION 3. In a related announcement, Falanx will work with Zoran Corporation to deliver the Mali technologies to mobile phones in the second half of 2006.
ATI announced that it will work closely with developers to maximize the functionality of its Imageon hardware for programmable shaders in OpenGL ES 2.0. “The beauty of OpenGL ES is that by leveraging the graphics processor, developers can have the flexibility of programming their own shaders to create the kinds of effects that until now end users could only experience on their PCs.”
The International Mobile Gaming Awards sponsored by NVIDIA, Nokia, Alias and Orange is a unique opportunity for OpenGL ES developers, to get assistance with developing a professional game for publication and prizes. The competition works in two phases: Phase 1 due Oct 17th, is for the developer to submit a proposal for the production of a game or a pilot. An international jury will select 20 projects that will then receive tools and technical assistance to develop the game further. The finished games will enter a second competition ending on 10th February 2006. On 15th February, four final winners will be announced. Grand Prize is $10,000 and a publishing contract in Europe.
Can’t make it to Siggraph, but want to know what is going on with the Khronos APIs? The Powerpoint presentation (converted to PDF) from the BOFs at Siggraph 2005 is now online. It reviews in detail each of the newly released or announced embedded APIs and tools for authoring and acceleration. This includes detailed information about the OpenML open source ML SDK, OpenGL ES 2.0, the OpenGL ES Shading Language, OpenGL ES 1.1 Extention Pack, OpenGL SC 1.0, EGL 1.2 and Collada. (5 MB pdf)
Several analyses have appeared online regarding the OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenSL ES announcments at Siggraph. EE Times and Tom’s Hardware help clarify what the new APIs do, how they work, and how they will impact the market.
Khronos has publicly released the OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1 Extension Pack, EGL 1.2 and OpenGL SC 1.0 specifications. OpenGL ES 2.0 combines a version of the OpenGL Shading Language for programming vertex and fragment shaders that has been adapted for embedded platforms, together with a streamlined API from OpenGL ES 1.1 that has removed any fixed functionality that can be easily replaced by shader programs. The OpenGL ES 1.1 Extension Pack collects together a number of optional extensions in one specification to extend OpenGL ES functionality for fixed function hardware. OpenGL SC 1.0 removes functionality from OpenGL ES 1.0 that is not required for safety-critical applications such as avionics and automotive instrumentation displays to minimize implementation and safety certification costs. Read Release.
Khronos has publicly released the OpenVG 1.0 royalty-free, open standard for low-level 2D vector graphics. OpenVG enables hardware acceleration of libraries such as such as Flash and SVG, enabling high-quality, anti-aliased, scalable 2D vector graphics and fonts on embedded and handheld devices with highly interactive performance and low levels of power consumption. Khronos will release details of an OpenVG 1.0 Adopter’s Program in the second half of 2005, including a Conformance Testing Program enabling conformant products to use the OpenVG trademark ensuring that conformant OpenVG implementations provide a reliable, cross-platform 2D graphics programming platform. OpenVG has also been designed
to seamlessly interoperate with OpenGL ES 3D graphics using EGL 1.2. Read Release.
Khronos has announced the formation of the new OpenSL ES (Open Sound Library for Embedded Systems) working group to define an open, royalty-free, cross-platform API (application programming interface) standard to enable low-level audio hardware acceleration across multiple embedded devices and platforms. he goal of OpenSL ES is to define an application-oriented audio API tuned for embedded systems, standardizing access to hardware acceleration features such as 3D positional audio and MIDI playback. OpenSL ES will provide a fully cross-platform foundation for a wide range of higher-level audio APIs, including JSR-234, and will enable easy porting of game and applications of across multiple platforms and audio devices. Read Release.
The COLLADA project has elected to join Khronos to further their work as an open standard under Khronos’ open participation process and royalty-free intellectual property (IP) framework. COLLADA stands for “COLLAborative Design Activity” and defines an XML-based schema to enable 3D authoring applications to freely exchange digital assets without loss of information - enabling multiple software packages to be combined into extremely powerful tool chains. Read Release.