RenderDoc 1.5 has been released. Changes include: SPIR-V reflection and disassembly has been refactored to be more reliable and is based on the publicly available grammar json; Vulkan has a new replay-time optimisation which takes advantage of the above replay options dialog; OpenGL has a low-memory optimisation to defer copying initial contents of textures and buffers that are rarely modified; Support for twenty-one (21) Vulkan extensions have been added; Support for fifteen (15) OpenGL extensions have been added along with whitelisting of some OpenGL ES extensions that were already supported. A complete list of changes and improvements is available in the Latest release notes.
Basemark GPU 1.2 adds iOS and macOS to our list of already supported operating systems: Android, Windows, and Linux. We include OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan 1.0, DirectX 12 and Metal. With the new features in Basemark GPU 1.2, you will be able to analyze and compare the 3D graphics performance of smartphones, tablets, notebooks, Windows and Linux desktop PCs, etc.
Neil Trevett, the president of the Khronos Group, presented at the X.Org Developers’ Conference for the first time. During his presentation on October 2nd 2019 he covered the usual Khronos initiatives, how Khronos engages in open-source and open standards, and related information. Phoronix has done a short write-up on Neil’s talk.
NVIDIA is still investing in their OpenGL driver stack and have added new multi-GPU/SLI functionality to their driver. Complementing the WGL_NV_multigpu_context extension from July is now the GLX_NV_multigpu_context extension catering to Linux GLX windowing system users. See more extensions in the Khronos OpenGL Registry.
With the release of virglrenderer 0.8.0, getting accelerated OpenGL within a virtual machine (VM) made a big leap forward. One specific aim was to support hosts that support only OpenGL ES to a point that within the VM guest also OpenGL 4.3 applications can be run. An aim that was fully achieved as we can now run games like Alien Isolation within qemu on certain devices that support only OpenGL ES 3.2 and a number of extension.
The Khronos Group BOF day is today, July 31. For those folks that really wanted to catch some of the BOF Day sessions, but couldn’t make, we have it covered for you. Starting at 9AM PT, the morning livestream will start on YouTube. The afternoon sessions will be on a second afternoon livestream also on YouTube. Learn more about the Khronos Group BOF Day and all of the various sessions on our SIGGRAPH 2019 event page.
SIGGRAPH is next week! The conference is July 28-August 1. For those going, Khronos will be hosting several Birds of a Feather sessions. For all those folks that will not be present, we will be offering live streaming of all our sessions (glTF, WebGL, OpenXR and Vulkan) on the Khronos Group YouTube Channel, and will follow up with recorded video the following week. For complete details on all the sessions, please ask your friends and co-workers to take a look at our SIGGRAPH event page! A special thanks to our Title sponsor NVIDIA, Beer Sponsor LunarG, and Demo sponsor Cesium, for making possible the Khronos Networking Reception at the end of the day.
Intel has released their 26.20.100.6861 graphics drivers. OpenGL has been bumped to 4.6, which adds an extension to use Vulkan’s SPIR-V shaders in OpenGL. Vulkan has been given four new extensions: VK_EXT_depth_clip_enable, VK_EXT_host_query_reset, VK_EXT_scalar_block_layout, and VK_KHR_shader_float16_int8. The OpenCL kernel compile times have been reduced.
LLVM 2019 wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, and some of the presentations are now rolling out. For a list of Khronos related session, visit our event page. For a complete list of presentations, please visit the LLVM website.
As part of our optimisation work, we have added Vulkan support to the game. We have been able to do this not only for Beyond, but for the current live version of the game. OpenGL has been replaced by Vulkan. Many players, particularly players with AMD graphics cards, should see a performance improvement. Read on to learn more about Vulkan and VR announcements.
Arm Mobile Studio provides free tools for tracing OpenGL ES, Vulkan and OpenCL API calls, to help you optimize application performance and system resources. Learn more at the Arm Webinar on April 23. The webinar will be made available online after the event.
Akash Kuttappa has posted an in-depth review of glTF updates coming out of GDC 2019. The review covers Mozilla Hubs and Spoke, Adobe Dimension and glTF, Facebook and glTF, Google
, Microsoft and glTF, and more. Each review includes a ‘Showcase’ and ‘Looking forward’ section. Read the blog.
Radeon GPU Analyzer (RGA) is thte AMD offline compiler and integrated code analysis tool, supporting the high-level shading and kernel languages that are consumed by DirectX 11, Vulkan, OpenGL and OpenCL, including HLSL, GLSL, the OpenCL kernel language, and SPIR-V. Along with support for Vulkan in the RGA GUI, the biggest new feature in RGA 2.1 is a new analysis system that lets you obtain the GCN machine ISA and hardware resource information, using the compiler in the running driver that you have in your system. Learn more on the Radeon GPU Blog from AMD.
Khronos will be holding their Annual GDC Developer Day Sessions on March 19th in Moscone West Room 2020. The complete schedule is available online:
glTF and WebGL - 10:00am – 11:00am
OpenXR – State of the Union – 11:20am – 12:20pm
Vulkan – State of the Union - 1:20pm – 2:20pm
Making Use of New Vulkan Features – 2:40pm – 3:40pm
Bringing Fortnite to Mobile with Vulkan and OpenGL ES – 4:00pm – 5:00pm
Ubisoft’s Experience Developing with Vulkan – 5:30pm – 6:30pm
Running all day March 18-19 will be the Khronos OpenXR Table at VRDC. Finally on March 20th starting at 6:30pm, there will be the annual WebGL/WebVR Meetup to be held in Galvanize. In past years there were over 200 people attending with only standing room and people being turned away. If you want to get in, show up early. This event will be live streamed on the Silicon Valley WebGL group on Facebook.
