Recently the open-source AMD OpenGL driver “RadeonSI” enabled OpenGL threading by default for the “glthread” option that has long been opt-in on a per-game/app basis. Along with that has been a number of glthread-related improvements to this code that punts executing OpenGL calls to a separate CPU thread. The Zink OpenGL-on-Vulkan driver has now unconditionally enabled OpenGL threading too.

Mozilla Firefox 94 will begin using EGL back-end for the Linux desktop to support bringing better performance, lower power usage, and other benefits.

Microsoft’s latest contribution to Mesa is an EGL implementation that changes Mesa’s WGL front-end code to allow a Windows EGL implementation with a WGL driver for EGL. This Windows EGL support is merged for next quarter’s Mesa 21.3 release.

In this blog from Collabora, Erik Faye-Lund brings us up to date on upstream development, OpenGL 4.6 support, OpenGL compatibility profile, OpenGL ES 3.1 support, Lavapipe and continuous integration, Windows support, macOS support and more…

In this Collabora blog post, Rohan Garg explores the new, low overhead extension in Mesa allowing OpenGL and Vulkan applications to talk to each other, bringing more flexibility to application developers while easing the transition path between the industry-standard Khronos APIs.

Built to power a new generation of game development tools, Ultra App Kit provides an easy-to-use C++ programming SDK for creating desktop GUI applications. Ultra App Kit GUI renders in retained mode rather than immediate mode, and is specifically designed for desktop GUI applications. This makes applications snappy and responsive when resizing or refreshing a window, with DPI scaling for resolution-independent graphics on any screen.

Ultra App Kit programs can be combined with an embedded OpenGL viewport, or a 3D game engine. An OpenGL tutorial is provided in the documentation.

A long time, OpenGL tutorial website, ogldev.org, has recently established a new YouTube channel dedicated to OpenGL tutorials. Join Etay Meiri and learn OpenGL today!

This blog from Igalia follows the team’s effort in improving performance of the V3DV Vulkan driver for the Raspberry Pi 4. The blog explores the optimizations the team recently did to their backend compiler, the results, and future work.

Vivid3D C++, is a brand new 3D engine and IDE from Vivid Software.

It is 100% open source, and funded through public means. It has a custom UI called “Resonance2”. It supports scripting through Python, which is unique as most engines use C++ or C#. Click here to be taken to the GitHub page, where you can clone the engine. VIVID3D uploads updates frequently.

The engine uses AssImp 5.0 to allow it to import over 40+ 3D formats, including texture maps.

https://github.com/pysgames/Vivid3D

The GSN Composer is a free online tool for node-based visual programming. It is especially intended for educational purposes, such as computer graphics courses and tutorials.

The built-in shader editor allows rapid prototyping of GLSL shaders. Importantly, the created GLSL code is generic and can be used directly in other OpenGL/GLSL applications. Custom data for the shader’s UNIFORM and IN variables can be easily supplied via the visual interface, which is the main advantage compared to other web-based shader editors.

The shader editor was now upgraded to WebGL2 and supports GLSL ES 3.0 code. WebGL2 allows shaders with multiple render targets (MRT). For each additional OUT variable in the shader code, the interface automatically creates a corresponding output image. This facilitates G-buffers and deferred shading. Furthermore, examples for physical-based rendering (PBR) and HDR environment lighting are provided.

Collabora has been working with Microsoft on their D3D12 mapping layer. We’re excited to share that we have recently passed the OpenGL 3.3 conformance tests and have upstreamed the code in Mesa 3D! Also, I’m happy to report that Microsoft has released their compatibility pack that uses our work to provide OpenGL (and OpenCL) support. Photoshop can now run on both Windows on ARM CPUs! This is exciting to see high-profile applications like that benefit from our work!

Zink has announced that it now supports OpenGL 4.5 over Vulkan with Mesa 21.1.

Naivi have used the MoltenVK layered implementations of Vulkan functionality over Metal, a part of the Khronos Vulkan Portability Initiative, to port their NAP real-time performance engine from OpenGL to Vulkan to ship on Windows, Linux AND macOS. Naivi discovered that Vulkan apps run just as well on macOS as they do on Linux and Windows, avoiding the need for a dedicated Metal backend. Switching to Vulkan dramatically improved render-times for NAP’s Mac users, as well as providing a significant performance boost on Windows and Linux. The article concludes “Vulkan does feel like the future of graphics.”

xVision has released an update to version 2.00, which brings full compatibility with version 11.51 of X-Plane and the Vulkan API.

The xVision utility enables the user to manipulate shaders and alter the way X-Plane’s visual enhancements appear. Users of xVision 1.X would have noticed that when using the Vulkan API to render visuals, many of the shaders had little to no effect on X-Plane and their experience. With 2.00, xVision now supports shader tweaks for both Vulkan and OpenGL.

Panfrost, the open source driver for Arm Mali Midgard & Bifrost GPUs now provides non-conformant OpenGL ES 3.0 on Bifrost and desktop OpenGL 3.1 on Midgard. Panfrost’s desktop OpenGL support is native, reducing CPU overhead. Applications can now make use of the hardware’s hidden features, like explicit primitive restart indices, alpha testing, and quadrilaterals.