Already supported by production browsers from Google and Mozilla, the WebGL 2.0 standard is final and now ready for developers to create the next wave of 3D web applications and engines. WebGL 2.0 exposes OpenGL ES 3.0-class functionality, bringing desktop-OpenGL capabilities to web developers everywhere. Additionally, Khronos has now started work on the next generation of WebGL to bring the power of the new generation of explicit 3D APIs to the Web. More information on WebGL 2.0 is available in the Khronos Blog.
Mali Graphics Debugger (MGD) library loading has been integrated into Unity so developers can quickly and easily use MGD to profile OpenGL ES applications. MGD also supports debugging of graphics applications developed with Vulkan.
The PowerVR architecture is quick to support the latest technologies, and the Vulkan API is a case in point. Follow Imagination as they walk through a comparison of OpenGL ES and Vulkan.
Intel now has drivers certified for the most advanced versions of all three open industry-defined 3D graphics APIs on Linux: OpenGL 4.5, OpenGL ES 3.2 and Vulkan 1.0. OpenGL 4.5 certification was announced 3 February 2017 on the Khronos Group’s Conformant Product page.
With the release of Firefox 51, WebGL 2.0 support has landed! WebGL is a standard API to render 3D graphics in the Web. To date, we have been able to use WebGL 1.0 (based on OpenGL ES 2) to render fancy graphics into a <canvas> element. WebGL 2.0, however, is based on the OpenGL ES 3.0 specification, which introduces new features – many of them aimed at increasing performance and visual fidelity.
Imagination Technologies announced PowerVR ‘Series8XE Plus’ GPUs this week. The Series8XE Plus GPUs include support for the latest APIs including OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 1.2, Vulkan 1.0 and OpenVX 1.1.
There’s a new stable release of the GTK+ multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs), versioned 3.22.6, which promises to work better with OpenGL ES 2.0, the standard for embedded accelerated 3D graphics.
Shaderific version 4.1 is now available. Shaderific is an educational app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch that makes it possible to write, compile and test OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenGL ES 3.0 shader programs directly on any iOS device. Version 4.1 adds full support for iOS 10. Furthermore, the release includes a new shader for Conway’s Game of Life that demonstrates the use of the newly introduced custom uniforms. The cell size can be determinded and shadow effects can be enabled to provide a variety of beautiful rendering options. To provide full flexibilty to the user Shaderifc now supports importing Game of Life patterns in the form of text files. The patterns are automatically converted to textures that can be used as start configurations.
HoloJS is a framework for creating UWP applications using JavaScript and WebGL. HoloJS is a C++ library that hosts Chakra to run JavaScript code, and also hosts ANGLE to handle OpenGL ES graphics calls.
In the high-level test, the Adreno 540 GPU scored 41.4 fps (Offscreen) in Manhattan 3.1 OpenGL ES 3.1, 61.8 fps (Offscreen) in Manhattan OpenGL ES 3.0, and 114.9 fps (Offscreen) in T-Tex OpenGL ES 2.0. The scores suggest the new Adreno 540 GPU is around 30% more powerful than the Adreno 530 GPU inside the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821.
The Mali Graphics Debugger allows developers to trace Vulkan (1.0), OpenGL ES (1.x, 2.x, and 3.x), EGL (1.4), and OpenCL (1.x) API calls in their application and understand frame-by-frame the effect on the application to help identify possible issues.
GStreamer is a set of libraries and plugins that are used by certain multimedia apps for playing music or video streams on a GNU/Linux distro. New features include implementation of Vulkan API support on the next-generation Wayland display server, as well as OpenGL and OpenGL ES improvements.
The biggest new feature of Mesa 13.0.0 is OpenGL 4.4 and OpenGL 4.5 capability. Equally big news includes OpenGL ES 3.2 support for Intel Skylake or later, OpenGL ES 3.1 support for Intel Haswell, Windows-DRI support to the GLX component, as well as KHR_no_config_context and EGL_KHR_debug support for EGL component. The Mesa EGL interface also received support for EGL_MESA_platform_surfaceless.
The Vulkan-enabled ARM Mali-G51 graphics processor extends new Bifrost architecture to mainstream devices to enable more compelling user experiences. The ARM Mali-G51 also supports OpenGL ES 3.2 and OpenCL.
