Cloud Imperium Games developer Ali Brown indicated that Star Citizen will be dropping DirectX support in favor of Vulkan. Specifically, Brown mentioned that CIG had been developing on DX11, with an intent to support DX12. However, because Vulkan enables single-API support for older version of Windows (and Linux) without sacrificing performance and features, the plan now is to move away from DirectX completely.

NVIDIA graphics driver for Windows version 378.66 is now offering some OpenCL 2.0 support. From the release notes: “New features in OpenCL 2.0 are available in the driver for evaluation purposes only.” Some known issues include: The current implementation is limited to 64-bit platforms only; OpenCL 2.0 allows kernels to be enqueued with global_work_size larger than the compute capability of the NVIDIA GPU. The current implementation supports only combinations of global_work_size and local_work_size that are within the compute capability of the NVIDIA GPU; For executing kernels (whether from the host or the device), OpenCL 2.0 supports non-uniform ND-ranges where global_work_size does not need to be divisible by the local_work_size. This capability is not yet supported in the NVIDIA driver, and therefore not supported for device side kernel enqueues.

Intel announces that they are moving from beta support to full official support for the Vulkan API (version 1.0.33.0) on Windows going forward.

Earlier this week, at the Microsoft Windows 10 Event in New York, Microsoft shared their vision around 3D for everyone. As part of achieving that vision Microsoft announced they are joining the 3D Formats working group at Khronos to collaborate on its GL Transmission Format (glTF).

NVIDIA is rolling out the world’s first production Vulkan drivers today as part of the Android 6.0 Marshmallow OTA update to SHIELD Android TV. This makes SHIELD Android TV the first consumer platform with production installed Vulkan drivers – making it an ideal platform for Android developers to get easy access to this new-generation graphics API This continues NVIDIA’s rollout of Vulkan drivers across multiple platforms, including Windows 7-10, desktop and embedded Linux and now Android.

LunarG, Inc. announced the release of the first Vulkan Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows® and Linux operating systems. The SDK includes the resources developers need to get started creating the next generation of 3D graphics applications.

The Khronos Group today announced the ratification and public release of the OpenVX™ 1.0.1 specification, a maintenance update to the open, royalty-free standard for cross platform acceleration of computer vision applications. OpenVX 1.0.1 integrates bug fixes and clarifications resulting from feedback from working group members and the wider industry implementing and using the specification. OpenVX enables performance and power-optimized computer vision processing, especially important in embedded and real-time uses cases such as face, body and gesture tracking, smart video surveillance, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), object and scene reconstruction, augmented reality, visual inspection, robotics and more. In addition to the OpenVX conformance tests and Adopters Program launched in late 2014, Khronos is now shipping an open source, fully-conformant CPU-based implementation of OpenVX 1.0 that runs on Linux, Android or Windows. The full OpenVX 1.0.1 specification and details about the sample implementation are available at www.khronos.org/openvx.

The Intel GPA now includes an expanded Frame Analyzer for OpenGL ES that includes performance optimization functionality. Developers can also run the System Analyzer and Platform Analyzer applications to analyze Android targets (Intel or ARM architecture) running OpenGL ES v1.0-3.1 from Windows 7/ 8.1 hosts as well as from Apple OS X 10.7, 10.8 or Ubuntu 12.04 or 14.04 host systems.

Matrox C-Series PCI Express x16 graphics cards are designed with AMD GPUs featuring DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.4 and OpenCL 1.2 compliance.

Recent research shows that WebGL is now supported on more devices than Flash. It’s the bigger platform. In fact, WebGL powered HTML5 is now the largest platform on the planet for interactive browser graphics. Now that WebGL is available on IE and Safari as well, we should see WebGL become even bigger. Long live WebGL!

MontageJS has introduced a new WebGL-based component for the MontageJS framework. The 3D view component for MontageJS offers an abstraction layer for WebGL and aims to make the individual elements of a 3D scene just as easy to manipulate as conventional HTML elements in the page DOM. If your browser has WebGL enabled, you can try out a demo here. The MontageJS 3D view component is designed to load and display glTF content. The COLLADA working group provides Mac and Windows open source converters to translate COLLADA files into glTF.

Windows 7 users will enjoy the benefits of Internet Explorer 11, including WebGL, starting on today. IE11 for Windows 7, available for download in 95 countries, includes the same performance, security and stability improvements that Windows 8.1 has enjoyed the past few weeks. WebGL is supported giving developers more flexibility to create highly visual sites. IE11 also supports HTML5 drag-and-drop as well as device awareness — so a web developer can create a site that knows the orientation of the device it’s running on.

The Intel SDK for OpenCL Applications 2013 Release 2 now supports Microsoft Windows 8.1, as well as Intel Atom Z3000 Series ( formerly “Bay Trail”) Platforms. Designed for visual computing applications, the SDK continues to support the full OpenCL 1.2 standard on 3rd and 4th generation Intel Core processors, helping developers harness the hardware acceleration capabilities of Intel Iris and Intel HD Graphics. Download a free copy of Intel SDK for OpenCL Applications 2013 R2.

PCMark 8 now includes support for Windows 8.1 and some cleaned up OpenCL options.

At at IBC this year, AMD demonstrated a 4K CinemaDNG workflow for Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve 10 color-grading. Using a Supermicro 7047GR-TRF SuperWorkstation to run four AMD FirePro W-series graphics cards, the GPU-accelerated workflow relied on Blackmagic’s OpenCL support for Windows and Mac to enable real-time playback of CinemaDNG.