Google’s new Android Extension Pack and OpenGL ES 3.1 are supported in the upcoming Android L release. The Android Extension Pack is a set of extensions to OpenGL ES which provides features like tessellation to improve the detail of geometry rendered onscreen, and geometry shaders which can also be used to add detail to what is rendered onscreen as well as to add shadows to a scene. The Android Extension Pack also includes support for compute shaders, and Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC).
Xilinx, Inc recently released the Vivado Design Suite 2014.1, the industry’s only SoC-strength development environment. This release extends the automation of the UltraFast design methodology and delivers an average of 25 percent faster runtimes and 5 percent improvement in performance across all devices. Also new to 2014.1 is hardware acceleration of OpenCL kernels, within Vivado High-Level Synthesis (HLS).
Help Khronos get a more interesting WebGL widget on Khronos.org and maybe even win a prize by entering the WebGL Widget Contest. We will choose the coolest widget that best shows off WebGL technology. Then we’ll post the winning entry on the Khronos website with a link back to the winner’s website, and the winner will receive a Mali-based device from ARM. The winner will be announced at our WebGL BOF at SIGGRAPH.
Adobe has launched Photoshop CC 2014, a new full-point update that extends the software’s GPU-accelerated Mercury Graphics Engine, and expands its blur effects and Smart Objects functionality. All three new tools are powered by the GPU-accelerated Mercury Graphics Engine, expanded in the update to improve performance on other image-editing tasks: Adobe promises image upsampling is “up to 15 times faster”.
CL3VER Viewer 2.1 improves 3D visualization of CL3VER presentations in most browsers—with IE in Windows XP being shown as the odd man out. CL3VER works with both Flash and WebGL. When you try to access a CL3VER 3D scene from your browser, it recognize the browser version and provides a Flash or WebGL scene automatically.
Blue Marble Geographics announced the release of the Global Mapper Software Development Kit (SDK) version 15.2. This interim release features a significant improvement in the organization and quantity of online data, new functionality for transforming LiDAR point clouds, and support for several new 3D model file types, including COLLADA .dae format.
The new version of Internet Explorer IE11 improves WebGL performance and adds support for instancing extension, 16-bit textures, GLSL builtin variables, and triangle fans. Microsoft notes its Khronos WebGL Conformance Test score has improved from 93 percent to 97 percent.
The Khronos Toronto Chapter will be holding their next meetup on Thursday July 10 on Yonge street in Toronto at the Uken Games Office. From the meetup page “Those who’ve tried out the iOS8 update were met with something truly remarkable: WebGL is enabled by default in Mobile Safari. With Apple finally on board, we now have support from ALL major desktop and mobile browsers.” Spacing is limited, so if you are interested in attending, please signup soon!
Samsung gave a talk on using WebCL in HTML5 gaming at the last “Next Game Frontier” event in France last March. The video from this talk is available online.
Vivante Corporation announced multiple silicon partner integrations of its GC7000 Series GPU IP into SoCs targeting wearables, mobile, automotive, and 4K TV products. GC7000 supports the newly released OpenGL ES 3.1* API and hardware TS/GS/CS (tessellation / geometry / compute shader) extensions for Android. Product is based on a published Khronos OpenGL ES 3.1 Specification, and is expected to pass the Khronos Conformance Testing Process. Current conformance status can be found at www.khronos.org/conformance.
The Khronos OpenGL ES Working Group is pleased to announce the launch of the OpenGL ES 3.1 Adopter Program. The program gives participants access to the OpenGL ES 3.1 conformance test, and allows them to submit implementations for conformance certification. The OpenGL ES 3.1 conformance test builds on the latest version of the ES 3.0 test, which includes greatly enhanced shading language coverage contributed by drawElements Ltd. It adds eighteen new test categories covering the new features of ES 3.1, including compute shaders, image and buffer object load/store, atomic operations, and indirect drawing. In addition to the conformance test, the working group has released updated API and shading language specifications, containing many corrections and clarifications.
More information about the Adopter program can be found in the Adopters’ Agreement and the . The updated specifications are available in the Khronos OpenGL ES Registry.
The WebGL Workshop London Meetup Group will be holding a WebGL meet-up in London on August 28th 2014. At this month’s meet-up they will finish the rotating dice in raw WebGL, then do the same in Three.js and Babylon.js for comparison.. Held at the SkillsMatter on Goswell Road London, there are a few prerequisites. Check it out, and if you can make, please be sure to reserve your spot.
The WebGL Workshop London Meetup Group will be holding another WebGL meet-up in London on June 26th 2014. At this month’s meet-up they’ll be looking at how WebGL can be employed to visualise your data. Held at the SkillsMatter on Goswell Road London, there are a few prerequisites. Check it out, and if you can make, please be sure to reserve your spot.
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!
AMD joined other exhibitors at the International Workshop on OpenCL with a unique demonstration. Developed by the AMD FirePro team, the AMD Waterfall demo featured an FTS Celsius R930 Workstation with the AMD FirePro W9100 and a 4K monitor. Designed to showcase OpenCL and OpenGL interoperability, in the waterfall particle simulation, the solution computed the collision of each particle in order to roll it along the rocks. IWOCL 2014 presentations are available for download from Agenda & Slides from 2014 | IWOCL.