OpenGL is far from dead

WITH ALL the DirectX games hitting the market these days, you'd be forgiven for thinking that poor old OpenGL was as dead as a dodo.

But not so, according to SplashDamage, developers of upcoming FPS Quake Wars. In an interview with Nvidia's Roy 'The Boy' 'Terrific' Taylor, they let on that they think DX10 will get a run for its money.

There has been a complete lack of progress on the OpenGL featureset in the past couple of years, and Splash said that "Hopefully the Khronos group taking control will speed the process up again." Khronos took over the running of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board last Autumn and has managed to get chip-makers like Nvidia to open up DX10-esque hardware features in the OpenGL system. "The extension mechanism has also allowed manufacturers of high end cards to gracefully expose DirectX 10 features on Windows XP," Splash said.

So DX10 features on XP? Does this mean we could see a new wave of games coming out using OGL for maximum market exposure? "[OpenGL] is still the only viable 3D solution for cross-platform development on the PC," we are told, and that includes XP, Vista, Linux and OSX. But that said, it seems unlikely - SplashDamage, and iD Software (which owns the Quake brand) are really the only two major development studios still using OpenGL.

Cross-platform it may be, but Microsoft is putting enough dollars behind Vista that it won't matter in six months time. Indeed, it seems that OpenGL could soon be the stuff of graphics pros and nostalgic dev studios - if it isn't already.

Something exciting for OpenGL programmers.....

OpenGL 2.x and 3.0 APIs arrive this year....
Longs Peak and Mount Evans represent major API upgrade. What is going on with OpenGL right now is very exciting. This year will see two new versions of this venerable API. The first version due in July 2007 is Longs Peak (OpenGL 2.x). This is a major clean-up of the code after almost a decade and a half. Approximately three months after that we will see the release of Mount Evans (OpenGL 3.0) which will run specifically on hardware born after November 8th, 2006. We are talking about DirectX 10-class hardware, bringing all the features of unified 3D architecture to the world of OpenGL. Mount Evans is compatible with Longs Peak, but you will require OpenGL 3.0 class hardware to run everything.

OpenGL 3.0 will offer features such as instanced rendering, stream out of vertex data to a buffer, texture buffer objects, numerous new texture formats and so on. Most importantly the Khronos Group is linking OpenGL and OpenGL ES, a mobile 3D graphics API via COLLADA and glFX, so what is supported in OpenGL 3.0 will see the light of the day in ES version as well.

Programming for PS3?

It is happy to point out that PS3 is not as complicated to write for as we've all been led to believe. Apparently, the machine's use of Open GL as its graphics API means that anyone who's ever written games for the PC will be intimately familiar with the set-up. In fact, PS3 employs a cut-down version named Open GL ES, which is even simpler.

The graphics capabilities of PS3 will be slightly above the absolutely top-end graphics cards on the PC, but you've got much more processing power in the box so you're going to see a lot more physics, a lot more generated geometry. With water ripples, for example - they're pretty much algorithms, you have a flat plane of triangles and you run some sort of mathematical algorithm over it to generate a surface rippling effect - well, you will have the processing power to do these sorts of generated geometry effects On PS3. You could actually put one chip aside just to do that...

Volatile reckon PS3 is going to be much better for HD cinematics than Xbox 360, thanks to its Blu-Ray storage medium. 20 minutes of HD-TV footage takes up around 4.7GB, so an Xbox 360 game would quickly run out of space. This is going to matter more in the coming years as movies and games merge and we see more film elements being brought across to games.

So there you go. PS3 is relatively easy to program for if you have experience with high-end PCs - certainly more straightforward than PS2 with its proprietary graphics APIs. We've also heard lots of talk - from various studios - that Sony's developer support will be a lot stronger with PS3 (it's already much, much better with PSP apparently). Time will tell.

Nintendo plans to sell 35 million Wii Consoles in U.S.

Nintendo plans to sell 35 million Wii consoles in the United States by 2011 or 2012.

Nintendo wants to get close to the success of Sony's PS2, which sold 38.2 million consoles in the U.S.

Clearly Nintendo tanked lots of self-esteem with the runaway success of the Wii console world-wide. Sony has a slower start with the PS3.
Nintendo sold 2.5 million Wii so far in the U.S. Sony stands at 1.3 million PS3 consoles sold.

In 4-5 years I hope that we actually see a new Wii console that is HD and makes good on the hardware performance side of things.

Where is Video gaming industry heading?

The current generation of consoles is so diverse and as a result, video gaming industry is at crossroads. The winner of this three-way race (360, PS3, Wii) will cause a major directional shift in the industry depending on what happens.

If the PS3 wins: consumers will have chosen high technology and media convergence. Future consoles would be more PC-like (just as media PCs are becoming more console-like), and pretty soon PCs and Consoles would be indistinguishable. If this happens, with PCs fighting head-to-head with Consoles for control of the living room, I actually think PCs would win because they're more customizable, upgradeable, and general-purpose. End result would be a resurgence in PC gaming, and a "crash" on the console side.

If the Wii wins: consumers will have sent a strong message to the industry that they want gameplay, not technology. This is so incompatible with Sony's greater market strategy that they would likely drop out of the console market entirely (with SCE perhaps going the way of Sega), while Microsoft would probably continue to position itself as the "mature" gaming console. With the market narrowed to two main contenders, we'd probably see at least one newcomer in 8th generation, and I'd bet at least one company will totally miss the point and try to create a console with a bunch of wacky new controllers that are impossible to create games for. In either case, consoles will move back to being "for games" and this whole "media convergence" thing we keep hearing about will be one more fad that's over.

If the 360 wins: this would show that gamers still care a lot about high production values, but there's also a limit to how much anyone's willing to spend on a game machine. Sony would still probably drop out, Nintendo would continue to be the low-cost leader that it always has, and Microsoft would use the lessons it learned with operating systems to lock down a near-monopoly on console gaming in the following generation.

Design your own games...

Who hasn't wanted to make their own computer games? It's a fantasy many game players hold -- designing levels, programming artificial enemies, and making millions of dollars on your hard work Okay, the money may not be realistic, but we're fantasizing here. Imagine churning out first-person shooters, action horror, third-person adventures, auto racing, outer space shootouts and other games in a matter of minutes. You can do that and more with 3D Game Maker. Focus Multimedia and Dark Basic Ltd. packaged a number of features into their program, making you a game designer in minutes.
Getting Started

3D Game Maker uses a point and click interface to get you up and running. If you've spent countless hours toiling over scripting codes for other games, then you will appreciate its simplicity. The program comes with everything you'll need to make as many playable and exchangeable games as you wish. The purpose of 3D Game Maker is to allow you to customize a game you want to make.

How easy is it? You begin by selecting either beginner or standard mode from the interface screen. The beginner mode doesn't have all the options (such as editing a level or placing objects) that you'll find in the standard mode, but it is the fastest way to learn 3D Game Maker as you go along.

For the truly lazy there is an option to have the program randomly generate a game for you to play. But that takes the fun out of doing it on your own. There are also some pre-made games you can play through to give you some idea of what the software can do.

Next, choose one of eight possible genres (scenes) for you game -- shooter, horror, war, space, driving, jungle, cartoon, or silly. Under each of these categories are pre-made characters, weapons, textures, sounds and more specific to that genre. For example, if you select "space," then you'll only have access to 3D Game Maker's space-related tools (textures, players, levels, etc). Or if you want to make an adventure game, you're offered jungle scenes, animal characters, etc. 3D Game Maker comes with more than 360 pre-made scenes and over 500 3D objects. If that's not enough, users can scan their own images, import 3D models and download free objects from the official 3D Game Maker site. Kiss your free time good-bye.


Now that your scene is selected, you'll add enemies, toss in weapons and obstacles (or power ups), name the game, and play. Characters depend on the genre you select. But these are not the high polygon creations found in today's games. Close your eyes and imagine the early days of gaming. I'm talking about the birth of 3D characters. They're blocky and have graceless movement, but heck they're cute.

The developers went a little insane when offering characters. Yes, there are people such as cops and soldiers, but have you ever wanted to be a killer tomato? This assortment will add hours of fun to the program. An end boss who's an evil kangaroo or marshmallow man is genius. If you don't want to fight a bad guy simply change the game's objective to "collect all pick ups" or something similar.

Final thoughts;
There have always been products spouting how easy they are in creating a game from scratch. 3D Game Maker means it. Without the use of a user manual, I had no trouble making game after game. This may not get me hired at id Software, but I can dream.

Useful info:


Game Type: Game Development
Developer: Dark Basic Ltd.
Publisher: Focus Multimedia
Multiplayer: N/A 3D Card Requirements: 8 MB DirectX Compatible
Minimum System Requirements: Windows 95/98/ME, Pentium II 400 MHz, 64 MB RAM, DirectX 8.0, DirectX-compatible sound card, 4x CD-ROM drive, 600 MB hard-disk space.

G3D 6.10 3D Engine

G3D is a commercial-grade 3D Engine available as Open Source (BSD License). It is used in games, tech demos, research papers, military simulators, and university courses. It can support real-time rendering, off-line rendering, back-end game server management of 3D worlds, and use of graphics hardware for general purpose computing.

G3D provides a set of routines and structures so common that they are needed in almost every graphics program. It makes low-level libraries like OpenGL and sockets easier to use without limiting functionality or performance. G3D gives you a rock-solid, highly optimized base from which to build your application.

G3D does not contain scene graph or GUI routines. Because of this, there is a lot of flexibility to how you structure your programs. The tradeoff is that you have to know more about 3D programming. G3D is intended for users who are already familiar with C++ and DirectX or OpenGL. G3D does not draw widgets by itself. Several good G3D-compatible GUI libraries exist and we recommend using one with G3D if your project has extensive UI needs.

For more info and download Click Here

Video Gaming - A "Million dollar baby"

The video game industry has come a long way since 1966 when Ralph Baer, commonly credited as the inventor of the video game, designed a series of seven prototypes that played several video games.

The first playable video game was one in which two squares chased each other—exciting, huh? The first agreement was signed with Magnavox in 1971 and the first video game system was released in May 1972: Odyssey. Atari would later hit the market in November 1972 with their first PONG arcade game.

Today, the computer and video game industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Sales for U.S. computer and video game software grew 6% in 2006 to $7.4 billion—almost tripling industry software sales since 1996, according to the Entertainment Software Association [ESA]. A number of other statistics that caught my attention:

# The average game player is 33 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.
# The average age of the most frequent game buyer is 40 years old.
# 93% of computer game buyers and 83% of console game buyers were over the age of 18.
# 44% of gamers are age 18 to 49.
# 25% of gamers are age 50 or older.
# 38% of all game players are women.


So, how can one profit from this ever-growing industry?Here are a few companies below that are some of the top players in the video game industry

GameStop Corp. (GME) GameStop Corp. operates as a retailer of video game products and personal computer entertainment software. The company is also the largest reseller of used video games. GME currently operates 4,778 retail stores across North America and Europe. The great thing about this company is that no matter which game console or software titles eventually win out, GME will succeed by selling the most popular consoles and titles in its stores.


Electronic Arts, Inc. (ERTS) engages in the development, marketing, publishing and distribution of interactive software games worldwide. Its software games are playable by consumers on devices such as in-home video game players, personal computers, mobile platforms, including handheld video game players and cellular handsets, and over the Internet and other online networks. ERTS produces one of the most popular video games around—Madden NFL. The PlayStation 2 version sold 1.8 million copies, helping to make the game the top seller of 2006.


Activision, Inc. (ATVI) is a leading international publisher of interactive entertainment software products. ATVI maintains a diverse portfolio of products that span a wide range of categories and target markets and can be used on a variety of game hardware platforms and operating systems. The company’s portfolio of games has been anchored by four key titles: Call of Duty 3, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Tony Hawk's Project 8 and Guitar Hero II.


THQ Inc. (THQI) is a leading global developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software, whose diverse product portfolio caters to every segment of the expanding gaming audience. The company develops its products for all popular console and handheld game systems as well as games for personal computers and wireless devices. As of Mar 31, 2006, THQI had 14 internal development studios located in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada.




Stumble It!

OpenKODE: DirectX for mobile phones!

OpenKODE is like DirectX™ for mobile phones!
Except its an open standard, cross-platform, royalty-free and streamlined for handheld devices
OpenKODE is a set of C-native API's for handheld games and media applications. 2D, 3D, Video and audio media types are all seamlessly accelerated by OpenKODE. OpenKODE minimizes source changes when porting games and applications from phone to phone.
OpenKODE® is a royalty-free, cross-platform standard that combines a set of native APIs into a comprehensive media stack specification for accelerating rich media and graphics applications. OpenKODE aims to make advanced media capabilities consistently available across multiple devices for increased native source portability and reduced mobile platform fragmentation. OpenKODE 1.0 brings together the OpenGL ES and OpenVG Khronos media APIs to provide state-of-the-art acceleration for vector 2D and 3D graphics and provides the new OpenKODE Core API that abstracts operating system resources to minimize source changes when porting games and applications between Linux, Brew, Symbian, Windows Mobile, WIPI and RTOS-based platforms. Subsequent versions of OpenKODE will add the OpenSL ES and OpenMAX media APIs to provide accelerated video and audio that is fully integrated with graphics processing.
For more details Click here

Virtual reality and 3D Programming...

Imagine having a discussion with Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein on the nature of the universe, where their 3-D, life-sized representations looked you in the eye, examined your body language, considered voice nuances and phraseology of your questions, then answered you in a way that is so real you would swear the images were alive.
Technology from computer games, animation and artificial intelligence provide the elements to make this happen. The National Science Foundation has awarded a half-million dollar, three-year grant to UIC(University of Illinois at Chicago ) and UCF(University of Central Florida) researchers to bring those elements together and create the methodology for making such virtual figures commonplace.
EVL(Electronic Visualization Laboratory ) will build a state-of-the-art motion-capture studio to digitalize the image and movement of real people who will go on to live a virtual eternity in virtual reality. Knowledge will be archived into databases. Voices will be analyzed to create synthesized but natural-sounding "virtual" voices. Mannerisms will be studied and used in creating the 3-D virtual forms, known technically as avatars. These "Avatars" would respond to human conversations through actions and voice. A true implementation of 3D techniques.. Isn't it?
More information refer Article in Science Daily

OpenGL ES Full specification...

OpenGL ES working group announced the release of the OpenGL ES 1.1 full specification. This does not cross reference any specifications that of desktop OpenGL 1.5. But, the API itself is not changed and the working group would continue to maintain and publish the older "Difference specification", which was an annotated list of differences between it and desktop OpenGL 1.5. To understand the API, programmers new to OpenGL had to read the 300+ page OpenGL 1.5 specification, cross-referencing against the difference specification to see which features were supported. The new document is entirely self-contained and as it is only about half as long as the desktop specification, it is much easier for OpenGL beginners to read.
Both versions of the specification are available at the Khronos OpenGL ES Spec page

Windows-Mac porting made easy...

There’s no denying that most games are available for Windows PCs long before they come to the Mac platform, though a recent initiative could change this. TransGaming, a developer of software portability products for the electronic entertainment industry, has announced a collaboration with Nvidia, which makes graphics processor technologies, to bring “top tier video games” to Mactels using TransGaming’s Cider portability engine in conjunction with Nvidia’s CgFX graphics system. Cider is a portability engine allowing Windows games to run on Intel-based Macs without any modifications to the original source code. The software works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel-based Mac and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs. Games are wrapped up in the Cider engine to work on the Mac, using the OpenGL API to map Windows Direct3D calls. With Cider, porting becomes a thing of the past since the technology allows a Windows game to run on an Intel Mac without any significant development effort. Cider loads the game directly into memory and executes the code which means it is running directly in Apple's Mac OS X. The game simply relies on Cider's implementation of the Win32 and DirectX APIs instead of those found in Windows. With most modern games using shaders extensively, Cider converts all the DirectX shaders used by the game into the equivalent OpenGL shaders, which in turn rely on the quality of Apple's OpenGL drivers for their performance. In the end, the game play experience is equivalent to the Windows version and, most importantly, the Mac user is given a "Mac experience" and doesn't need to worry about installing any separate technology or Windows.

NVIDIA DirectX 10 Contents...

NVIDIA has released the world's first interactive Microsoft DirectX 10 application, known as the NVIDIA Cascades demo. The Cascades demo allows consumers with NVIDIA GeForce 8-series graphics cards and Windows Vista to experience stunning Direct X 10 graphics features on their computers for the first time.

You can find the Cascades demo at:
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_cascades_home.html

In addition, many of the most anticipated titles of 2007 will be DirectX 10, including Crysis, Hellgate: London, Age of Conan, and Unreal Tournament 2007.

Geometry Shaders

What are Geometry shaders?
A geometry shader can generate new primitives from existing primitives like pixels, lines and triangles.

Geometry shader is executed after Vertex shader and its input is the whole primitive or primitive with adjacency information. For example, when operating on triangles, three vertices are geometry shader's input. Geometry shader can then emit zero or more primives, which are rasterized and their fragments ultimately passed to Pixel shader.

Typical uses of a geometry shader include point sprite generation, geometry tessellation, shadow volume extrusion, single pass rendering to a cube map.




• Input
- Standard primitives- point, line, triangle...
- New primitive types include neighboring vertices
- Line with adjacencyPrimitive Assembly



- Triangle with adjacency





• Output
- Unique output type (independent from input type)- Points, line strips or triangle strips
- Can output zero or more primitives- Generated primitive stream is in the same order as inputted
6Clipping & Rasterization

Windows Vista Fully Supports OpenGL

Hardware-accelerated OpenGL is fully supported on Windows Vista with the Windows Aero compositing desktop user experience - just as with Direct3D.

OpenGL hardware acceleration is handled in exactly the same way in Windows XP and Windows Vista - through an Installable Client Driver (ICD) provided by graphics card manufacturers. Without an OpenGL ICD installed, Windows XP and Windows Vista both revert to rendering OpenGL in software on the CPU rather than using GPU acceleration.

More Info

Presentations from GDC

Want to know whats new in OpenGL 2.1... Here are a few presentations from GDC 2007.
Click here

OpenGL on a new path...

The OpenGL ARB (Architecture Review Board), the governing body for OpenGL, has voted to transfer control of the OpenGL API (application programming interface) standard to the Khronos Group, a member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standard, royalty-free APIs.

The Khronos Group has voted to establish an OpenGL Working Group that will control and evolve the standard for cross-platform 3D graphics with “significantly enhanced participation” as ARB companies join over 100Khronos members involved in creating open standards for dynamic media on a variety of platforms. The full transfer of OpenGL to Khronos is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2006 with full support for OpenGL and its evolution to continue uninterrupted during the transition.

The OpenGL ARB and the Khronos Group have collaborated in the past on consistency in the OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenML, COLLADA and OpenGL SC standards. As a result of this transition all OpenGL-related activities will now occur under the single Khronos participation framework to enable fully-integrated cooperation between these related standards activities so that OpenGL “may form the foundation for a coherent set of standards to bring advanced 3D graphics to all hardware platforms and operating systems,” according to the two companies.

Where am I?

I am currently in a beautiful place called Udupi in south India.

Who am I?

I am a 3D Programmer!

This blog is all about 3d programming and its applications. Make yourselves free and go through the posts on the blog. I am sure you would find it useful. Go through the blog archives and get access to the posts....
Happy blogging!

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