OpenGL 3.0 released – programmers disappointed

The third edition of the open API has been introduced at Siggraph 2008. The specifications can be found at khronos.org/opengl. The advantage of OpenGL is that the interface is independent from a platform and thus can be used with Windows, Mac or Linux. All current graphics cards support Open GL 3.0. Although there are many new features, a lot of programmers are disappointed since they miss some things they expected.

The new features of OpenGL 3.0:

• Vertex Array Objects to encapsulate vertex array state for easier programming and increased throughput
• non-blocking access to Vertex Buffer Objects with the ability to update and flush a sub-range for enhanced performance
• full framebuffer object functionality including multi-sample buffers, blitting to and from framebuffer objects, rendering to one and two-channel data, and flexible mixing of buffer sizes and formats when rendering to a framebuffer object
• 32-bit floating-point textures and render buffers for increased precision and dynamic range in visual and computational operations
• conditional rendering based on occlusion queries for increased performance
• compact half-float vertex and pixel data to save memory and bandwidth
• transform feedback to capture geometry data after vertex transformations into a buffer object to drive additional compute and rendering passes
• four new texture compression schemes for one and two channel textures providing a factor of 2-to-1 storage savings over uncompressed data
• rendering and blending into sRGB framebuffers to enable faithful color reproduction for OpenGL applications without adjusting the monitor's gamma correction
• texture arrays to provide efficient indexed access into a set of textures
• 32-bit floating-point depth buffer support