OPENGL 4.3

I recently started programming in OpenGL so i decided to post an update on the latest version of OpenGL released by Khronos group on August 6th, 2012.

The latest version is OpenGL 4.3. The new feature list includes:

• compute shaders that harness GPU parallelism for advanced computation such as image, volume, and geometry processing within the context of the graphics pipeline;
• shader storage buffer objects that enable vertex, tessellation, geometry, fragment and compute shaders to read and write large amounts of data and pass significant data between shader stages;
• texture parameter queries to discover actual supported texture parameter limits on the current platform;
• high quality ETC2 / EAC texture compression as a standard feature, eliminating the need for a different set of textures for each platform;
• debug capability to receive debugging messages during application development;
• texture views for interpreting textures in many different ways without duplicating the texture data itself;
• indirect multi-draw that enables the GPU to compute and store parameters for multiple draw commands in a buffer object and re-use those parameters with one draw command, particularly efficient for rendering many objects with low triangle counts;
• increased memory security that guarantees that an application cannot read or write outside its own buffers into another application’s data;
• a multi-application robustness extension that ensures that an application that causes a GPU reset will not affect any other running applications.

This post is not only to update you readers about OpenGL but to renew interest in fellow programmers about the API. The growing DirectX influence in the 3D graphics market and Microsoft's massive marketing campaign has resulted in a mighty blow to OpenGL's popularity. I have no hate against DirectX but OpenGL in no way is inferior to DirectX. Both API's have their own capabilities and applications and no one can underestimate the capabilities of any one.

So, All my programmer readers, Try OpenGL and stay TUNED.