OpenGL

Angle, a Google graphics project for Windows computers, has passed an important certification milestone that could improve some browsers' graphics.

Google launched Angle in March 2010 as a way to help the fortunes of WebGL, the nascent 3D graphics technology for browsers. And yesterday, Google programmer Vangelis Kokkevis announced Angle has been certified to pass the OpenGL 2.0 certification test suite.

WebGL provides a low-level graphics interface that mirrors the OpenGL standard used on Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android, but that's still a second-class citizen on many Windows machines. Windows comes with Microsoft's rival standard … Read more

Believe it or not, we still have our jobs after welcoming Jim Lanzone, CBS Interactive president, on yesterday's show. Go back an episode and listen for a rare opportunity to hear someone make fun of Jeff. Cheers, Jim!

Today we're going over some of the stories that we didn't get to talk about yesterday, including Google's latest OpenGL project. The platform that Google tested using Google Earth is once again put to use on the Google Infinite Digital Bookcase, a helix of virtual books you can browse in a 3D model.… Read more

Monotype Imaging is bringing its font-rendering software a step into the future with hardware acceleration features it expects will help improve readability, add fancy features such as 3D, and offload work from mobile devices' main processors.

The company, while perhaps best known for creating and licensing typefaces, also has a business selling software that lets printers print the text and devices such as e-book readers display it on screens. It's this last category where the company offers its iType product, and the new version 5.0 announced today adds the new hardware acceleration features.

iType 5.0 draws upon … Read more

The nonprofit Khronos Group standards organization announced a new specification this week for OpenGL 4.2, which brings new graphics functionality to the what's considered to be the most widely adopted cross-platform 2D and 3D graphics API.

OpenGL 4.2 includes specs for enhancing pixel rendering, geometry and efficiency in memory storage and bandwidth, as well as a lot of other very technical specs. In short, OpenGL 4.2 makes graphics looks better across multiple platforms and gives developers a consistent set of APIs to work with.

Neil Trevett, vice president of mobile content for Nvidia, said there were … Read more

Mozilla has answered Microsoft's concern that WebGL raises too many security risks with the observation that Microsoft itself has accepted the same risks with 3D interface technology coming with its own Silverlight browser plug-in.

WebGL, a new standard from Khronos Group, lets Web programmers add hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web with an interface that mirrors the OpenGL ES 2.0 standard used among other places in Android and iOS devices. WebGL opens up online possibilities such as virtual worlds and graphically rich games, and it's built into Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome today.

Microsoft, though, … Read more

Hardware acceleration has become the holy grail of browser development in the past year, as the technology to increase browser performance by tapping graphics cards to help with Web site rendering has advanced from the theoretical to the practical. Despite Opera being a longtime developer and advocate of hardware acceleration standards, and the first major browser maker to demonstrate hardware acceleration in use, no publicly released version of Opera included the technology--until today.

Opera 11.50 (direct download) is a rough alpha, unstable, not for daily use, and limited to Windows computers, but it does have hardware acceleration. This means … Read more

When it comes to graphics performance in OS X, Apple has taken the conservative approach and focused on compatibility and stability in drivers instead of including the cutting-edge and highly tweaked drivers and graphics systems that bring the best quality to performance-related applications like games.

This compatibility-based approach may be good for productivity applications to prevent potential crashes, but has kept Apple behind when it comes to gaming performance. For awhile this was not an issue, but the recent release of Valve's "Steam" client for the Mac along with a few other gaming titles have not only … Read more

Khronos Group, the industry consortium that develops OpenGL, announced a new version of the graphics interface on Monday that it hopes will compete better with Microsoft's DirectX--and that could get a boost from 3D Web technology.

OpenGL 4.1, released just a few months after OpenGL 4.0, is an interface that programs can use to tap directly into a variety of graphics hardware. It's the 3D interface of choice for Mac OS X, Linux, and many 3D design applications, but when it comes to the biggest consumer market, games, DirectX rules the roost.

OpenGL 4.1 adds … Read more

In a move that could keep ties with online games programmers strong, Adobe Systems is adding 3D graphics support to a coming version of its widely used browser plug-in.

The move is an important advancement for Flash, a software foundation that eases programmers' difficulties with incompatibilities among various operating systems and browsers. And it'll come none too soon: Flash is under siege by a host of Web standards, and part of that work focuses on 3D Web graphics.

The 3D plans came to light on an agenda for the Adobe Max conference in October. "Join Sebastian Marketsmueller, Adobe … Read more