Posted 08/15/08 at 09:27:23 AM by Chris Moody

The ink was hardly dry on the Khronos Group's August 11th announcement that they released the OpenGL 3.0 API specification, when Nvidia releases beta drivers supporting the standard. These new drivers implement the OpenGL 3.0 API and the GLSL 1.30 shading language for both Windows XP and Vista on selected GeForce and Quadro videocards. This isn’t totally unexpected since Nvidia is a member of the Khronos Group

“OpenGL 3.0 is a significant advance for graphics standard and we’re proud that NVIDIA has played a major role in developing it,” said Barthold Lichtenbelt, Manager, Core OpenGL Software at NVIDIA and chair of the OpenGL working group at Khronos. “OpenGL 3.0 will be a first-class API on both GeForce and Quadro boards. Shipping drivers two days after this new specification is released demonstrates our strong commitment to the OpenGL developer community and our partners who rely on the standard.”

There has been much speculation on how the OpenGL 3.0 API will compete with DirectX 10. Some truly great games were made with previous OpenGL API specs like Far Cry, any of the Quake series, Starsiege: Tribes, and the original Half-Life. These games are pretty long in tooth, and newer games have been made with Direct X, including the engine that drives Valve's Source engine.

We can look forward to developers putting out some new games in the future using this standard. With all they accomplished with OpenGL 2.1, I am pretty excited about what’s coming.

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news, nvidia, OpenGL, Direct X 10, Khronos Group

Posted 07/15/08 at 12:00:35 PM by Will Smith

We had an opportunity to speak with id co-founder John Carmack after the big EA press conference yesterday (where id surprisingly announced a partnership with EA to publish Rage). We grilled the legendary game developer (and part-time rocket scientist) about id's post-apocalyptic shooter, the state of gaming graphics, and what his plans are after id Tech 5. Rage looks be a drastic departure from the traditional id FPS, not only in gameplay style (open worlds with vehicles vs. claustrophobic indoor environments) but also in the way Carmack has designed the code-base. id has already announced that Doom 4 is in development (no publisher has yet been annonced), and Carmack confirmed that it'll run at 30Hz and run with several times the graphics power as Rage, a 60Hz game. 

Click through to read our extensive interview and find out what John Carmack thinks about DirectX 10!

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quake, gaming, interview, E3, Rage, OpenGL, id software, e3 2008, john carmack, quake live, doom 4, id tech 5

Posted 08/10/07 at 12:22:27 PM by Mark Soper

Gamers love Fraps screen and movie capture software, but now Fraps is a handy utility for every Windows user.

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news, windows xp, Windows Vista, DirectX, FRAPS, screen capture, movie capture, OpenGL