OpenGL 1.2 Spec Ratified

On Tuesday, Silicon Graphics and other members of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB) announced the ratification and availability of OpenGL 1.2. Although the new 2D and 3D graphics API won't make it to platforms until late this fall, the new features and specifications for the language shows some changes in the industry due to the demand and development of new and more powerful hardware. Platforms already supporting OpenGL include Windows 95/NT, Linux, MacOS, BeOS, Solaris, and others.

The ARB is composed of companies that include Digital Equipment Corp., Evans & Sutherland, Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Intergraph Corp., Microsoft (yes, this does say Microsoft), and Silicon Graphics. These companies evaluate which extensions should be officially supported and incorporated by the API.

These extensions enhance OpenGL in the following ways:

Improved Visual 3D Quality:- Separate Specular Color: Enables more realistic highlights by allowing a specular color to be displayed on textured objects

- Texture Coordinate Edge Clamping: Avoids blending texture borders and textured pixels

Improved Performance:- Packed Pixel Formats: Packed 8/16/32-bit pixel format types reduce color converting, use less memory, and allow images to load more quickly

- Normal Rescaling: Automatic rescaling of vertex normal speeds geometric operations

- Texture Level of Detail: Conserves texture memory by enabling subsets of MIP-map levels to be loaded as required

- Vertex Array Enhancements: Enables operations on a specified sub-range of a vertex array, allowing optimizations such as caching and pre-transformation of geometries

- Improved Windows Support: Increased performance and functionality under Windows 9X/NT

New Capabilities and Functionality:- Three Dimensional Texturing: Support for 3D textures enables hardware acceleration of volume rendering

- Optional Imaging Feature Set: Addresses the growing role of imaging in 3D graphics and is the first optional feature set ever included in OpenGL