Khronos releases OpenGL 4.5

Important stuff:
ARB_direct_state_access - improved API for almost everything. Hopefully this is the only way to do things in OpenGL NG (unless they come up with something even better).
ARB_clip_control - finally allows inverse floating point depth buffer on OpenGL. Without this floating point depth was useless. Long wait, but finally here.
ARB_texture_barrier - makes pinpoint rendering faster. No need to change RTs and can use the same buffer for read and write safely (but doesn't allow overdraw inside a single shader, so no generic programmable blending).

KHR_blend_equation_advanced:
This is basically a hardcoded set of blending equations (driver adds these to the end of a pixel shader). Two modes... non-coherent can be easily implemented manually by shader code + ARB_texture_barrier, so it is totally useless. The coherent version needs "PixelSync" or similar GPU synchronization barrier inside the shader. However I fail to understand why they didn't expose the GLSL pixel synchronization barrier instead and allowed us to write custom blending formulas instead of using 15 preprogrammed ones. It's funny how they even have internal debate in the standard document how they should implement color dodge and burn (http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/KHR/blend_equation_advanced.txt). Proves my point perfectly. Give us custom blending please! Every hardware supporting the coherent KHR_blend_equation_advanced should be able to do programmable blending.

 

Finally DSA is here!

Can't wait to "clean up" my current code base and see how/if it improves performance over time!

 

Please tell us your progress.

A reflexion on OGL NG.
Khronos has had a surprisingly fast reaction to Mantle/DX12
We will end with two APIs that seem brothers instead of cousins? DX12 and OGL NG.

 

Osamar, will do. I am not able to tackle the major rendering systems yet, but just cleaning up the screen shot code got rid for 1/3rd of the code and made it much more readable..
Currently the biggest "obstacle" is that none of the major search engines have yet crawled the updated specs, but generally it is a joy to finally be able to use it

And I know that Groovounet is hard at work using DSA at Unity, so hopefully he will be able to post comparisons of speed as well as his take on it..

 

I moved the OpenGL NG related posts to the OpenGL NG thread: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=65484.