If the ARB had big problems with Cg then what was the purpose of today's press release regarding the ARB? To wit:
In addition to worldwide developer support, members of the OpenGL(R) Architecture Review Board (ARB) working group gathered to help define the OpenGL shading language voted unanimously in favor of NVIDIA making a full language specification proposal based on the Cg Language Specification. Next month, NVIDIA will open source the NVIDIA Cg Compiler technology under a nonrestrictive, free license, making the Cg compiler code available to university researchers, programmers, console manufacturers, independent hardware vendors, and other interested parties.
"From developers, hardware companies, middleware and tool vendors -- the interest in Cg has been enormous," said Kurt Akeley, creator of OpenGL and a graphics architect at NVIDIA. "We are delighted that the OpenGL ARB shading language working group has unanimously agreed to review our forthcoming proposal for a Cg based high level shading language."
First Cg Implementations Demonstrated in NVIDIA Booth #8110
Having embraced Cg since its introduction, the digital content creation (DCC) developer community has worked quickly to incorporate Cg into their current development plans. Working directly with NVIDIA to speed their implementations, top content creation software vendors including Alias|Wavefront, Discreet and Softimage will be demonstrating their first Cg implementations publicly for the first time in the NVIDIA booth #8110 at SIGGRAPH. The first Cg-based offerings will be available to DCC customers in upcoming versions of Alias|Wavefront Maya(R), Discreet 3ds max(TM), and Softimage SOFTIMAGE|XSI.
"The industry response has certainly validated the need for a higher level shading language," said Dan Vivoli, vice president of marketing at NVIDIA. "After the first Cg announcement, the traffic on our Web site jumped to six times its normal activity level in the first 24 hours, with nearly a half a million requests to download the toolkit in the first month."
In addition to the aforementioned leading developers, a host of other independent software vendors are actively taking advantage of NVIDIA technology to implement the Cg programming language. Digital Immersion Software Corp., an industry leader in photo-realistic product communication, today announced Presenter 3D(TM) version 1.1 for Autodesk Inventor(R) with real-time rendering made possible with Cg. Aimed squarely at simplicity of operation to increase the mechanical computer-aided design engineer's productivity, this new Cg-infused version of Presenter 3D plugs directly into Autodesk Inventor.
Interactive Data Visualization (IDV), a developer of real-time nature tools for film, video and game developers, is also debuting its Cg-enabled SpeedTree product line during SIGGRAPH 2002. By rapidly integrating Cg into their OpenGL graphics engine in the days following Cg availability, IDV was able to deliver compelling special effects, such as realistic swaying trees, adjustable wind, dynamic shadows and running water on a very tight development schedule.
, Rendermonkey details and more details on the 9700 can be seen here:
