Today at SIGGRAPH, Khronos announced the latest incarnation of graphics API targeted at embedded and mobile development – OpenGL ES 3.0. The new API brings many features that are present in the latest desktop and console APIs such as OpenGL 3.3 and 4 to the vast mobile gaming arena. Some of these exciting features that will be at your disposal include enhanced texturing support, high quality ETC2 / EAC texture compression, full support for integer and 32-bit floating point operations in shaders, occlusion queries, transform feedback, support for multiple render targets and much more. All of these enhancements to the rendering pipeline will accelerate and greatly enhance the visual experience of your content.
The Mali-T600 series of GPUs was designed from the ground up to fully support OpenGL ES 3.0[1]; we will begin to see consumer devices based on this family emerge later this year.
As developers I am sure that you have one question in mind: When can I begin to write games or content with OpenGL ES 3.0? Well, the answer is now! To help support our huge expanding ecosystem of developers, we have announced the availability of a number of different tools to get you up and running on the path to developing some amazing content, quickly.
First off, there is the OpenGL ES 3.0 Emulator. The emulator presents the OpenGL ES 3.0 API to developers on a Windows host and utilizes host GPU to accelerate the rendering, offering you real-time performance. This is ideal for developers wanting to begin playing with the new features and start creating new content ready for when devices become available.
ARM always encourages the use of compressed textures, by doing so not only improves performance but also reduces power consumption. OpenGL ES 3.0 supports a new texture compression format ETC2. The new format now includes many new enhancements over the previous ETC1 format allowing it to be used in more places than were previously possible. New features include higher quality image compression, support for multiple new format, multiple bit depths and alpha channel support. To help support this, we have also released Texture Compression Tool v4.0. The update provides a simple and intuitive user friendly interface to compress textures to the new standard and allows developers to visualize the end product. Being able to preview the end result will allow you to choose the correct options for your particular content and tweak until you are happy with what you see.
You may be thinking... where do I begin? To answer that, we have released the OpenGL ES 3.0 SDK. This is a collection of OpenGL ES 3.0 examples that can be modified for your content, a simple framework that can be integrated into your projects to simplify some tasks and the Emulator to view your creations. Within minutes of downloading the SDK you will be able to see OpenGL ES 3.0 in its glory.
ARM will be showcasing OpenGL ES 3.0 on the latest Mali-T604 hardware at SIGGRAPH along with all of the mentioned tools. If you are in the neighborhood, please visit the booth to see some of the latest demos and content all being accelerated by ARM's Mali GPUs.
To learn more about Mali and download these tools along with many others, visit Malideveloper.com. As always, please provide feedback in our forums.
[1]Product is based on a published Khronos Specification, and is expected to pass the Khronos Conformance Testing Process when available. Current conformance status can be found at www.khronos.org/conformance.