On Monday, Silicon Graphics and the OpenGL Architecture Review Board made up of twelve members including Apple unveiled OpenGL 1.5 to the public. Sporting the new OpenGL Shading Language 1.0 and Vertex Buffer Object technology, version 1.5 will have many of the new features that OpenGL 2.0 will be based upon. Here is a brief summary of what's new in 1.5:

The OpenGL 1.5 specification evolved with input from the OpenGL ARB -an
independent consortium- and interested participants to reflect predominant trends in the graphics industry. The ARB's process of enhancing OpenGL includes jointly developing specifications of features proposed by ARB members, to be incorporated and officially supported within the API. In OpenGL 1.5, several additional features and functions have been ratified, including the following:

* Vertex Buffer Object: vertex arrays for higher performance
rendering
* Shadow Function: additional comparison functions for shadow
mapping
* Occlusion Query: asynchronous occlusion test for better culling
* Non power-of-two Textures: for more efficient use of texture
memory, including mipmaps
* OpenGL Shading Language v. 1.0: as official extensions more
specifically, shader objects, vertex shaders, and fragment shaders,
all for use of programmable shader hardware

Introduced 11 years ago by SGI, OpenGL is the premier environment used by software developers to create interactive 2D and 3D visual applications for computer systems ranging from consumer PCs to graphics workstations and supercomputers. OpenGL is the industry's only graphics API with support for virtually all operating systems.

OpenGL

OpenGL 1.5 Press Release

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