Mobile By Matthew Humphries Mar. 17, 2014 10:24 am
Unless you own a Windows Phone, chances are the games and graphics-heavy apps you use on your smartphone take advantage of OpenGL ES–a subset of the OpenGL graphics rendering API specifically aimed at mobile GPUs.
Today at GDC 2014 the Khronos Group announced a new version of the spec–OpenGL ES 3.1, and it makes the GPU inside your smartphone and tablet much more useful. The aim of the ES spec is to offer a feature set as close to OpenGL 4.4, the current standard on desktop, while at the same time catering to the relatively limited platform offered by mobile hardware.
The biggest new feature in OpenGL ES 3.1 is the ability to use the GPU for general computing tasks. This has been enabled in two ways: compute shaders and indirect draw commands. With compute shaders the GPU can carry out computing tasks previously done by the CPU that are tightly coupled to graphics rendering.
Indirect draw commands open up a lot of potential by allowing the GPU to look at memory instead of the CPU for draw commands. That’s great because as it allows the GPU to do things like carry out a physics simulation in a shader before deciding where objects should be rendered on the screen. The CPU doesn’t need to be accessed, freeing up processing time and using the GPU much more effectively.
Mobile games that take full advantage of OpenGL ES 3.1 are also going to look much better. The shading language has been improved to allow for more modern styles, there’s now the option to use extensions, meaning advanced blending modes and per-sample shading is an option. And texture functionality has been enhanced, allowing for multisample shading and stencil textures, for example.
As well as opening up the graphics options for new games, OpenGL ES 3.1 is backwards compatible with previous versions, meaning developers can update older apps to take advantage of the new features. That is, if your hardware can cope with them.
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Today at GDC 2014 the Khronos Group announced a new version of the spec–OpenGL ES 3.1, and it makes the GPU inside your smartphone and tablet much more useful. The aim of the ES spec is to offer a feature set as close to OpenGL 4.4, the current standard on desktop, while at the same time catering to the relatively limited platform offered by mobile hardware.
The biggest new feature in OpenGL ES 3.1 is the ability to use the GPU for general computing tasks. This has been enabled in two ways: compute shaders and indirect draw commands. With compute shaders the GPU can carry out computing tasks previously done by the CPU that are tightly coupled to graphics rendering.
Indirect draw commands open up a lot of potential by allowing the GPU to look at memory instead of the CPU for draw commands. That’s great because as it allows the GPU to do things like carry out a physics simulation in a shader before deciding where objects should be rendered on the screen. The CPU doesn’t need to be accessed, freeing up processing time and using the GPU much more effectively.
Mobile games that take full advantage of OpenGL ES 3.1 are also going to look much better. The shading language has been improved to allow for more modern styles, there’s now the option to use extensions, meaning advanced blending modes and per-sample shading is an option. And texture functionality has been enhanced, allowing for multisample shading and stencil textures, for example.
As well as opening up the graphics options for new games, OpenGL ES 3.1 is backwards compatible with previous versions, meaning developers can update older apps to take advantage of the new features. That is, if your hardware can cope with them.
More...
