During the Games Developer Conference the Khronos Group released new versions of its widely used 2D and 3D graphics API, OpenGL. Besides the expected Version 3.3, they also released OpenGL 4.0.

From 2004 - 2008 there was so little movement from OpenGL that it was practically announced dead, falling badly behind its competitor DirectX. However, since 2008 the responsible Khronos Group has regained its footing and focused on the further development of the graphics specification. In 2008 version 3.0 was released and in 2009 two more releases followed. 3.3 was on the cards for this year's Games Developer Conference, and OpenGL did not disappoint. However, the audience was caught by surprise when the immediate availability of OpenGL version 4.0 was also announced.

According to the Khronos Group, OpenGL 4.0 offers an API to access the most modern hardware features available - putting it on an equal footing with DirectX 11. Up until now DirectX 11 has been far ahead of OpenGL - 3.x was focused on older hardware that was consistent with DirectX 10 (no Tesselation, etc.). Additionally, the press announcement mentions explicitly that the new version was designed with developers in mind, to enable them to create OpenGL-based programs and games significantly faster and more efficiently.

However, the new API is only relevant if there are graphics drivers implementing it: AMD and Nvidia have both promised new drivers soon, and since in both drivers the OpenGL stack for Windows and Linux is almost the same, Linux support for OpenGL 4.0 shouldn't be far behind. It will take longer for open source graphics drivers; the OpenGL implementation Mesa3D does not yet even offer OpenGL 3.x support. However, after a long pause this project started moving quickly again two years ago; at the moment we are seeing new releases on a monthly basis so let's hope support will follow in the near future.

We at credativ would like to see a more transparent process in the Khronos Group - after all, Open Source Services and Support are our main business, and OpenGL is an important part of the Open Source ecosystem. But nevertheless, congratulations on the new release!