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OpenGL successor Vulkan will level up the gaming industry
A successor to OpenGL, the open source graphics library that stands as a direct rival to Microsoft’s DirectX 12 library and Apple’s Metal, has been named by The Khronos Group, a consortium of schools and businesses tasked with maintaining OpenGL and OpenCL.
That name is “Vulkan” and the new open source 2D and 3D graphics API will expand the portfolio of OpenGL to mobile platforms.
OpenGL has been the standard library of a multitude of high-end gaming and graphics software projects for over a decade since its debut in 1992. Games that include OpenGL that readers may be familiar with include all of Blizzard Entertainment’s titles such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft 2, and Diablo 3, and all of Id Software’s games. It is estimated half of all current AAA titles run on OpenGL as a standard graphics library for cross platform compatibility.
According to Vulkan’s creators the new library is designed to provide direct control over GPU operation while minimizing overhead, take advantage of multi-threading-friendly architecture, and is designed with cross platform in mind including mobile, desktop, consoles, and embedded platforms. The impetus behind the project is to provide a highly portable library for developers to jump on board, compile, debug, and test for the expanding variety of devices and displays on the market.
Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve Games, has even thrown his support behind the project.
“Industry standard APIs like Vulkan are a critical part of enabling developers to bring the best possible experience to customers on multiple platforms,” says Newell. “Valve and the other Khronos members are working hard to ensure that this high-performance graphics interface is made available as widely as possible and we view it as a critical component of SteamOS and future Valve games.”
This announcement represents the culmination of glNext or the “Next Generation OpenGL initiative,” which is a redesign effort around OpenGL and OpenGL ES to unify the two projects into one project. The announcement of this project finalization is scheduled for Thursday at GDC 2015 where representatives of Valve, Epic Games, Oxide Games, Unity Technologies, and The Khronos Group will speak.
More details on the project are available on the Vulkan website.
image via Anandtech.com
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