Vulkan is here!

 Posted on February 18, 2016  |  Sascha

Khronos finally launched Vulkan 1.0! After 18 months of hard works and a huge industry-wide collaboration, this is a huge success. And this is not only an API-launch, but a hard launch with drivers for Vulkan from NVidia, AMD, Intel, etc. on mulitple platforms. My launch contributions Some time ago I was invited to be a part of the Vulkan Advisory Panel board. So I actually got a head-start and also released some Vulkan related stuff to the public on launch day. [Read More]
vulkan 

Vulkan specification complete, release imminent

 Posted on December 19, 2015  |  Sascha

Great news! The Khronos Vulkan Working Group just announced that the specification is complete (and has entered the legal review process) and the release is imminent. Though the initial time frame of 2015 was missed (by a bit), this should mean that Vulkan will be ready for launch in early 2016. This will include SDKs for all supported platforms, production ready drivers from several IHV, resources, tools, demos, examples and much more. [Read More]
vulkan 

Vulkan related works

 Posted on December 14, 2015  |  Sascha

In case you don’t follow me on twitter or aren’t watching my github repositories, I’ve been working on Vulkan related stuff over the last few months. And with Vulkan’s release approaching it’s time for a short summary on what I plan on release upon or shortly after launch of the new graphics and compute API. Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer As with OpenGL and OpenGL ES I’ll also do a Vulkan Hardware Capability viewer (github). [Read More]
vulkan 

Introducing gpuinfo.org

 Posted on October 11, 2015  |  Sascha

Aside from playing around with a certain new API, I’ve also been working on the web front end OpenGL and OpenGL ES hardware database. Though I redid the visual side of both some time ago they differed too much for my taste and especially the OpenGL ES database was lacking lots compared to the OpenGL one. No live search, bad visuals (especially for the reports), lacking compare features and much more. [Read More]
opengl  opengl-es  gpu-info-org 

Vulkan from the POV of a hobby 3D developer

 Posted on August 13, 2015  |  Sascha

As there have been lots of new information on Vulkan, Khronos’ new graphics and compute API I decided to do a little write up of the new API from a hobby 3D developer’s point of view. Although I’ve been writing games, demos and applications with OpenGL for roughly 15 years now I still consider myself a hobby developer in terms of 3D graphics. My job is not depending on pushing pixels, maxing out draw calls or swizzling shader commands, and most of my work on 3D (primarily OpenGL) is done during my spare time (mostly late at night). [Read More]
vulkan 

Status update

 Posted on July 7, 2015  |  Sascha

Just as the last blog post is starting to collect dust (time flies by oO) : I’m still doing lots of 3D development during the late hours in my spare time, still with C++ (Visual Studio rocks :) ), but most of that development is done under an NDA so that’s the main reason I haven’t been updating this blog lately. Other than that I’ve also been working on a dungeon crawler prototype using modern C++ (C++11/14) and modern OpenGL (4. [Read More]
dungeon-crawler 

Parallax offset mapping with WebGL

 Posted on May 6, 2015  |  Sascha

Years ago I wrote a demo showcasing different normal mapping techniques with Delphi, but never got around cleaning up the source and releasing it. While working on my WebGL dungeon crawler prototype I dug out the old code, cleaned it up and ported it over to WebGL, so you don’t need a compiler to see it in action and play around with it. Parallax mapping uses an additional heightmap (together with a normal map) to add more depth to flat surfaces depending on the current camera angle. [Read More]
webgl 

Geometry instancing with WebGL 2

 Posted on April 25, 2015  |  Sascha

WebGL, based on OpenGL ES, brings hardware accelerated OpenGL to your browser, and version 2.0 is around the corner (specs). I’ve been playing around with WebGL (via JavaScript) for some time now (see my GitHub WebGL repo) and recently Google’s chrome (canary) got WebGL 2 support. WebGL 2.0 adds some interesting new features, with geometry instancing being one of them, so I sat down and wrote a small demo that shows how to render the same instance of a single mesh with differing shader attributes using instancing and only one drawcall : [Read More]
webgl 

Using OpenGL ES on windows desktops via EGL

 Posted on April 19, 2015  |  Sascha

OpenGL ES is an embedded version of OpenGL mostly used on mobile devices that offer only limited GPU capabilities compared to modern desktop GPUS. Introduction Thanks to android, OpenGL ES is very widespread, and as WebGL is also based on OpenGL ES (2.0), chances are pretty high you’ll get into contact with OpenGL ES at some point during your 3D development efforts. And at some point you may want to prototype your OpenGL ES applications on a desktop system (windows, linux, mac), or just distribute a desktop version of your mobile game using OpenGL ES. [Read More]
opengl-es  tutorial