Qt with threaded OpenGL support.

Here's a pretty exciting news for developers. Qt, the cross-platform application and user interface framework, is available in version 4.8.0 under fedora 16. The new Ot has the threaded OpenGL support. Under Fedora 16 , we have the development packages:

(1/2): libXv-devel-1.0.6-2.fc15.i686.rpm                 |  38 kB     00:00     
(2/2): qt-devel-4.8.0-0.23.rc1.fc16.i686.rpm             |  10 MB     00:03 

We expect developers will use this functionality to create new graphics applications.

3D engine for Java developers

Who wants to write 3D games that run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android ?
If you are a Java developer and you want do that , then use jMonkeyEngine framework jME).
The engine is written in Java and uses LWJGL for OpenGL access.
It is a high-performance, 3D scenegraph-based graphics API with state-of-the-art features.
The jME3 is completely open-source under the BSD license and it is free to use it.
You can find documentation, help and a nice community around JME and jMonkeyEngine.
jMonkeyEngine Homepage
Wiki
Forum

China will launch first 3D television channel in January

The Internet brings us news about 3D television, in a region less than expected - China.

Beijing: Television viewers in China can expect a totally different viewing experience as the country's hopes to launch its first 3D television channel Jan 1, 2012, the government has announced. The TV channel will go into official operation during the Lunar New Year Festival in late January, Xinhua reported.

Read more on this site.

Construct 2 Release r68

This is just a new visual tool for HTML5 game development.
Construct 2 is an program that lets you make games .
Also seam is not programming required...
The development team show us a video and let us to see that.
You can download this from here.

OpenACC new standard ...

OpenACC is a new standard for parallel programming developed by NVIDIA.
The GPU Computing and Parallel Computing PGI Accelerator directives are the basis of the OpenACC standard.
Most people do not know hardware issues, it is still necessary for them to know the evolution of technology in the field of 3D.
Here's a demo video about this technology.

Illyriad’s 3d Town rough demo with WebGL

The team development of Illyriad game try to use webgl API.
The result is a rough and ready demo.
The team tee us about this demo :
It’s very rough, not optimized and currently only runs on Chrome [working in all browsers that support WebGL is our priority]; but that’s kind of the point – its a technology tester to ensure we weren’t making a mistake.
I saw the screenshots and videos , but on my laptop the demo give me some errors.
The beginning is good , I hope will see in the future a good game, not just only a demo.
You can read more on this site.

3-D Simulations of Nova Explosions

On October 20, 2011 sciencedaily web site announced that:
Scientists at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. BarcelonaTech (UPC) have for the first time simulated critical phenomena.
Novae are cataclysmic stellar phenomena. This new study solving an enigma that has puzzled stellar astrophysicists for over half a century.
This simulations is maked with the MareNostrum supercomputer after 150,000 hours of calculation.
You can read more about this on article.

WebGL benchmarks by Stephen Bannasch.

You can try the new update of Stephen Bannasch benchmarks.
Stephen tell us about new features:

I've updated my benchmark page comparing matrix libraries useful for webgl programming with newer versions of some of the libraries:

- closure to svn rev: 1364
- glMatrix to 1.0.1
- tdl to commit: 59d484f, Fri Jun 3 2011
Also you can download the source code for these benchmarks.You can be found here on github.

HoloDesk the future of 3D.

The HoloDesk uses a half-silvered mirror and a Kinect sensor to “see” objects in 3D.
This device is created by Microsoft, a research project out of the Sensors and Devices group at Microsoft Research Cambridge.

You can get more infos about this project: HoloDesk - Direct 3D Interactions with a Situated See-Through Display

3Defy - transform your photos into 3D photos.

3Defy is a great demonstration of the most recent in Flash programming.
This is a site that lets you add 3D effects to 2D photos that you upload or link.
You can try to create your 3D images using modeler from here.
Upload your image and use Select for your face or Erase fro background.
Use mouse wheel to increase or decrease the active area.

Use Save or Share buton to use it.

Let's see the result ...

Nice !

X3DOM - part 001.

What is X3DOM?
The official website gives us the answer.
X3DOM (pronounced X-Freedom) is an experimental open source framework and runtime to support the ongoing discussion in the Web3D and W3C communities how an integration of HTML5 and declarative 3D content could look like. It tries to fulfill the current HTML5 specification for declarative 3D content and allows including X3D elements as part of any HTML5 DOM tree.
We try to use it.
The official site tell us about the browsers and X3DOM.
Internet Explorer 9 = does/will not support WebGL. So you have to install the InstantReality-plugin or Flash 11.
Google Chrome ver 9.x = supports WebGL natively.
Firefox >= 4.x = supports WebGL natively.
Safari (Mac only: Safari 5.1 on OS X 10.6 and 10.7) = include support for WebGL (Windows version does not), but you need enable it through the “Developer”-menu. To activate the “Developer”-menu go to Preferences->Advanced and check the “Show Developer menu in menu bar” button.
Let's check it!
First, check here if your browser supports X3DOM.
If your browser not supports X3DOM , you will see this :

Also , the running example will show you this:

Now, Let's try a simple example. Create a html file and paste the code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<body>
 <title>TEST X3DOM</title>
 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.x3dom.org/x3dom/release/x3dom.css" /></link>
 <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.x3dom.org/x3dom/release/x3dom.js"></script>
</body>
<h1>Show box under x3dom !</h1>
<x3d width="500px" height="500px">
 <scene>
  <shape>
   <appearance>
    <material diffuseColor='blue'></material>
   </appearance>
   <box></box>
  </shape>
 </scene>
</x3d>
</html>

Also if you want then we can install this (instantreality Framework 2.0).
I managed to run version 6.0.2 Firefox example by changing the settings WebGL.
I wrote in the address bar about:config and I looked and changed the setting:
webgl.force-enabled to true.
Open the file with the Firefox web browser.We can see one blue box...

... and Chrome Web Browser (ver. 13.0.782.220 m)with this result:

Under IE , I got errors ... Although I have installed the InstantReality-plugin or Flash 11.

You can see more examples here.

OES_texture_float WebGL extension under WebGL

In the video below you see a demo using OES_texture_float WebGL extension.

If the video card is the generation then you need to use Chrome and test online here.
This demo uses the following features:

• Raytraced reflections and refractions
• Analytic ambient occlusion
• Heightfield water simulation *
• Soft shadows
• Caustics **

It seems that technology WebGL has a brighter future , the proof is many demos on internet.

Shadertoy: Test your shader online.

If you want to learn and test 3D shader technology, then you can try Shader Toy v0.3 .
This web site allows you to write shaders and view the result .
It also comes with some useful examples .
More can be found on website .

Programming Demoscene

The basics of demo coding by Martti Nurmikari. You can see bellow:

New 3D Book - 3D Engine Design for Virtual Globes

The authors of this nice book : Patrick Cozzi and Kevin Ring have done a very good job , because was necessary such a book.
The book is named 3D Engine Design for Virtual Globes and you can get from
The engine design presented in this book is based on OpenGL 3.3 with core.
The book has 520-page programming book.
You cab get from here the price is just £37.99 ...

NVIDIA R280.19 Beta

OpenGL it was designed to be readily extensible to accomodate new hardware innovations.
Now you have new extensions:

1. GL_EXT_import_sync_object
2. WGL_EXT_swap_control_tear

Let us hope that we will have such news of OpenGL.
Unfortunately I have not yet found any reference about them.

Sketchpad - online ...

If you want to draw and do not have specialized software installed. You can test your skills online here.
This web page allows you to draw with different tools and to save your work.
Although it seems simplistic this site offers multiple patterns and gradients, as well as useful tools for you.

The SDK for Kinect is released .

For those who use an Xbox 360 Kinect, we have a good happy.
It is released the beta of the Windows SDK for Kinect.
The API is for C + +, C # and Visual Basic.
Maybe seven months after the Kinect Because WAS officially hacked.
Read more here.

OpenSceneGraph - features

On 8 June 2011 , a new release of OpenSceneGraph (OSG) it is announce .
Today I read on internet about these enhancements:
Uniform variable performance enhancements.
Support for OpenGL multisample textures using the GL_ARB_texture_multisample extension.
OcclusionQueryNode support for multiple parent Camera nodes (including render to texture operations).
A new command line option for the osgconv application. "--use-world-frame" causes osgconv transformations to operate in the world, rather that the bounding volume, coordinate space.
New notification macros to avoid inefficiencies in STL stream implementations.
A new export option for the .OSG file format plugin. "OutputRelativeTextures" exports texture images to a subfolder of the exported model file.
Several updates and fixes to the .3DS file format plugin.
...

You can see some screenshots , here .
It seems that the development team is moving quickly, considering the evolution of this software.

Latest version of Blender 3D on Puppy Linux.

For users who use 3D software Blender good news. Beta version 2.5 is now present on Lucid Puppy version 5.2.5.
This distro released in April 2011, brings new improvements.
Here is a screenshot of it:

I've tested it with old Nvidia video card.
I had to install the driver for FX 5200 named "NVIDIA-173.14.25.lupu500k2.6.33.2".
I made ​​this easy with the software "Puppy Package Manager.
Everything went perfectly.

SlimDX and SharpDX frameworks.

These two applications come to support developers who use DirectX.
First SlimDX is a free open source framework that enables developers to easily build DirectX applications using .NET technologies.
SlimDX supports a wide range of APIs, operating systems, and configurations. All versions of Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008, and 7 are supported, for both 32 and 64 bit. There is a minimum requirement of .NET 2.0
See more here.
The second, SharpDX is intended to be used as an alternative managed DirectX framework. The API is generated automatically from DirectX SDK headers, with AnyCpu target, meaning that you can run your application on x86 and x64 platform, without recompiling your project or installing assemblies into the GAC.
Full support for the DirectX API.
Managed platform independent .NET API.
See more here.
What I don't like about the two programs and their official websites...
The tutorials are weak and few.
Documentation is not complete.
sharpdx comes with two zip archives that would be enough to develop an application.
SlimDX installation has two executables:
. NET Runtime 2.0 End User and Developer SDK
The result is the same as sharpdx, a lot of source code with some compiled binaries.
I tried to run the samples for DirectX 9 but failed.
I use DirectX 9c on a Asus Eee PC 1000H with 1GB RAM.
Although I was expecting more, these applications have disappointed me.

Newton Game Dynamics - open source from feb. 2011

Newton Game Dynamics is an integrated solution for real time simulation of physics environments.
The API provides scene management, collision detection, dynamic behavior and yet it is small, fast, stable and easy to use.

This API was created by Julio Jerez and Alain Suero.
Starting 02/15/2011 this API is open source and hoosted in google code.
See more here.

Allegro 5 library for game development.

Allegro 4 and Allegro 5 are cross-platform, open source, game programming libraries, primarily for C and C++ developers.

The Allegro library provides low level routines like input, graphics, midi, sound effects, and timing.
It is cross platform : Windows, OS X, Linux, DOS, and others.
The official website is here.
You can find some tutorials, and various articles for beginners.
Other information can be found here.

Play beta game to win an GTX 460 graphics card

Today I received an email from NVIDIA:

RIFT™ Beta Event: Warfronts
Catalin, be one of the first to check out RIFT™, a new fantasy MMORPG.
...

The email came with a promise to win a video card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 460.
Unfortunately, my desktop uses the Linux Eee laptop has Windows XP installed.
We went to the site and looked a little under "Media. "
The game looks promising with strong effects worthy of a last generation video card.
It seems to me a kind of "Warcraft" more stylish.
Unfortunately, training developers and open source code not available yet allow monopolization of games development.
You can try a beta .here