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

OpenGL - Direct State Access

DSA is new OpenGL feature . Named "Direct State Access" give us the new options to programming with OpenGL.
This extension allows us to update OpenGL states in a direct way.
I saw a good article with example here.
See this pdf file about : OpenGL Bindless Extensions by NVIDIA.
One example is enough by removing cache misses then speedup is 7.5x up.
Nice .