Panther's OpenGL implementation brings significant performance optimizations, powerful development tools and support for the latest display cards to Mac OS X. OpenGL applications running on Panther benefit from optimizations in the vertex and texture paths, improved asynchronous operation and better Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) utilization. Developers writing OpenGL-based applications on Mac OS X can take advantage of industry leading tools to speed their development. OpenGL Profiler allows for quick and easy observation of all aspects of OpenGL in real time. A companion tool, OpenGL Shader Builder now includes support for additional vertex and fragment programming languages in addition to new debugging options. Mac OS X's OpenGL continues to grow with the addition of several new extensions. Lastly, Panther adds support for the latest display cards and GPUs from ATI and NVIDIA.
Features
- Support for Pixel Buffers (Pbuffers) via the APPLE_pixel_buffer extension on all graphics processing units, providing accelerated off screen rendering targets and render to texture functionality.
- Floating point pixel support via the APPLE_float_pixels extension adding texture types, texture internal formats and color buffers composed of both 16 bit and 32 bit floating point components.
- Several enhancements to the OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT), including spaceball support, full preferences, improved timer and event handling, and other optimizations.
Optimizations
- Major static geometry performance improvements via display list optimizations
glCopyTexImage & glCopyTexSubImage improved hardware acceleration for maximum data throughput- Optimized color conversion and texture compression engines
- Streamlined mipmap generation
Hardware
Panther’s hardware support includes ATI Radeon 9200, 9600, 9800 and Nvidia’s GeForce FX family of graphics processors.
Tools
Shader Builder is powerful tool to help you leverage the programmable features of the latest GPUs. New for Panther is support for low level fragment programming. Once programs have been developed they can now easily be exported into Xcode projects.
OpenGL Profiler is the Apple’s best of class tool to assist developers in debugging and optimizing their OpenGL usage. Profiler now has support for attaching to running processes, the ability to dynamically override OpenGL functions using scripts, and browse textures and programs. Other powerful features include breakpoints and execution controls, OpenGL state and call stack analysis and collection of real time driver statistics.
The Driver Monitor provides real time access to the inner workings of the Graphics Processing Unit. Through it developers can track VRAM usage, hardware stalls, texture upload sizes and many others, thus accurate performance pictures. The Driver Monitor, as with the other OpenGL tools, is included with a standard install of Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther” developer tools.
Extensions
Note, specific extension support varies by renderer, see the extension guide for more specifics and always check the extension string.
New for Panther
For complete extensions list see the Apple OpenGL Extensions Guide.
Updated: 2004-08-04
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