Don’t worry, it’s just a warning.

August 15, 2008 less than 1 minute read

I don’t like Visual Basic, yet in many Microsoft shops, VB is still being used especially in combination with ASP.NET. The problem with Visual Basic is that it’s not very strongly typed. Conventions are often thrown out of the window and Senior VB developers often hold their seniority as experience which, is more fiction than fact.

How many more times do I have to see Functions which don’t return anything and should have been declared as Subs.

Or:

Variable 'XYZ' is used before it has been assigned a value.

Or:

Variable declaration without an 'As' clause; type of Object assumed.

Ugh. You’d think that people with 15 years of development experience wouldn’t dismiss this kind of stuff and just do the right thing.

OpenGL 3.0 - 1 hour after

August 11, 2008 1 minute read

Artistic License?

Once upon a time there was a little old API, struggling for its life amongst the giants of software. Little old OpenGL knew that in order to survive it had to adapt to a strange, bewildering and new environment; it was a strange new world indeed. For two years, rumors of old OpenGL’s struggles reached the user-groups and there was much rejoicing indeed. But on one faithful day, August the 11th of 2008, OpenGL perished. Its age and idleness had (as with all things good and bad) caught up with him and slayed little old OpenGL in its path.

After reading the spec and looking desperately for the promised object model, I felt quite like a (self-censored) taking the newsletters seriously and writing about them so explicitly.

For those who haven’t read the specification yet, it’s OpenGL 2.1 plus and minus some stuff, hardly the fruition of two years labor. The anticipation that followed the initial announcement of OpenGL 3.0’s Object Model was tremendous. For the first time in a long time, people started noticing OpenGL again and maybe a place for it in modern multimedia applications such as PC games besides id Software’s titles.

Alas, it was not to be. Woe is me for my old API is truly dead. D3D, hello.

OpenGL 3.0 Specification - August 2008

August 11, 2008 less than 1 minute read

It’s here, (Edit: It’s official) haven’t read it yet but here it is:

The OpenGL ® Graphics System: A Specification (Version 3.0 - August 11, 2008)

Link to the registry containing the link

Let me know what you think of it, thanks nosmileface!

NVIDIA to Release OpenGL 3.0 Drivers September

July 25, 2008 less than 1 minute read

It’s been a while since I posted but this one will make up for it. A messy screenshot of NVIDIA’s 2008 timeline has emerged on Chilehardware (CHW) and reveals that OpenGL 3.0 drivers/implementation will be due in September of this year in a collection called Big Bang II (Big Bang I was SLI).

CHW member KaiserGerhardI has provided a deciphering of the screenshot which provides more information on the contents of the screenshot:

• First: Quad ?????? Release February
• Hybrid Shipped Spring
• Spring Notebook Cycle
• GT200 + ????
• Big Bang II-Fall Will Focus on
  • Now/WWW features
  • SLI connectivity features
  • Display connectivity
  • Quality improvements
  • Performance improvements
  • OpenGL 3.0

The words which could not be deciphered are marked with question marks. What this means for OpenGL enthusiasts and developers is that we won’t have to attend SIGGRAPH, NVISION or any other meeting for that matter, since this is basically a confirmation on its own.

Now, let’s hope that ATI will also provide an implementation this soon.

Geforce GTX 200 Series Announced

June 16, 2008 less than 1 minute read

NVIDIA officially announced its new line of GPUs today on their website. Two models from the line have been announced, namely the GTX 260 and the GTX 280.

NVIDIA claims that the cards have a 50% performance increase over the Geforce 8800 Ultra (figures anyone?). Below are some highlighted specs for the high-end GTX 280:

NVIDIA Geforce GTX 280 Specs

I’d love to see a benchmark done on this puppy.