At the Game Developers Conference this week in San Jose, CA, The Khronos Group is showcasing demos of a new draft standard called the embedded subset of OpenGL (“OpenGL ES”) from several of its… members.

According to the group, OpenGL ES is a light weight, royalty-free embedded graphics standard that will provide graphics API profiles that meet the needs of a broad range of embedded system and device of market segments, including handheld wireless devices, automotive and avionics displays, and multimedia consumer devices such as advanced digital TVs, set-top boxes, and game consoles.

OpenGL ES demonstrations taking place in the Khronos Group booth at this week's Game Developers Conference include . . .

• Imagination — using their PowerVR MBX graphics core for mobile devices, PDAs, set top boxes and in-car systems, will show several OpenGL ES features accelerated by hardware including Transformation & Lighting, Texture filtering, Texture blending, Multitexture and Anti-Aliasing.
• 3d4W — is showcasing its 3d.2go software-based 3D rendering engines in both C and Java that support OpenGL ES for Java, Symbian, BREW and other devices.
• HI — is demonstrating their Mascot Capsule Engine for character animation and the practicality of OpenGL ES 3D graphics on mobile phones available today. The D504i Mitsubishi Docomo handset is also being shown with 3D hardware acceleration.

What is OpenGL ES?

From the Khronos website . . .

The embedded subset of OpenGL (OpenGL ES) is a proposed solution to bring advanced graphics capabilities to an increasing variety of devices, appliances, and embedded displays. It will be based on well-defined subset profiles of OpenGL and will enable the lightest weight interface between software and hardware. OpenGL ES will be available royalty free to the embedded industry.

An EE Times article about OpenGL ES and this week's demonstrations appears here.

And one more interesting tidbit: The Register reports that Microsoft, which was a founding member of the Open GL architecture review board (ARB), has just “tendered its resignation from the consortium governing the OpenGL standard, signalling an intention to go it alone with its Direct3D graphics platform.” Read more here.

 
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