New AR-Toolkit App

The new Moves by Maxon app is available for free in the Apple App Store. It follows on the success of the Cineversity facial capture app, CV-AR, which is still available on the Apple App Store.  However, designers who want full-body motion capture are now able to use Moves by Maxon, an application that combines both technologies.

Moves by Maxon capitalizes on the emerging technology of Apple’s AR-Toolkit, which enables users to capture facial motion and whole-body movement; enabling artists to bring motion sequences into Cinema 4D with limited technical effort.

Moves by Maxon is a new free facial and whole-body AR capture application that works on your iOS devices.

Moves by Maxon is immediately available from the Apple App Store and is compatible with iPhone® XR, iPhone® XS, iPhone® XS Plus, iPhone® 11, iPhone® 11 Pro, iPad Pro® (3rd Generation).

A separate plugin is required to transfer the captured data from your Apple device to Cinema 4D and can be downloaded for free from the Cineversity website. This plugin is only compatible with the latest version of Cinema 4D – Release 2, or later. Cineversity also provides an overview video, installation instructions and basic instructions of use tutorials.

Find out more about Cinema 4D system requirements here.

The post Maxon Introduces ‘Moves by Maxon’ AR App for Apple iOS Devices like iPhones appeared first on Architosh.

The Hangar Experience

On building and infrastructure construction sites AEC professionals are utilizing aerial drones for capturing imagery useful for multiple purposes—some quite critically.

From the vantage point of a drone, aerial footage shows the construction site in ways that on-the-ground experiences can’t provide, providing key insights that can have an impact on efficient operations and also site safety. Aside from the ability to communicate construction progress, one of the more popular uses of drone footage in construction, stakeholders also gain the advantage to annotate over aerial footage imagery and to telepresence these often remote locations.

Aside from the ability to communicate construction progress, one of the more popular uses of drone footage in construction, stakeholders also gain the advantage to annotate over aerial footage imagery and to telepresence these often remote locations.

Hangar Apps

Hangar 360 was introduced in late April and is a piece in Hangar’s vision, says the company. The Hangar 360 app is available now for the iOS platform and enables your iPhone device, for example, to plug directly into a drone navigation control joystick system and simply automate the production of a 360-degree aerial photo experience.

Words don’t quite do this justice like a video can so take a look at the video over at this link.

01 – Hangar 360 is the new drone automation app that runs on your iOS device. This is a sample image from a drone running Hangar 360. But follow the links in this article to learn a lot more and what you can quickly do with Hangar 360.

Hangar’s other apps include more utility tools useful for both drone aerial work as well as even technology for the Osmo video handheld device. The separate Hangar Airspace app which itself is a feature inside AutoPilot, another app, does many interesting things. One of them is enabling your drone to fly and automatically watch (film) the location of the drone controller. So if you are in a car and you want your drone to film you driving a country road in your new sports car, for example, it can do that.

The Airspace app can also help your drone automatically keep focus on a particular object, or do a 360-degree orbit around a particular object. Think sports events or the construction site. Airspace shares telemetry information between the drone devices it supports, your tablets and your smartphones running the app, in real time.

Hangar’s key large app is AutoPilot. It turns your Inspire or Phantom devices into powerful, autonomous smart drones. Hangar’s AutoPilot tackles the problems confronting nearly all drone devices and that is they are hard to actually fly very well. At least manually.

To learn more about Hangar and the Hangar 360 App go here.

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Softbank acquired the British chip design firm ARM for $32 billion back in 2016. It is a giant bet on the future of the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s likely not just a sound bet but an even sounder investment for the Japanese holdings company. Here’s why.

ARM Looking Up for Softbank Parent Company

ARM already licenses its chip designs to industry leaders like Apple, Nvidia, and even Qualcomm—all of them major chip designers spinning off their own chip designs. Apple’s designs are known as the A-series and power the revenue-leading iPhone and its iPad tablet computers. ARM chips are also already in each and every modern automobile driving on the road today and the future of AI-based vehicles will need even more processing power.

01 – Softbank’s ARM chip unit will ship trillions of microprocessors for IoT devices but security is looming large for a world with everything connected to thwart hackers from doing harm.

Key Takeaway

Softbank’s big bet on ARM is all about the future of IoT (Internet of Things) but even if IoT somehow falls short of grand projections, ARM still dominates in vehicles and is attacking the server market which powers the cloud. If projections are under-sized, in 20-30 years ARM chips in your tennis shoes may have 100 times the IQ of the average human brain and be under constant threat of being hacked. 

Then there is ARM’s challenge to Intel in the supercomputing space and in giant, cloud-distributed compute infrastructures like Microsoft’s Azure cloud. According to Bloomberg this week, Microsoft has pledged to use ARM server chips as it seeks to cut costs around its Azure cloud business, one of Microsoft’s stronger business segments.

The Birth of Super-Intelligence

But Masayoshi Son’s comments about the brain cells in chips outstripping neurons is pointedly centered at the Internet of Things (IoT). Everything from Nest thermostats in homes, to smart refrigerators that are connected to the Internet, to explosive growth in devices in buildings that communicate status updates over the Internet, the IoT market is set to explode beyond our imagination. And ARM intends to be driving it forward.

During his keynote at the Mobile World Congress, Masayoshi Son asked his audience to raise their hands if they knew what the word “singularity” means, referring to the point in history when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence. When the machines have become greater than us. “If a guy has a 200 IQ we call him [a] genius,” says Masayoshi Son, “If a guy has 10,000 IQ what should we call him?”

02 – To listen to Softbank’s CEO (Softbank owns ARM) speak about why he acquired ARM for $32 billion watch the video above. 

Referencing the 30 billion neural connections in the human brain and roadmaps for ARM microprocessors, he predicts that in 30 years ARM-powered IoT devices will have intelligence equaling an IQ of 10,000. He believes that mankind will have 10 billion smart robots assisting with human activity by 2040. And for IoT—which is where Softbank plans to truly leverage future growth with ARM—he bemusingly states: “Think of one of the chips in our shoes…it will be smarter than our brains. We will be less than our shoes…”

Related Articles

Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel’s Dominance

Softbank expects ARM to deliver 1 trillion IoT chips in next 20 years. 

[Editor’s note: Earlier today we reported that Softbank’s CEO said mankind would have 10 million smart robots helping mankind. He actually said 10 billion. – 10 Marc 17. 10:15. ]

SaveSave

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CAD for mobile devices

The latest fad in the CAD world is the ability to have CAD on-the-go and with Onshape having the ability to work on any mobile device already, it will allow engineers to continue their inspirations wherever they are. In other words, Onshape excels at meeting the anywhere, any device access to cloud-based computing.

Mechanical engineer Christian Stark, who is using Onshape to create a precise 3D CAD model of the historic Schooner Zodiac in Bellingham, Washington, says he finds Onshape for iPad to be invaluable for his restoration effort.

“The original plans were lost in a fire. Using Onshape for iPad, I can take measurements and edit the 3D model as I crawl around the boat,” Stark says. “It’s amazing what you can do. There isn’t any other CAD system that lets you do this.” He also adds, “Onshape also gives me the opportunity to quickly show and share the model with other team members”.

Taking a fresh approach to CAD for mobile devices, the Onshape development team created a precise touch-screen interface that replaces traditional keyboard and mouse interactions. Every CAD command and action is controlled with a swipe or tap of your finger.

01 – The Increased precision of the iPad Pro’s touch screen makes it an ideal platform for Onshape.

“Desktop-installed CAD systems are extremely limited on mobile right now,” says Ravi Reddy, team lead for Onshape Mobile. “We rejected the idea of providing a view-only version of CAD or just offering a subset of features. We were determined to build a full CAD product that can be used anywhere and from any device.” He adds “We made sketching easy with touch-based finger offset tools and we also created intuitive lock and unlock modes to help with pan, zoom, and rotate operations for sketching and assemblies.”

Being platform agnostic

Onshape is platform agnostic, working on Macs, PCs and Chromebooks, on MacOS, Windows, and Linux on all major browsers as well as natively on Android and iOS phones and tablets. Onshape for iPhone and iPad apps can be downloaded free now at the Apple Store.

Reddy says he’s looking forward to seeing many more engineers and designers use CAD on a tablet: “We believe Apple is going after enterprise and content creation apps with the iPad Pro and Onshape is well positioned to take full advantage of this development.”

CAD users interested in learning more about how to design on their iPad or iPhone can visit Onshape.com/Learn.

About Onshape

Onshape is the only company in the world 100% focused on cloud and mobile CAD, offering the first and only professional 3D CAD system that lets everyone on a design team work together using any web browser, phone, or tablet. Breaking away from the traditional model of desktop-installed CAD, Onshape has data management and collaboration built in at its core.

For the first time, the CAD system and CAD data live in one place in the cloud, and are never copied anywhere. Everyone on a design team sees and works on the same master CAD data at all times, avoiding confusing checkouts, file copies, and overwriting each other’s work.

Full-cloud Onshape also eliminates the hassles of installations, license codes and servers, service packs, and add-on PDM systems. Every Onshape user always works with the same version of Onshape – the latest version.

Companies worldwide rely on Onshape today to speed up the design of consumer electronics, mechanical machinery, medical devices, machine parts, industrial equipment, and many other products. Onshape’s Free Plan also makes it the ideal CAD choice for students and educators to collaborate inside and outside the classroom.

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Onshape includes key members of the original SolidWorks team plus elite engineers from the cloud, data security and mobile industries.

The post Innovative cloud-based MCAD app ‘Onshape’ will be compatible with Apple iPad Pro appeared first on Architosh.

PhatWare Corporation, a leading professional software and application developer, announces the immediate availability of WritePad Pro 3.0, the advanced word processing, note-taking, and document management app, which also takes full advantage of PhatWare’s state-of-the-art handwriting recognition technology.

WritePad Pro 3.0 new features

WritePad Pro 3.0 offers a multitude of new features and enhancements designed to increase user experience and productivity. Major new features include universal handwriting recognition keyboard, which can be used for text input on any iPad and iPhone app.

01 – WritePad Pro 3.0 with state-of-the-art handwriting recognition technology.

Today screen extension allowing quick access to recent documents, and improved iCloud integration for easy document sharing between multiple devices.

To speed-up note-taking

WritePad Pro offers advanced shorthand features, which enables users to format text using written commands. Users can scribble shorthand commands to change the font, paragraph, and other formatting options, insert emotions emoticons and user-defined text blocks, invoke translator, maps and other system resources, and more. Documents created with WritePad Pro can further be synchronized with Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, iCloud, and Microsoft OneDrive.

Pricing and Availability

WritePad Pro 3.0 is a universal app for both iPhone and iPad and is available now in the iTunes App Store and is priced at $9.99 (USD), however for a limited time is available at a reduced price of only $4.99. WritePad Pro 3.0 is a free update for existing WritePad Pro users. For more information about the app and to purchase or download the update, please visit PhatWare online.

About PhatWare Corporation

Founded in October 1997, PhatWare Corporation is a leading provider of easy to use powerful software products and professional services for the mobile and desktop computing marketplace. PhatWare specializes in handwriting recognition, digital ink, notetaking, database, and network management software development. Copyright (C) 1997-2015 PhatWare Corporation. All Rights Reserved. PhatWare, PhatPad, PenOffice, and WritePad are registered trademarks of PhatWare Corp. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

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Pierre Gaubil, the CEO of Sensopia says, “Our users are mostly professionals in the field of renovation and remodeling. We wanted to automate the quotation process. Creating a quote in minutes instead of days can be the difference between a signed project and a lost client”.

How it works

The estimator is adaptable to almost any business model and enables the quotation of flooring (carpet, tile, hardwood floor), painting, electrical installation, furniture or pest control to name a few. The user can easily create a custom catalogue including his products, tasks, discounts or taxes to estimate the cost. Each item can have a custom pricing model (per item, meter/feet, square meter/feet, hour, carpet roll, liter/gallon, tile/sheet, box, percentage or a flat fee).

01 – As easy as taking a picture of a room, fine tuning and assembling rooms with a finger.

MagicPlan 5.0 estimator makes complex quotations such as carpet installation as simple as dropping a carpet onto the plan. The carpet roll cut is optimized, and can be manually adjusted to minimize the waste.

“We think that the estimator is a game changer. It creates a sense of confidence for the client, that realizes that the quote is part of a real process, where guessing is no longer a risk. It also creates a fantastic ROI for the professional by accelerating the process and enabling on the spot quotation” concludes Pierre Gaubil.

MORE: Sensopia introduces MagicMeasure app for iPhone and iPad

MagicPlan 5.0 is free to download and runs on all iOS platforms. Android will follow soon. The estimator is free to use on the device, however it necessitates a business subscription to enable the quote creation.

About Sensopia

Sensopia Inc. is a Montréal / San Francisco based application publisher focused on Reality Capture. Reality Capture is the process of retrieving information about the surrounding environment onto a portable digital model. Sensopia is the developer of MagicPlan and MagicMeasure. MagicPlan is a true mass-market success with more than 8.5 millions unique downloads and multiple awards including “App of the week” in 107 countries in the AppStore. Please visit www.sensopia.com for more information.

The post Sensopia announces MagicPlan 5.0 availability for iOS appeared first on Architosh.

And Grabowski, starts his series in part one with these metaphorical words:

I’ve seen CAD vendors bravely plunge into the churning waters of mobile apps, only to find them icy cold.

Perhaps his age, or perhaps his temperament and personality, but if Grabowski isn’t well known for detailed and concise instructional CAD books on a variety of his favorite known CAD systems, he is most certainly known for pulling no punches or mincing words about what he loves and hates in all things tech. He succinctly nails the challenges (nay, “headaches”) he sees in developing for mobile CAD, by listing each platform’s—iOS, Android, Windows, Web—key weaknesses.

01 – ARES Touch for Android is first full-featured DWG CAD authoring tool on Android platform.

Then he touches on the profit, or lack thereof, issues facing developers of mobile apps that have, often, small audiences, and sell for too little. As a result, many a promising mobile CAD app has gone the way of the dodo bird.

But not all of them!

Grabowski’s Top Mobile CAD Choices

Grabowski chooses wisely is listing Autodesk AutoCAD 360, Graebert’s ARES Touch and IMSI/Design’s TurboSite as mobile CAD apps that impress him.

Grabowski mobileCAD series is really an extended series on Graebert’s ARES technology in the mobile space. His article series breaks down into discussing why Graebert is chasing mobile and not cloud (Part 2), rethinking how mobile CAD should work (part 3) and question and answer session with Graebert staff. (part 4).

You can read his series starting with part 1 here. And continue on with the links above.

Grabowski asks interesting and good questions of Graebert. In his pursuit for some answers he asked Graebert’s CAD software engineer Andre Neumann, and head of sales and marketing Cedric Desbordes, to point out mobile CAD challenges and their possible, most effective solutions.

Their main challenges include file storage limitations that mobile devices have as well as moving these files smoothly, not to mention how to keep these files synchronized at all times to enable continuous access to the latest version.

Again, click on the links above for the whole series to learn more.

ARES Touch

To take a look at ARES Touch, which is for Android only at the moment, view this video below.

The post ARES Mobile featured in Grabowski series on Mobile CAD appeared first on Architosh.

Part of this launch, Parallels is introducing a companion app for Apple® Watch, providing users with the ability to see remote computers and initiate a connection for an even better remote experience.

“The need to do more on mobile devices has been a growing trend among both consumers and business professional alike. Our latest Parallels Access update brings new features that make it easier than ever before to get work done with native touch gestures on mobile devices, as well as from any computer with a web browser,” said Jack Zubarev, president of Parallels. “Parallels Access makes every application and file on your remote work and home computers available at your fingertips no matter where you are, so you can be productive on the go.”

01 – One simple tap on your mobile device, and you’re connected reliably to your computer. Or access it 24/7 from any other computer through a browser and your secure Parallels account. All rights reserved.

Parallels Access transforms mobile devices into more powerful computing machines by allowing them to remotely run any application, edit documents, and search through and access all the files on a remote computer through a universal file manager. It also allows you to use any computer with a modern web browser to access and run everything on your remote computer.

On-the-go

Parallels Access is ideal for professionals who want to travel light, but still access all their computer files on the go, or a home user that just wants the peace of mind knowing that all of their files and photos are available with a tap or click from anywhere in the world. The unique “Applification™” technology of Parallels Access makes desktop apps behave like native apps on tablets and phones.

“As the market shifts increasingly towards mobile applications, solutions that can further turn a mobile device into a powerful computer are becoming increasingly necessary,” said Laura DiDio, information technology analyst and principal of ITIC. “The latest update to Parallels Access further extends this invaluable functionality to make the practice of working remotely from your mobile device more efficient and powerful.”

Interactive gaming

With an eye toward helping people play their favorite computer games from any iOS device, Parallels Access has added experimental support for Gaming Mode, empowering them to access and play games in a more interactive way. The feature offers improved controls, with a control editor that enables users to create customized touch-based command shortcuts to games such as: Diablo III®, Elder Scroll®: Skyrim, NFS Rivals, League of Legends and Borderlands® 2.

Additional Features for both Android and iOS include:

• Universal File Manager with local file support, cloud storage, file previews and access to photos
• New “remoteless” connection for File Manager–connect to a computer to access files without taking over the screen
• Ability to transfer files from a remote computer to other apps on iOS and Android
• Enhanced file preview for files on a remote computer–now supports Microsoft Office files
• Improved Wake-on-LAN feature which offers additional ways to wake a remote computer
• Ability to work with multiple monitors in a web-browser session from a remote computer allowing the user to switch between available displays, or see them all at once
• Access to photos on a mobile device from the desktop agent, including the ability to take photos and copy them to a remote computer

Additional updates for iOS only include:

• Universal support for portrait and landscape for enhanced usability
• New OneDrive support for cloud storage in addition to existing support for Google Drive and Dropbox providing consumers additional options
• File previews in icons through File Manager for easier navigation
• 64-bit support for new CPU architecture on iOS devices

Availability, Pricing and Hardware Requirements

Parallels Access is available in the Apple iTunes App Store and on Google Play with a two week free trial. Individual subscriptions are available for purchase for $19.99 for one year or $34.99 for two years. Users can access up to five remote computers from an unlimited number of iOS and Android tablets and phones or computers with a modern web browser. As a limited-time, special offer, new customers who purchase Parallels Access can get a two-year subscription for $29.99.

Hardware requirements

• iPad: iPad mini 2 and iPad 2 or later running iOS 8
• iPhone: iPhone 6s and later running iOS 8
• Android: most tablets and phones running Android 5.0

Remote computers can be a PC running Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8 or Windows 7, or a Mac running OS X El Capitan (experimental support), OS X Yosemite (10.10), OS X Mavericks (10.9), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) and OS X Lion (10.7).

About Parallels

Parallels is a global leader in cross-platform solutions which make it possible and simple for customers to use and access the applications and files they need on any device or operating system. We help customers take advantage of the best technology out there, whether it’s Windows®, Mac®, iOS, Android™, or the cloud. Parallels solves complex engineering and user experience problems by making it simple and cost-effective for businesses and individual customers to use applications wherever they may be—local, remote, in the private datacenter, or in the cloud. Parallels began operations in 2000 and is a fast-growing company with offices in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Visit www.parallels.com/about for more information.

The post Parallels Launches Parallels Access 3.0 Remote Access App appeared first on Architosh.

Vulkan™, the new generation API for high-efficiency access to graphics and compute on modern GPUs, is on track for implementation and specifications later this year. It has received support from Google Android, SteamOS, Tizen, and multiple Linux distributions, including Ubuntu and Red Hat. The new OpenGL ES 3.2 specification absorbs AEP (Android Extension Pack) functionality to enhance pervasive graphics capabilities across mobile, consumer, and automotive devices. A set of OpenGL extensions will also expose the very latest capabilities of desktop hardware.

3D Graphics API State of the Union BOF at SIGGRAPH 2015

Attendees at the SIGGRAPH 2015 Conference in Los Angeles are invited to the Khronos 3D Graphics API BOF at 5-7PM on Wednesday 15th at the JW Marriott LA Live in the Platinum Ballroom Salon F-I, immediately adjacent to the Convention Centre, to hear more details around the latest developments in the 3D ecosystem. Full details of this and other Khronos-related SIGGRAPH sessions at: www.khronos.org/news/events/22015-siggraph.

Vulkan

Vulkan, which Architosh has detailed extensively in conversations with the Khronos Group, gives applications direct control over GPU acceleration for maximized performance and predictability, and uses Khronos’ new SPIR-V™ intermediate language specification for shading language flexibility. Vulkan minimizes driver overhead and enables multi-threaded performance on mobile, desktop, console, and embedded platforms. In parallel with finalizing the Vulkan specification, Khronos is working to drive an in-depth Vulkan ecosystem to:

• Reach out to key non-Khronos developers for feedback during specification drafting;
• Construct an open source Vulkan conformance test suite leveraging and merging with the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) drawElements Quality Program (dEQP) framework to enable direct feedback and contributions from developers to resolve cross-vendor inconsistencies;
• Develop a Vulkan tools architecture that can load code validation, debugging and profiling layers during development, without impacting production performance. The first open source, cross-vendor Vulkan SDK is being developed by Valve working with LunarG;
• Build key SPIR-V tools in open source, including translators from GLSL, OpenCL C and C++, a validator to check the correctness of any SPIR-V file and a SPIR-V assembler/disassembler.

“Hardware and software companies need an open 3D API to maximize market reach and minimize porting costs, and Vulkan is being forged by a broad consortium of industry leaders to do exactly that,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group. “Vulkan’s adoption and availability on platforms such as Android, Windows, Linux and SteamOS will ensure strong developer support – creating a wealth of high-quality content and applications for any platform that leverages this royalty-free standard.”

OpenGL ES 3.2

The new OpenGL ES 3.2 and OpenGL ES Shading Language 3.20 specifications bring AEP, plus additional functionality, into core OpenGL ES. AEP is a set of OpenGL ES extensions announced last year to bring console-class gaming to Android. OpenGL ES 3.2 will drive the pervasive availability of advanced desktop-class graphics functionality on a large class of mobile, consumer and automotive hardware, and will be adopted by Android. OpenGL ES 3.2 capabilities include:

• Geometry and tessellation shaders to efficiently process complex scenes on the GPU;
• Floating point render targets for increased flexibility in higher precision compute operations;
• ASTC compression to reduce the memory footprint and bandwidth used to process textures;
• Enhanced blending for sophisticated compositing and handling of multiple color attachments;
• Advanced texture targets such as texture buffers, multisample 2D array and cube map arrays;
• Debug and robustness features for easier code development and secure execution.

OpenGL Extensions

The OpenGL extensions released today expose cutting-edge desktop graphics capabilities and pave the way for new versions of OpenGL when this functionality is pervasively available, including:

• Streamlined sparse texture functionality to more effectively manage multisample sparse textures and uncommitted and unpopulated texture areas;
• Enhanced shader functionality including interlocks to efficiently ensure proper execution order for multi-pass algorithms, 64-bit integer handling, control of coverage results in sample masks for early fragment testing, enhanced atomic counter capabilities and a 64-bit monotonically incrementing counter to derive local timing information;
• Control over the number of threads used to compile shaders to accelerate compilation time;
• Modifiable locations of samples within a pixel to increase multisample antialiasing quality;
• Lastly, the OpenGL ES 3.2 compatibility extension enables the use of desktop OpenGL to develop mobile applications.

Industry Support

“AMD is thrilled to see the adoption this low-level, high-performance graphics API into an industry standard such as Vulkan” said Raja Koduri, corporate vice president, engineering, AMD. “At AMD, we strive to deliver maximum performance and control into the talented hands of game and graphics application developers everywhere and we see Vulkan as an excellent step in that direction.”

01 – Why the market needs Vulkan the new GPU API that unifies graphics and compute across a diversity of hardware systems. (image: Khronos Group, all rights reserved)

“As a founding member of Khronos, ARM is fully supportive of the latest specification of open standard 3D graphics APIs,” said Jem Davies, vice president of technology, media processing group, ARM. “As the number of graphical devices in everyday life continues to grow, the new OpenGL ES and Vulkan APIs are important steps in enabling game and application developers to provide richer and more energy-efficient user experiences.”

MORE: Khronos speaks to Architosh about the new Vulkan Graphics API: What it Means

“Intel is excited to be part of the continued rapid development of graphics APIs like Vulkan and OpenGL ES 3.2 and to showcase these APIs running on our hardware at SIGGRAPH 2015,” said Aaron Coday, director of visual computing engineering, Intel. “We can’t wait to see what application developers can do with the new features and performance benefits they offer on Intel Architecture.”

MORE: Five Things Apple users might want to know about the new Vulkan Graphics API

“Qualcomm Technologies has been a major contributor to the development of Vulkan which we intend to support with our upcoming Qualcomm Adreno™ GPUs for Qualcomm Snapdragon™ processors. We believe the Vulkan API will significantly reduce single-threaded overhead and increase multi-threaded efficiency, and consequently reduce power consumption for advanced mobile graphics applications,” said Avinash Seetharamaiah, senior director of engineering, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “Furthermore, we think the advancements with the Vulkan API will help mobile game developers more easily and efficiently bring console game content to Snapdragon mobile devices. We look forward to the migration of efficiency improvements from Vulkan to the other widely used APIs from Khronos,” Seetharamaiah added. “We welcome the arrival of OpenGL ES 3.2, bringing features like hardware tessellation and geometry shaders to OpenGL ES, because providing console-class graphics features in the mobile space is a step we support wholeheartedly with our world class Adreno GPU solutions.”

“Samsung enhances consumer’s mobile experience through innovative technologies and we are convinced that Vulkan will enable highly improved gaming experiences to our users,” said Hyunho Park, senior vice president of the system software R&D team at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung has been deeply engaged within Khronos to shape the Vulkan API – especially in the formation of the Window System Integration standard with broad platform support. We will rapidly drive adoption of the Vulkan to the mobile ecosystem to provide a high-performance, cross-platform graphics standards to game developers and consumers.”

About The Khronos Group

The Khronos Group is an industry consortium creating open standards to enable the authoring and acceleration of parallel computing, graphics, vision, sensor processing and dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices. Khronos standards include Vulkan™, OpenGL®, OpenGL® ES, WebGL™, OpenCL™, SPIR™, SPIR-V™, SYCL™, WebCL™, OpenVX™, EGL™, COLLADA™, and glTF™. All Khronos members are enabled to contribute to the development of Khronos specifications, are empowered to vote at various stages before public deployment, and are able to accelerate the delivery of their cutting-edge media platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests.

More information is available at www.khronos.org.

The post SIG: Khronos Expands Scope of 3D Open Standard Ecosystem appeared first on Architosh.

SIGGRAPH 2015 starts Sun, Aug 9 to Thu, Aug 13, 2015.

Compatibility

Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

01 – SIGGRAPH 2015 Conference Mobile APP

Available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Traditional Chinese.

Visit http://ddut.ch/siggraph or search for SIGGRAPH in the App Store or Google Pay.

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CS Odessa Diagram Viewer

CS Odessa’s newest product addition, Diagram Viewer, is designed to assist individuals who need to view business graphics files. The Diagram Viewer, for iOS 8+, is a great adjunct product to ConceptDraw PRO v10. Diagram Viewer gives users an extra degree of flexibility when working and viewing business graphics and diagramming images.

ConceptDraw PRO v10 is an easy way for one to create, edit, and view graphic content. The Diagram Viewer, for iPad, makes for a great viewing tool of content graphic for people who work with either ConceptDraw PRO v10 or Visio 2013 formats.

01 – ConceptDraw Diagram Viewer is the company’s first iPad app.

Diagram Viewer allows one to view ConceptDraw PRO v10 (CDDZ) and Visio 2013 (VSDX) files on an iPad. Both ConceptDraw and Visio, with the newest release of these visual tools, have significantly reduced the size of the files. This dynamic reduction in file size makes the iPad an ideal viewing device for business graphics produced by these two well know business graphics and diagramming tools.

ConceptDraw PRO is recognized for its ability to exchange documents with Microsoft Visio – the de facto standard in business graphics documents. ConceptDraw PRO can open and save documents that can be used by Visio users. It is supported by the powerful business solutions located in ConceptDraw Solution Park, and retails for only $199 per end user license.

ConceptDraw Office v3 is the third generation suite of ConceptDraw products that uses ConceptDraw InGyre3 integration technology to share data between its applications, allowing you to switch gears for different tasks more quickly. ConceptDraw Office v3 includes ConceptDraw MINDMAP v8, ConceptDraw PROJECT v7, ConceptDraw PRO v10, and the ConceptDraw Solution Park with more than 130 Solutions to power you through difficult and time consuming tasks. ConceptDraw Office retails for $499 and can be purchased directly from CS Odessa or their resellers. The ConceptDraw Office suite is designed for knowledge workers, project managers, managers, and academics.

To learn more about this app and the company go here: http://www.conceptdraw.com

The post CS Odessa has released its first iPad App—Diagram Viewer appeared first on Architosh.

The goal with Autodesk Building Ops is to place all the data on a building collected and utilized during the design and construction phases directly into the hands of the FM team on day one. Typically, facilities management and maintenance and operations teams rely on spreadsheets, Word documents and paper plans to amass and organize a building’s operations and facilities data.

Autodesk Building Ops is a web and mobile-based tool that building maintenance and operations professionals can use to track awaiting parts, track ticket items, review overdue maintenance, completed maintenance and a much more.

01 – Autodesk Building Ops is a new mobile-first application (shown here on Apple iOS) for bridging the data gap between design-construct and operations segments on BIM-based projects.

The mobile interface shows a dashboard at app startup. The benefits of using the  app include:

• Enable owners to begin operations on first day with a turnkey maintenance and asset management solution
• Help contractors better service warranty requests and reduce expenses from unmaintained equipment
• Speeds adoption with a dashboard interface that offers focused, relevant, role-based information to technicians, managers, and occupants
• Rapid migration of relevant documents, models, photographs and videos from BIM 360 Field

“New and retrofit building projects designed within a BIM workflow contain a huge amount of valuable information that can be used in building operations and asset maintenance,” said Jim Lynch, VP of Building and Collaboration Product Line Group, Autodesk. “Autodesk Building Ops offers a new way to extend the value of BIM throughout the entire building lifecycle.”

02 – Another view of the Autodesk Building Ops app for iOS iPhone. The app can show BIM model data in 3D.

“Building Ops represents a great opportunity for our teams to streamline the project handover process. It provides our owners facilities management teams with an easy-to-use solution that they will actually want to use. We’re excited about this tool’s potential,” said David M. Burns, IT Field Solutions, McCarthy Building.

Availability

Autodesk Building Ops is available now for worldwide purchase in English. It is available from the Apple App Store. And to learn more visit:  http://www.autodesk.com/products/building-ops/overview

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This new version brings weather simulations to smart LED bulbs, such as thunderstorms, rain density, wind speed, sky color and sleep timer that allows you to fall asleep to a gentle sound of rain and birds for a peaceful night.

Thunder and lightning are synchronized to keep observers in the eye of the storm. The frequency of lightning strikes, rainfall and bird songs can be adjusted in real-time to immediately see results. Birds can appear in millions of different locations, near and far, as the app moves them through space using advanced soundscape algorithms. Brightness, color, animation speed and volume can all be adjusted to create a personalized storm.

Weather simulator

The weather simulator is available as the “Thunderstorm” In-App purchase. No other In-App purchase is needed to use the weather simulator. Once purchased all lights recognized by the Philips Hue bridge can be included in the storm. The thunderstorm effect works best with Philips Hue bulbs including A19, BR30 and GU10 bulbs with color support. To use the experimental strobe feature the bulbs must be Philips Hue bulbs.

01 – Hue Lights app screenshot

Hue Lights was first launched in December 2013 and has seen steady growth from a worldwide user base. The latest version of the app includes Apple Watch support, scene and group activation from a fast widget, native Philips hub scheduling, dynamic lighting and a large selection of custom scenes. Every screen supports portrait or landscape mode on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. The app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and iPad devices running iOS 7.0 or later. The Hue Lights app requires a “Hue Personal Wireless Lighting Starter Set” to operate.

Device requirements:

• Hue Personal Wireless Lighting Starter Set
• iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch
• Optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6/6 Plus
• Requires iOS 7.0 or later
• 24.0 MB

Pricing and Availability

Hue Lights 1.7 is Free and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Lifestyle category. Follow @HueLights on Twitter for the latest news and updates. Visit Hue Lights official website for more documentation and supported hardware.

About LapApps, LLC

LapApps, LLC, is a California Limited Liability Company based in San Jose, California. It was founded by Mark Snycerski in September 2013 and specializes in app development. All Material and Software (C) Copyright 2015 LapApps, LLC. All rights reserved. Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone and iPod touch are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. iOS is a trademark or registered trademark of Cisco in the U.S. and other countries and is used under license. Hue Personal Wireless Lighting is a trademark owned by Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. LapApps, LLC is in no way affiliated with the Philips organization. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

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Waterford, CT – appPicker, one of the most popular iOS app review and news site – that helps users discover interesting apps – recently released its Annual List of “The best iPhone apps for task management”. Various apps got reviewed by appPicker in the Business and Productivity domain, shortlisting a list of 11 apps that are a couple of notches ahead of their competitors. The list includes award winning apps like Project Planning Pro, Wunderlist, 2Do and Clear, to name a few.

Developed by i2e Consulting LLC, Project Planning Pro is an extremely popular Task and Project Management app, developed for the specific needs of the iOS users. Since its inception a few years ago, the app has managed a fairly large number of downloads of 700,000 in the business app category in iOS. The app has also won a couple of prestigious awards, such as the Best App Ever Awards, Tabby Awards and the Appsters Award.

According to appPicker recommendation, Project Planning Pro is ideal when a specific order is required in a project.

Examples:

• Use this to plan any type of project either for business or personal use
• The app is user-friendly
• Add the tasks, the duration, and the start date for each one
• Input of the tasks is quick and simple

Sudhir Karanth, Director, Sales and Marketing at i2e Consulting LLC said, “We are extremely happy with the achievement of Project Planning Pro. We realize that getting featured in the esteemed list of ‘The Best iPhone Apps for Task Management’ is not an everyday occurrence and are thankful to appPicker for it. Project Planning Pro is proud and humbled with this achievement and will continue advancing the tool further.”

Language Support:

English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Spanish

Device Requirements:

• Compatible with iPad
• Requires iOS 6.0 or later
• 13.2 MB
• Rated 4+

Pricing and Availability:

Project Planning Pro 1.7.7 is Free and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Business category.

Media Assets: http://planningproapp.com/media/

About appPicker

Based in WaterFord, Connecticut, i2e Consulting is a software services company providing innovative Enterprise solutions to clients across the Globe. i2e Consulting is a Microsoft Certified partner with niche in Portfolio Project Management. i2e Consulting Mobile division is developing on iOS, Android and Windows Apps. Copyright (C) 2015 i2e Consulting LLC. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Microsoft and Microsoft Project are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

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If readers will recall, Steve Jobs poo-pooed the idea of Apple making a tablet device, citing that people didn’t want to handwrite on devices like the Newton and Microsoft Windows tablets. He explained this to Walt Mossberg in 2003 during the first All Thing D conference. In any case, Apple took that technology and put it into the iPhone and the rest is history. We will learn later this month just how much Apple ruled Christmas 2014 in the smartphone wars.

01 – iPhone evolution timeline, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The first iPhone came in 1 GB, 4GB and 8 GB models. It would be superseded by the iPhone 3G midway through 2008. The image graphic above, courtesy of Wikipedia, shows the evolutionary time-line of of Apple’s world-famous smartphone.

Registration Open: AIA National Atlanta

The AIA National Convention takes place in Atlanta, 14 – 16 May 2015, and registration is now open to members and non-members of the institute. President Bill Clinton will be keynoting the event. It should be a really exciting year for the American Institute of Architects in 2015.

The link to the registration page at the AIA is here. Early bird registration for AIA members is 500.USD, which is less than the one day nonmember price of 575.USD.

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But Why The Extra Structure?

That historic announcement is widely rumored to be the new smart watch, dubbed the Apple iWatch. CEO Tim Cook has stated earlier in the year that the company was going to enter an entirely new product category. But what exact technology the iWatch will feature is anybody’s best guess. And that says nothing about what it may look like.

It has been suggested that the new iWatch and the new iPhone 6 smartphones will both feature the ability to make payments with the devices in lieu of a credit card. Apple has reportedly secured business deals with American Express, Visa and other leading credit card firms. The mysterious structure may feature mock stores where the press can see first hand how using Apple’s new devices save time at  checkout, by simply tapping the device near a NFC capable cash register. The mock stores could be mini versions of leading retailers who Apple has partnered with and kept those partnerships secret.

Another key technology likely to be powered by Apple’s next devices is Apple’s HealthKit, which is a set of software technologies tied to leading edge sensor technology aimed at the medical, health and fitness markets. The market is already filled with devices that can take a person’s pulse or temperature. But Apple’s HealthKit has expansive ambitions and the company has hired leading health scientists and experts in the sensor field.

01 – Apple’s mysterious all white structure in front of the Flint Center in San Jose. Nobody knows what is inside and why they built it. We will all find out tomorrow. (image courtesy of 9to5 Mac, All Rights Reserved)

And speaking of sensors, Apple also has a kit called HomeKit, aimed at the home automation market, which is a very hot and growing segment of the connected devices and appliances space. Just visit any Home Depot store in the US and you can see the growing array of smart home technologies. Big brand early leaders and innovators in this segment include Nest—acquired by Google recently—and Phillips Hue and several others.

This leads one to speculate that the big mysterious all white structure Apple has purpose-built for tomorrow is actually a container for holding a home, store and a gym that can be dedicated to showcasing how Apple’s new smart watch and new iPhones will be able to revolutionize the shopping experience, the medical health and fitness market, and do something amazing with home automation. The linch pin in all of these three areas is the sensor technology behind it all.

One More Thing: A Runway Perhaps?

But one must not forget that Apple has pulled many a surprising rabbits out of its hat before. Could the nearly mythical AppleTV finally arrive? Has Apple designed a special new Mac computer for its 30 year anniversary? Has Apple secretly designed a car and none of us knew? Okay, that last one is a true stretch.

The most likely scenario other than the one mentioned above is that Apple’s mystery structure is actually a large hall for a fashion show. Why a fashion show? Because Apple is entering the wearables market for the first time with its new yet un-named smart watch and its senior vice president of industrial design, Jony Ive has reportedly stated that Switzerland is in trouble. Though it won’t be if their new iWatch looks anything like the concepts shown on AppleInsider’s report page.

But the hall for a fashion show makes a lot of sense. And who better to manage that fashion show than none other than Apple’s newest senior vice president, Angela Ahrendts, former CEO of Burberry?

The post Inside Apple’s Mysterious Structure? A house, store, gym…or a runway for Angela Ahrendts’ big debut moment? appeared first on Architosh.

A pioneer in the mobile solutions for AEC space, IMSI’s all new version app provides lightning-fast viewing of 2D/3D PDF documents as well as AutoCAD DWG documents. With built-in markup tools and a robust contact manager, TurboViewer 3.5 helps users share drawings and documents in seconds with colleagues and clients around the world.

“TurboViewer just got turbo-charged,” stated Royal Farros, CEO of IMSI/Design. “TurboViewer is now the fastest, easiest viewing markup app in the mobile world. And its ability to share drawings and documents is second to none.”

Highlight Details of TurboViewer 3.5

Details of the latest version of this notable mobile app include:

• Considered the fastest 2D and 3D PDF and DWG document mobile viewer app
• 2D and 3D Adobe PDF support
• 2D and 3D Autodesk DWG (AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT), TCW, DXF and DWF support
• Easy Contact Management (communicate with your team at the touch of a button)
• Powerful 2D and 3D markup tools
• New viewing modes
• New File Manager
• And more…

Additionally, there is an updated TurboViewer SDK also available for developers. For more information, please email TurboApps@IMSIdesign.com.

Availability and Pricing

TurboViewer 3.5 is free and available for iPad and iPhone through the Apple App Store now and will be available for Android shortly.

01 – The new IMSI Design TurboViewer 3.5 is the fastest DWG and PDF 2D/3D viewer in the world, says the company, and it does robust markup as well.

For more information about TurboViewer, please visit: www.turboapps.com

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“OpenGL ES 3.1 provides the most desired features of desktop OpenGL 4.4 in a form suitable for mobile devices,” said Tom Olson, chair of the OpenGL ES working group and Director of Graphics Research at ARM. “It provides developers with the ability to use cutting-edge graphics techniques on devices that are shipping today.”

Key features of the OpenGL ES 3.1 specification include:

Compute shaders – applications can use the GPU to perform general computing tasks, tightly coupled with graphics rendering. Compute shaders are written in the GLSL ES shading language, and can share data with the graphics pipeline.

Separate shader objects – applications can program the vertex and fragment shader stages of the GPU independently, and can mix and match vertex and fragment programs without an explicit linking step.

Indirect draw commands – the GPU can be instructed to take draw commands from its memory rather than waiting for commands from the CPU.

Enhanced texturing functionality – including multisample textures, stencil textures, and texture gather.
Shading language improvements – new arithmetic and bitfield operations, and features to enable modern styles of shader programming.

Optional extensions – per-sample shading, advanced blending modes, and more;
Backward compatibility with OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0 – programmers can add ES 3.1 functionality incrementally to working ES 2.0 and 3.0 applications.

At this year’s GDC (Game Developers Conference) there were sessions on OpenGL ES 3.1 where Khronos was showing the new kit.

“The certain future of graphics is mobile and with multiple advanced features the Khronos OpenGL ES 3.1 specification takes a significant step forward for mobile and embedded graphics; bringing mobile platforms closer in line with performance and feature set expectations of the very capable desktops and consoles of years past,” said Jon Peddie, president of JPR.

Conformance – Enhancing the User Experience

The OpenGL ES working group at Khronos expects to update the OpenGL ES Adopter’s Program to provide extensive conformance tests for OpenGL ES 3.1 within three months, enabling implementers of the specification to gain access to source code for Conformance Tests and to use the OpenGL ES trademark on products that pass the defined testing procedure. This ensures that conformant OpenGL ES implementations provide a reliable, cross-platform graphics programming platform.

“We returned yesterday from a week of meetings with Khronos members and key industry figures in the well-established Chinese smartphone market; and we expect to see an increased adoption of OpenGL ES in China,” said Erik Noreke, VP business development of Khronos Group. “There are a growing number of Chinese SOC companies providing the Chinese market with mobile platforms supporting high performance 3D graphics; and with OpenGL ES 3.1 they are able to continue supporting the growing consumer demand for high resolution 3D enabled devices.”

For more about The Khronos Group

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The companies were broadening their partnership to include a new multi-faceted agreement around Imagination’s groundbreaking PowerVR Ray Tracing technology and Unity’s industry leading game development engine that will bring photorealistic graphics to the mainstream gaming experience across a wide range of devices.

Integration Into Unity 5

The two companies will work together to integrate Imagination’s real-time ray tracing technology directly into the upcoming Unity 5. This will allow game creators to view in-game lighting effects with immediate feedback at the same level as the final results in the game. The product of that development can be deployed across a range of today’s existing devices.

The two companies have also entered into a longer-term strategic collaboration to blend ray tracing capability seamlessly into the gameplay experience, enabled by consumer devices supporting Imagination’s newly announced PowerVR Wizard Ray Tracing GPUs (graphics processors).

Integrating ray tracing directly into the game engine through this hardware IP solution will lead to interactive game graphics that will look at realistic as CG movies do today. The PowerVR Wizard IP provides programmable ray tracing, accessible within the shaders running on the PowerVR GPU, enabling all mobile developers to trace rays freely within their existing applications, even in combination with existing rasterization methods.

01 – A “before” shot of a scene without hybrid raytracing/rasterization methods.

02 – An “after” shot of a scene with hybrid ray tracing enabled.

David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies says: “Unity integrated Imagination’s ray tracing software into the Unity 5 editor due to its high performance on the broadest range of consumer laptops, ease of integration and unique future hardware roadmap. We will continue to work with Imagination to fully utilize the PowerVR Ray Tracing GPU IP within the Unity game engine to further enhance the in-game experience and simplify content creation for our developers.”

James A. McCombe, GM and technical director, PowerVR Ray Tracing, Imagination, says: “Today we are seeing just the tip of the iceberg. While many games are just ‘more pixels, same look’ ray tracing technology delivers ‘prettier pixels’ and a new exciting level of realism and creativity to games. We are very pleased to have been able to work with our friends at Unity to provide the performance and integration needed to enable real-time lighting previews directly within the Unity 5 editor, especially on low profile laptops where power-intensive GPUs are not available. With the availability of our newly announced PowerVR Ray Tracing GPU IP, we continue to work together with Unity to ensure that their game engine takes full advantage of ray tracing hardware once it arrives in consumer devices.”

Unity will be shipping Imagination’s ray tracing software in every copy of the Unity 5 editor beginning this year.

To learn more about Unity go here. To learn more about Imagination Technologies visit here.

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“OpenGL ES 3.1 provides the most desired features of desktop OpenGL 4.4 in a form suitable for mobile devices,” said Tom Olson, chair of the OpenGL ES working group and Director of Graphics Research at ARM. “It provides developers with the ability to use cutting-edge graphics techniques on devices that are shipping today.”

New Features in OpenGL ES 3.1

The key new features in OpenGL ES 3.1 specification include:

• Compute Shaders — applications can now tap the power of the GPU to perform general computing tasks, tightly coupled with graphics rendering. Compute shaders are written in the GLSL ES shading language, and can share data with the graphics pipeline
• Separate Shader Objects — applications can program the vertex and fragment shader stages of the GPU independently, and can mix and match vertex and fragment programs without an explicit linking step
• Indirect Draw Commands — the GPU can be instructed to take draw commands from its memory rather than waiting for commands from the CPU
• Enhanced Texturing Functionality — including multisample textures, stencil textures, and texture gather
• Shader Language Improvements — per-sample shading, advanced blending modes, and more…
• Backward compatibility with OpenGL ES 2.0 – 3.0 — programmers can add ES 3.1 functionality incrementally to working ES 2.0 — 3.0 applications

“The OpenGL family of APIs including OpenGL ES, OpenGL and WebGL have proven themselves as the foundation for 3D graphics on mobile devices, PCs and the Web – this OpenGL ES release is yet another graphical milestone that will enable billions of users to experience new levels of realism and interactivity on pervasive, mainstream devices,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group and vice president of mobile ecosystem at NVIDIA.

Developer Sessions at GDC 2014

Attendees at the San Francisco Game Developer Conference are invited to attend the Khronos DevU session “OpenGL ES 3.1: A Developers Overview” taking place at 5:00pm on Wednesday 19th in the Khronos private meeting room (#262 on the South Mezzanine Level). Space is limited and is available on a first-come first served basis. Other Khronos API DevU sessions are also available, for a full listing see: http://bit.ly/gdc2014.

“The certain future of graphics is mobile and with multiple advanced features the Khronos OpenGL ES 3.1 specification takes a significant step forward for mobile and embedded graphics; bringing mobile platforms closer in line with performance and feature set expectations of the very capable desktops and consoles of years past,” said Jon Peddie, president of JPR. “The widespread adoption by semiconductor manufacturers and developers has made OpenGL ES the technology of choice for mobile application development.”

Industry Support

“Mobile handset manufacturers and software developers are competing in an increasingly fierce market and features such as high-performance graphics make a huge difference in building customer engagement and satisfaction,” said Jem Davies, Vice President of Technology at ARM. “Khronos has an important role in creating industry-wide standards and ARM, as a promoter member, is playing an active role in its OpenGL ES working group. Historically, ARM has led the way in the development of mobile APIs on ARM MaliTM GPUs and we believe OpenGL ES 3.1 is a tangible step forward allowing developers to take full advantage of the graphics features in the OpenGL standard while maintaining the efficiency required to deliver these features to mobile users worldwide.”

“The new functionality in the OpenGL ES 3.1 API is a major step forward in bringing easy-to- access compute capabilities for advanced 3D graphics to mobile and embedded devices. The good news for Imagination’s extensive PowerVR developer ecosystem is that we designed all of our Rogue GPUs anticipating the full feature set of OpenGL ES 3.1, from the smallest, half-cluster graphics processors aimed at very affordable devices to multi-cluster, high-end GPUs designed for the ultimate flagship platforms. We are very excited about this next phase in mobile graphics as GPU compute becomes a more significant and integral part of advanced graphics applications,” said Tony King-Smith, EVP marketing, Imagination Technologies.

“With Mobica’s roots coming from the mobile space and with our strong interest in the development of next generation graphics, we are very excited to have contributed to the development of OpenGL ES 3.1,” commented Jim Carroll, CTO of Mobica “We look forward to continuing to help the Khronos group develop this further as we are already seeing the uptake of this specification with our customers for development and conformance testing.”

“The new OpenGL ES specification raises the bar for graphics interactivity and access to GPU compute across the mobile industry,” said Barthold Lichtenbelt, director of mobile graphics at NVIDIA and OpenGL ARB working group chair. “The NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor brings desktop graphics capabilities to mobile and can naturally support OpenGL ES 3.1 as well as full desktop OpenGL 4.4. We’re committed to working with Khronos to evolve the OpenGL family of APIs to provide a powerful platform for visual computing across the industry.”

“Upcoming mobile applications will require integrated GPUs to concurrently render graphics and perform general computing tasks within the power constraints of mobile devices,” said Tim Leland, Senior Director of Product Management at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We are pleased to have worked with Khronos to develop appropriate APIs in OpenGL ES 3.1 for compute shaders and indirect draw commands in order to enable new experiences on mobile devices that use Snapdragon processors.”

“Vivante has been a long-term contributor to the OpenGL ES API, leading the way for mass market adoption of the latest graphics technologies in mobile products. The company’s early vision of multi-context photorealistic rendering and compute in smartphones and tablets has come to life with the introduction of OpenGL ES 3.1, along with the comprehensive list of additional API features that are supported by the Smaller-Faster-Cooler Vega GPU product line,” said Wei-Jin Dai, President and CEO of Vivante. “Developers adding OpenGL ES 3.1 support to their applications designed around Vega will give them the extra edge they need to redefine the visual user experience and interactive game play.”

Conformance – Enhancing the User Experience

The OpenGL ES working group at Khronos expects to update the OpenGL ES Adopter’s Program to provide extensive conformance tests for OpenGL ES 3.1 within three months, enabling implementers of the specification to gain access to source code for Conformance Tests and to use the OpenGL ES trademark on products that pass the defined testing procedure. This ensures that conformant OpenGL ES implementations provide a reliable, cross-platform graphics programming platform.

“We returned yesterday from a week of meetings with Khronos members and key industry figures in the well-established Chinese smartphone market; and we expect to see an increased adoption of OpenGL ES in China,” said Erik Noreke, VP business development of Khronos Group. “There are a growing number of Chinese SOC companies providing the Chinese market with mobile platforms supporting high performance 3D graphics; and with OpenGL ES 3.1 they are able to continue supporting the growing consumer demand for high resolution 3D enabled devices.”

To learn more about Khronos go here.

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