OpenGL ES 3.0 - This API specification is supported by Android 4.3 (API level 18) and higher.
OpenGL ES 2.0 - This API specification is supported by Android 2.2 (API level 8) and higher.OpenGL ES 1.0 and 1.1 - This API specification is supported by Android 1.0 and higher.Android supports several versions of the OpenGL ES Specification intended for embedded devices.
Standard software interface for 3D graphics processing hardware. OpenGL is a cross-platform graphics API that (OpenGL®), specifically, the OpenGL ES API. Half the battle in OpenGL is often finding ways to create an image efficiently with minimal wasted/repeated/redundant effort on the hardware's part, but to start with, just get some stuff on your screen and learn the anatomy of the whole process incrementally.Android includes support for high performance 2D and 3D graphics with the Open Graphics Library Each part of that process can run extremely deep in its complexity, depending on what you want to do. ^ nb: above is an extreme oversimplification - only intended to provide a rough idea. Next, you prepare the shader programs that tell the GPU what to do with the data you'll be throwing at it, and lastly you supply vertex, uv, color, and various other information to the GPU so that it can be rendered. the one that'll be presented to a device's display for starters. In a nutshell, you prepare buffers (this is already a complex area) for various processes - e.g. It's really just a matter of instructing the GPU to perform certain tasks, provided with certain data. I would expect anything you learn in ES2 to carry across to ES3, and in some respects being familiar with the history of an API can lead to a more robust grasp of its newer iterations. There's a wealth of easy and quick tutorials around the web for learning Open GL ES2, and I would highly recommend supplementing any reading you do with a good amount of tinkering to see what's what.
Unless you have a good real-world ES3 device or platform to run your code on, I think it would be unnecessarily difficult to learn Open GL via jumping straight into its newest, only-just released iteration instead a version that currently sees vastly more widespread use. Seeing as OpenGL ES 3.0 spec was just released, I thought, "Why would I learn ES 2 when I can just learn the fully PC-compatible ES 3?" So, how would I learn it, when the specification was just ratified fairly recently, read the specification? I am currently reading the book Real Time Rendering, 3rd Edition, and while it is very helpful, it does not teach a graphics API (I knew it didn't beforehand, and didn't expect it to). I might not be the seasoned veteran and trusted expert on C/C++, but I think my knowledge is sufficient. I am new to graphics programming, but am by no means new to programming. OpenGL is normally implemented by the graphics hardware vendors.
For Android, it's said to be already available from select vendors who sell debugging devices, but it probably won't be available for the mainstream user until early next year.Īnd, while I'm at it, how do you program with OpenGL? I realize that it is a specification and not a full API, but I can't say I know anything about how to implement it. If you are doing mobile development, OpenGL ES 3.0 for the iPhone likely will not be available until iOS 7 next fall, possibly later (Apple didn't support OpenGL ES 2.0 until 2 years after it was released in 2007). If you do not have an OpenGL 4.3 compatible graphics card, you could artificially restrict yourself to the OpenGL 3.3 core API to get an idea of what OpenGL ES 3.0 programming would be like.
The Adreno 3.0 SDK for Windows and the Mali Developer SDK for Windows include an OpenGL ES 3.0 emulator. If you have a graphics card that supports OpenGL 4.3 (NVIDIA has released OpenGL 4.3 beta drivers), you can use an OpenGL ES 3.0 emulator. So, how would I learn it, when the specification was just ratified fairly recently, read the specification? OpenGL ES 2.0 is a good starting point because it is forward compatible with OpenGL ES 3.0, meaning the applications you develop for OpenGL ES 2.0 will work (with minor modifications in the vertex and fragment shading code) on OpenGL ES 3.0, as well as desktop OpenGL 2.1, OpenGL 3.x and OpenGL 4.x. Seeing as OpenGL ES 3.0 spec was just released, I thought, "Why would I learn ES 2 when I can just learn the fully PC-compatible ES 3?"