OpenGL Shading Language

Until recently, application developers have had no choice but to use the graphics hardware as built by hardware developers. The programming interfaces (APIs) simply exposed the underlying capabilities of the hardware. If the hardware didn't do something quite the way an application wanted it done, there was no alternative but to accept what the hardware could do. More recently, graphics hardware has become more flexible. Developers have been eager to exploit this flexibility. Within the last year or so, it's become clear that the right answer for OpenGL is to expose the new functionality in the form of a high-level programming language - the new OpenGL Shading Language, developed by 3Dlavis, Inc., is the answer. This book is the official guide to this new language. It is both a tutorial and a reference, and is filled with many practical examples that will help developers learn the language as well as create shaders to suit their own needs. The author is at the very center of this technology, serving on the OpenGL ARB and leading the team at 3Dlabs responsible for defining and implementing the next iteration of OpenGL.This is the one book all graphics developers will need in order to learn about this important new advance in graphics programming.