Khronos is proud to announce that the GDC Paris conference has invited a Collada WG representative to present and demo the Collada specification. This presentation will be done in conjunction with relevant new game engine technology under development at Intel. Rod Green from Intel’s visual computing division will be present to do the presentation.

The Khronos Group has announced the place and time of their three BOF’s at Siggraph 2008 Los Angeles Convention Center. A notable addition to this update show a time and date has been set for the OpenGL BOF, on August 13th at the Wilshire Grand Hotel. Also updated are the COLLADA BOF on August 14th and the Khronos Handheld BOF, both at the LACC. To reserve your spot at any of these BOF’s, sign up today on the Khronos Siggraph 2008 events page.

HI Corporation announced that they have developed an OpenGL ES 1.1(*1) software implementation “MascotCapsule Renderion(*2)”. With the OpenGL ES compliant 3D graphics software implementation, graphics are not processed by the GPU, but by the main CPU as a software-implemented alternative processor using the processing capacity that has increased significantly in recent years. With this implementation, manufacturers will be able to support the industry standard OpenGL ES without GPU. HI is planning to optimize its software implementation for Renesas Technology’s CPU cores, and will greatly promote this product in low-end embedded devices as well as help manufacturers support industry standards at low cost.

SmithMicro has recently released Poser Pro, the 3D character solution for production, integrates scenes with 3D applications. Includes COLLADA, 64-bit render engine, Network Rendering. Save time with pre-built characters and props.

Anark Corporation today announced its sponsorship of the upcoming 3D Collaboration & Interoperability conference, May 15 & 16 in Denver, Colorado. Anark will demonstrate Anark Core(TM), a unique software platform that dramatically reduces repetitive CAD file conversion and preparation tasks, enabling efficient interoperability between producers and consumers of CAD data. Anark Core version 1.1 provides users with design-feature removal capabilities (parts, holes, fillets), then exports modified CAD data into high-precision BREP and lightweight mesh file formats including CATIA V4/V5, Parasolid, Pro/E, STEP, Unigraphics, IGES, Collada, DWF, X3D, and VRML.

May 12th, 2008 The Khronos Group is pleased to announce the release of the OpenGL(R) ES 2.0 Conformance Tests.  The Conformance Tests exercise and verify both the OpenGL ES 2.0 API and its companion shader programming language, GLSL ES 1.0. Only implementations that pass the Conformance Tests and are reviewed via the Khronos Conformance Process are entitled to call themselves “OpenGL ES 2.0” and use the OpenGL ES 2.0 trademark and logo. Khronos Adopters who have entered the OpenGL ES 2.0 conformance program can now download the Conformance Tests and make conformance submissions.  Information about the Khronos Conformance Testing and Adopters Program of OpenGL ES 2.0 is available here.

“The availability of a conformance program is a significant milestone for any open standard and Khronos expects that the launch of the Conformance Tests for OpenGL ES 2.0 will encourage and enable multiple implementations of this industry-leading 3D API,” said Neil Trevett, president of the Khronos Group. OpenGL is a registered trademark and the OpenGL ES logo is a trademark of Silicon Graphics Inc. used by permission by Khronos.

The Embedded Systems 3D Game Software Development Kit, short ES 3D Game SDK, is an Open Source 3D Game Engine / SDK for embedded devices / mobile phones. The new v0.4.2 includes ROAM for the terrain renderer and a sky dome implementation. Also, several improvements and bug fixes are included in this release. The SDK is tested against the OpenGL ES library from Hybrid Graphics (Rasteroid 3.1), Imagination Technologies (PowerVR) and Nokia (OpenGL ES 1.1 Plugin). For OpenKODE, the Acrodea SDK is used and tested.

Bob Kuehne of Blue Newt Software and Paul Martz of Skew Matrix Software are pleased to announce that registration is now open for two OpenSceneGraph (OSG) training courses in Denver, CO, June 11-13, 2008. These two courses will provide developers with essential OSG programming skills and visual database creation techniques.

Altia DeepScreen is an embedded software tool that automatically generates tight, deploy-able C graphics code from the Altia Design graphical user interface (GUI) builder used for creating custom Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs). DeepScreen supports many embedded platforms—including VxWorks, QNX, X11, miniGL and now OpenGL ES.