Hints found of OpenGL 3.0 support in 10.6.3

News is bouncing around today that the current test version of Mac OS X 10.6.3 has OpenGL 3.0 installed in it, and while it's not completely working yet, developers are hopeful that this means Apple is pushing to have full OpenGL 3.0 support in place as soon as possible. What does that mean for us mere users? Better, faster graphics, and the ability to push the hardware we've already paid for to where it's supposed to be. Most of the hardware sold in modern Macs actually has the ability to make use of OpenGL 3.0 (in fact, the current version is actually 3.2, and 3.0 was released back in 2008), but Apple's never included it in the software.

It's a strange thing, this hesitance Apple has to really push the graphics ability on these machines to the limit. They've kept things slower than they could be in other ways as well, for reasons we're not entirely sure of. It just doesn't seem like faster 3D is a priority for them -- we'll leave it up to you to decide whether that's good or bad.

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Source: http://netkas.org/?p=362

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Gaming Hardware OS Software Apple Snow Leopard

News is bouncing around today that the current test version of Mac OS X 10.6.3 has OpenGL 3.0 installed in it, and while it's not...

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NavStar

My it's my inner cynic, but it seems this OpenGL 3.x push is more about the future iPhone hardware than Mac systems.

"iPhone 2010 will have OpenGL 3.x GPU! Oh crap, we have to get the iPhone OS up to speed. Oh, I guess we'll this will trickle down to the desktop OS since they are both based on the same core OS."

January 13 2010 at 10:08 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Lumi

Sad thing about this, is that there won't be any games really using this yet. I hope Wine and Crossover are on this like flies though.

I myself play World of Warcraft, and the issue has been raised there as well. But, they don't use OpenGL3.0 at all, and may not change anything for the better at all.

"Apple uses WoW for testing and we also have developer seeds of 10.6.3
Everything is still working.

WoW doesn't use OpenGL 3.0 so it doesn't affect WoW. OpenGL 2.1 is still available, there's no change on that side."
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22418746805&sid=1

January 13 2010 at 8:38 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Shunnabunich

If you're familiar with Apple, it's obvious why they have traditionally lagged behind in OpenGL support and graphics hardware. Otherwise, there would be a danger that someone might make a game for the Mac. That would clearly be an intolerable turn of events requiring years of internal OS rejiggering to prevent further infestation.

January 12 2010 at 9:04 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Shunnabunich's comment

Fan-of-iTech

What?

January 12 2010 at 10:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Bobnease

It'd be great if they could make it so I don't have to log out every time I need to switch graphics cards. Kinda makes me feel like I'm back on OS 9...

January 12 2010 at 6:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ivanpertsev

Wow, this is nice. I was just wondering today about the OGL version while sitting in class and whats going on, and then this.

It wont be hard to get to 3.2 if they get to 3.0 in 10.6.3 final, 9400M G, 9600, etc can easily use all of the 3.x OGL updates.

Gonna have more efficient and faster rendering. :)

January 12 2010 at 4:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply