Android NDK hits Release 3, brings OpenGL ES 2.0 access to devs

[Guest ermacwins]

http://android-developers.blogspot.c...id-ndk-r3.html

Posted by David Turner on 08 March 2010 at 11:25 AM

The third release of the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) is now available for download from the Android developer site.

It can be used to target devices running Android 1.5 and higher. In addition to a few bug fixes and improvements, this release includes the following new features:

Toolchain improvement

The toolchain binaries have been refreshed for this release with GCC 4.4.0, which should generate slightly more compact and efficient machine code than the previous one (4.2.1).

Note that the GCC 4.4.0 C++ frontend is more pedantic, and may refuse to compile certain rare and invalid template declarations that were accepted by 4.2.1. To alleviate the problem, this NDK still provides the 4.2.1 binaries, which can optionally be used to build your machine code.

OpenGL ES 2.0 support

Applications targeting Android 2.0 (API level 5) or higher can now directly access OpenGL ES 2.0 features. This brings the ability to control graphics rendering through vertex and fragment shader programs, using the GLSL shading language.

A new trivial sample, named "hello-gl2", demonstrates how to render a simple triangle using both shader types.

Name simplification

This NDK release is just called "r3", for "Revision 3", to indicate that it is not limited to a specific Android platform/API level. Some developers thought that the previous release's name (1.6_r1) was confusing and indicated that it could only be used to target Android 1.6, which was not true.

Enjoy!

So what does this mean? can we get all these bugs fixed i.e. 3d wallpaper and other open gl es 2 stuff?

Sorry im noob

[Guest Carl_Brummy]

http://android-developers.blogspot.c...id-ndk-r3.html

Posted by David Turner on 08 March 2010 at 11:25 AM

The third release of the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) is now available for download from the Android developer site.

It can be used to target devices running Android 1.5 and higher. In addition to a few bug fixes and improvements, this release includes the following new features:

Toolchain improvement

The toolchain binaries have been refreshed for this release with GCC 4.4.0, which should generate slightly more compact and efficient machine code than the previous one (4.2.1).

Note that the GCC 4.4.0 C++ frontend is more pedantic, and may refuse to compile certain rare and invalid template declarations that were accepted by 4.2.1. To alleviate the problem, this NDK still provides the 4.2.1 binaries, which can optionally be used to build your machine code.

OpenGL ES 2.0 support

Applications targeting Android 2.0 (API level 5) or higher can now directly access OpenGL ES 2.0 features. This brings the ability to control graphics rendering through vertex and fragment shader programs, using the GLSL shading language.

A new trivial sample, named "hello-gl2", demonstrates how to render a simple triangle using both shader types.

Name simplification

This NDK release is just called "r3", for "Revision 3", to indicate that it is not limited to a specific Android platform/API level. Some developers thought that the previous release's name (1.6_r1) was confusing and indicated that it could only be used to target Android 1.6, which was not true.

Enjoy!

So what does this mean? can we get all these bugs fixed i.e. 3d wallpaper and other open gl es 2 stuff?

Sorry im noob

I think this of more interest to the gaming developers, I know for example that Mozilla Firefox for android/mobile are considering using the OpenGL ES 2 kit. Games should run quicker as this will be directly taking with the graphics system, instead of going via the JVM. It may also be of use to developers who want to improve UI such as HTC with Sense. However, the phone would HAVE to support the OpenGL ES 2 libs for this, and this may make multiple device compatibility more difficult.

It is the age old issue, portability or performance...

Carl.

[Guest ermacwins]

is hero capable of handling OpenGL ES 2?