GLSL quietly added to OS X?

I recently updated to 10.3.4 and noticed something interesting - my computer now supports the following extensions:

GL_ARB_vertex_shader
GL_ARB_fragment_shader
GL_ARB_shader_objects

Which seems funny, considering that I have a 667 mhz G4 w/ the original Radeon board it came with. (when i say radeon, i mean THE radeon, it was the first model, before they were numbered.) Ive been able to use GL_ARB_vertex_program in the past, but performance with it was a little clunky and my guess is that it was software emulated since my card is so old. But suddenly I now have support for all these new GLSL extensions as well? Even fragment shaders? How can this be?

I haven’t tried them yet, so I have no idea if they actually function or not. Maybe apple is halfway toward getting a working GLSL implementation? I notice that GL_ARB_shading_language_100 is not present, which in my understanding is required for GLSL to function.

Anybody know what’s going on here?

Nothing works yet.

Apple made the (wrong, IM(NS)HO) decision to include those three extensions even when the crucial ARB_shading_language_100 extension doesn’t work yet.

It may be that they intend to support all four extensions on all renderers (including software), which would explain their presence everywhere, but they’re not there yet.

Thats sort of what I expected. I hope GLSL functionality will be working soon on hardware that supports it at least (maybe 10.4?).

On the original Radeon (actually a Radeon 7000 mobility if you’re referring to the 667 Mhz G4 TiBook) you’ll notice that you’re also missing ARB_fragment_program. So even if you get the shading language you still can’t use it.

ARB_vertex_program is software emulated on all old GPUs. The same is not currently true for ARB_fragment_program. But, notice that in 10.3.4 there is a new (second) software renderer “Apple Generic-fragment program”. I think this is a good hint that fragment program emulation will be added to old GPUs in the future.

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