A new discussion forum has been added to help with the development of the OpenTK manual. If you have any ideas to share please post them at the Documentation forum.

The Documentation section has been updated with new content and functionality. It now forms what is known as a "collaborative book", which functions not unlike a wiki; once logged in, you can create new pages in the book, edit existing ones, or even change the chapter layout. There isn't much content to speak of right now but new pages are slowly being added, with the intent of acting not only as a manual for OpenTK but also for 3d programming in the managed world (hey, let a man aim high!)

A rough outline of the chapters:

1. Installation
   [Linux, Windows, compilation instructions, starting a new project]

2. A Simple Introduction
   [creating a window, drawing shapes, resizing the window, user input]

3. Warming up
   [common game-related tasks like framerate independence, text rendering, mode setting, projections/math, loading resources, playing sounds]

4. Putting it all Together
   [show how to create a simple game, e.g. 3d pong or something of that calibre]

5. Advanced Topics
   [managed/unmanaged resource pools, interop performance, the GC, scripting on .Net]

6. Crash-course in OpenGL
7. OpenAL madness
8. References

Any specific topics you'd like to see discussed? Interested in helping out? Waiting for your thoughts!

A preview is available online at Documentation->Reference. Not 100% ready yet (contains private members, misses a stylesheet), expect regular updates.

Edit: stylesheet updated.

According to your input, it seems that the most wanted features are improved documentation and support for mode setting. Following these, we have GLU support, fonts and text, stability, sound and joystick input.

The current plan is to tackle these tasks in the order layed out above, making frequent releases to gather feedback (code contributions would be very welcome!) For the first task, documentation, several features have been added to the Example Launcher: every example now includes an html page describing how it works, with links to the function reference. Moreover, you can view and edit its source code on the fly and see your changes immediately! Hopefully, this will become a great tool for exploring OpenTK and testing new ideas. Check the attached screenshots.

To help prioritize tasks, please check the list below and choose the two most important features for you:

1. Documentation (NDoc function reference, user manual, improved tutorials)
2. Bug and stability fixes.
3. Joystick support.
4. Improved mode setting (fullscreen modes, FSAA, stencil, stereo)
5. Glu bindings (tesselation, quadrics)
6. Mac OS X support
7. OpenAL bindings
8. Fonts and Text (multiple font sheets, text layout)

This will help focus resources on items that will be more useful for your projects. You don't need to create an account before posting.

Thanks!

Get it while it's hot.

New features:

• OpenGL API now follows .Net naming conventions.
• OpenTK.Fonts for text rendering.
• OpenTK.Math for Vector, Matrix and Quaternion math.
• Improved GameWindow timing and shutdown behavior.
• VSync support.
• New tutorials for OpenTK.Fonts.
• Improved Linux support. GameWindow no longer crashes on exit.
• Windows 98, ME and 2000 support.
• Contributors.txt file.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed for this release.

I spent the past few days implementing and profiling different font rendering methods, and I'm glad to say that OpenTK can now render text at an impressive rate of ~1.25 million characters per second. This is the best-case situtation where all text is rendered in one batch, but the gist is that text rendering has negligible impact on performance.

I've also tried to improve text rendering at small point sizes, but this didn't work out so well. To get pixel-perfect glyph rendering, you have to disable OpenGL texture filtering, however, by doing so you stop benefiting from sub-pixel precision making text look really bad. You can improve quality by enabling grid-fitting and making absolutely sure that every glyph is rendered at whole pixel boundaries. This isn't really practical (scrolling text suddenly becomes a very interesting problem!), so I've compromised by enabling filtering and increasing text contrast to compensate. Grid-fitting is still enabled for small point sizes (16 or less), but disabled for larger text where sub-pixel precision allows us to have better shapes. I'm not 100% content with the looks of the text, but this can be tweaked in the future.

The new OpenTK.OpenGL code, which follows the .Net naming conventions, has been committed to SVN. This is a breaking change - fortunately, migration is mostly a matter of straightforward search-and-replace operations:

1. "GL.ARB" -> "GL.Arb", "GL.EXT" -> "GL.Ext", etc
2. "GL.Enums." -> ""
3. "VERSION_1_5" -> "Version15", "VERSION_2_0" -> "Version20", "ARB_multitexture" -> "ArbMultitexture" etc
4. "PROJECTION" -> "Projection", "MODELVIEW" -> "Modelview", etc

For example, "GL.Enums.BeginMode.TRIANGLES" becomes "BeginMode.Triangles", while "GL.Enums.ClearBufferMask.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT" becomes "ClearBufferMask.ColorBufferBit". Don't forget to add using OpenTK.OpenGL.Enums; to all files that use OpenGL functions.

Thanks to george's work, OpenTK now contains a fully featured math toolkit (vectors, matrices, quaternions). Font support is progressing (not ready yet), GameWindow timing has been improved, and several bugs have been fixed in the bindings. Unless something serious shows up, the next version, 0.3.13, will be ready by the end of next week.

The OpenTK site was upgraded last night with several new features have been added (source code formatting, anonymous comments re-enabled), cleaned up URL's and (hopefully) better performance. The opentk.org domain now points to this site, too. Do report if you see anything abnormal! I am also looking for recommendations on a reliable web host that supports PHP/MySQL, so if you have any in mind please share.

It was announced earlier today that the ARB is currently revising the specifications to correct several identified issues. The official announcement is available at the OpenGL forums.

OpenGL 3.0 will be a complete redesign of the 20 year old OpenGL API, something sorely needed if I may add. It will be supported on R300 (Radeon 9500+)/NV30 (Geforce 5200+) and newer hardware, at least once the IHV's provide the necessary drivers. The Pipeline Newsletters contain more information on the upcoming API - a recommended read by all OpenGL developers.