Eurographics 2006 - Conference Webpage

T3Developing Mobile 3D Applications with OpenGL ES and M3G (Half-Day)

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Date:	Monday, 4th September
Time:	9:00 - 12:30
Location:	Tutorial Room 8 (HS 8)

Organizer: Kari Pulli, Nokia Research Center & MIT CSAIL
Speakers: Kari Pulli, Nokia Research Center & MIT CSAIL
Tomi Aarnio, Nokia Research Center
Jani Vaarala, Nokia
Ville Miettinen, Hybrid Graphics
Mark Callow, HI Corporation
Abstract: This course presents two new 3D graphics APIs for mobile platforms: OpenGL ES and M3G. Topics include the structure of the APIs, the evolution of mobile graphics standards, programming examples, and tips and tricks for programmers and artists. Attendees gain an understanding of the functionality the standards provide and how to use them to create efficient graphics applications.
Summary: Mobile phones offer exciting new opportunities for graphics application developers. However, they also have significant limitations compared to traditional desktop graphics environments, including absence of dedicated graphics hardware, limited memory (both RAM and ROM), limited communications bandwidth, and lack of floating point hardware. Existing graphics APIs ignore these limitations and thus are infeasible to implement in embedded devices.
This course presents two new 3D graphics APIs that address the special needs and constraints of mobile/embedded platforms: OpenGL ES and M3G. OpenGL ES is a light-weight version of the wellknown workstation standard, offering a subset of OpenGL 1.5 capability plus support for fixed point arithmetic. M3G, Mobile 3D Graphics API for Java MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile), also known as JSR-184, provides scene graph and animation support, binary file format, and immediate mode rendering that bypasses scene graphs. These APIs provide powerful graphics capabilities in a form that fits well on today's devices, and will support hardware acceleration in the future.
The course begins with a discussion of the target environments and their limitations, and general techniques for coping with platform/environment constraints (such as fixed point arithmetic). This is followed by detailed presentations of the APIs. For each API, we describe the included functionality and compare it to related workstation standards, explaining what was left out and why. We also discuss practical aspects of working with the APIs on the target platforms, and present strategies for porting existing applications and creating new ones.

Speakers' Background

Kari Pulli: has been an active contributor in both OpenGL ES and M3G (JSR-184) standardization groups. Kari is a Research Fellow at Nokia and is currently a Visiting Scientist at MIT. Before joining Nokia in 1999, Kari worked on graphics at Microsoft, SGI, and Alias|Wavefront, obtained a PhD at University of Washington in graphics in 1997, and was the technical head of the Digital Michelangelo project at Stanford Graphics Lab in 1998-99. Kari is a member of the Eurographics Executive Committee.
Jani Vaarala: is a Graphics SW Architect at Nokia. He has been actively involved with OpenGL ES standardization, and headed a project that developed a SW OpenGL ES engine and adapted EGL for Symbian OS. Jani started on 3D graphics in early 90's on an Amiga, on which he developed several award-winning graphics demos.
Ville Miettinen: is the CTO and co-founder of Hybrid Graphics, Ltd. During the last decade he has been involved in the design and implementation of numerous software products in the games and 3D graphics industries. His research interests include dynamic code generation and software rasterizers, and he has authored conference and journal papers on graphics hardware and visibility optimization. He is a member of ACM SIGGRAPH, the Khronos Group and the JSR-184 expert group.
Tomi Aarnio: is the specification editor and one of the main contributors in the M3G (JSR-184) standardization group, and a member of the OpenGL ES group. As a Senior Research Engineer at Nokia, he has been involved in designing and implementing several mobile graphics engines, most recently heading the implementation of M3G.
Mark Callow: is Chief Architect at HI Corporation, the leader in 3D graphics engines for mobile devices, whose Mascot Capsule Micro3D Engine is found on more than 30,000,000 handsets. Mark leads an international team creating implementations of M3G and OpenGLES and was active in the creation of both standards. Prior to HI, Mark was with Silicon Graphics for 11 years were he created InPerson, a collaborative desktop video conferencing system; Mark was also Cosmo Software's liaison to the MPEG- 4 standards committee. He previously taught several well-received Siggraph courses and is a member of ACM, ACM Siggraph, IEE, the Khronos Group and the JSR-184 expert group.