After taking a brief holiday break, Apple managed to release the first developer beta of Mac OS X 10.6.3 last week. Among the 221 code changes, there appears to be some initial support for parts of the OpenGL 3.0 spec, though Apple will have a long way to go before Snow Leopard is OpenGL 3-ready.

OSx86 contributer netkas, known for his work in enabling graphics card support for non-Apple GPUs, noted over the weekend that the developer test build of 10.6.3 contained a number of OpenGL 3.0 extensions, as well as a few for the updated 3.1 and 3.2 specifications. Mac OS X has essentially been stuck at OpenGL 2.1 support for some time, even though GPUs in most newer Macs support the newer standards.

Part of the issue with bringing OpenGL 3.0 support is that the newer versions deprecated many older functions from OpenGL 2.x in an attempt to modernize and simplify the overall API. All three revisions of OpenGL 3.x also include revisions to the shader language as well. Updating all the support requires work on Apple's part as well as the cooperation of GPU vendors to get drivers into shape. OpenGL 3.1 and 3.2 were released last year, well into Snow Leopard's development cycle, and drivers offering beta support for those versions of OpenGL were the norm on Windows Vista.

For those who need OpenGL 3.x support, however, the good news is that most of the necessary functionality brought by OpenGL 3.0 is included by way of extensions. Shading language 1.30 still isn't supported, and support for 3.1 and 3.2 is still in the early stages. Later revisions of Snow Leopard may include full support for the updated standards, but chances are good that 10.7 will definitely include full support.

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