Khronos Group Releases OpenVG 1.1 Lite to Bring High-Quality Vector Graphics to OpenGL ES 2.0-Compatible GPUs

Provisional Specification publicly available for industry feedback before finalization.
Full Conformance Test Suite placed into Open Source

Beaverton, OR – May 28, 2020 – Today, The Khronos^® Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating graphics and compute interoperability standards, publicly releases the OpenVG™ 1.1 Lite Provisional Specification for advanced 2D vector and raster graphics, with conformance tests placed into open source under the Apache 2.0 license. OpenVG 1.1 Lite enables this high-quality 2D vector graphics API to be fully accelerated by any OpenGL^® ES 2.0-compatible GPU for the first time, significantly increasing the range of devices on which it can be deployed. The Provisional Specification is released in markdown format on GitHub to enable the developer community to provide input and feedback before the specification and conformance tests are finalized.

OpenVG provides a low-level hardware acceleration interface for sophisticated 2D vector graphics, ideal for smooth and fluidly scalable user interfaces. Since its inception in 2008, OpenVG has been widely deployed in consumer electronics, handhelds, wearables, and automotive devices, as it can be accelerated by low-power, low-cost 2D graphics hardware.

The OpenVG 1.1 Lite specification relaxes the accuracy requirements of stroke path rasterization and normalizes the stencil/blending modes of OpenVG 1.1 so that they can be directly accelerated by any OpenGL ES 2.0-compatible 3D GPU, while maintaining high rendering quality. With this update, OpenVG can be even more widely deployed on almost any existing or new 3D-accelerated devices and platforms.

OpenVG 1.1 Lite includes the following updates to OpenVG 1.1:

• Stencil paint modes have been made optional;
• Complex stroke path generation (Bezier cusp cases) conformance has been relaxed;
• Lighten and Darken blending modes have been made optional.

“OpenVG 1.1 Lite enables fully-accelerated beautiful fonts, and high-quality vector graphics on almost any 3D GPU,” said Eisaku Ohbuchi, chair of the OpenVG Working Group and fellow at Digital Media Professionals Inc. “By open-sourcing the conformance test suite, implementers can understand the operation and accuracy of OpenVG more concretely, and industry feedback can help us improve the quality of the tests and the specification over time.”

OpenVG 1.1 Lite has been developed by Khronos members, including Ajou University, Digital Media Professionals Inc., and TAKUMI. More information about OpenVG specification, conformance tests, sample implementations and utility libraries is available at https://www.khronos.org/openvg/.

About OpenVG

OpenVG defines low-level 2D operations based on simple geometry such as lines and Bezier curves to provide hardware acceleration for vector graphics and engines such as SVG™. OpenVG enables high-quality, anti-aliased, scalable 2D vector graphics and text with highly interactive performance and low levels of power consumption – ideal for embedded and handheld battery-powered devices. The OpenVG Adopters Program maintained by Khronos enables OpenVG implementers to become officially conformant to enjoy the protection of the Khronos Intellectual Property Framework and use the OpenVG trademark.

About Khronos

The Khronos Group is an open, non-profit, member-driven consortium of over 150 industry-leading companies creating advanced, royalty-free, interoperability standards for 3D graphics, augmented and virtual reality, parallel programming, vision acceleration and machine learning. Khronos activities include Vulkan®, OpenGL®, OpenGL® ES, WebGL™, SPIR-V™, OpenCL™, SYCL™, OpenVX™, NNEF™, OpenXR™, 3D Commerce™, ANARI™, OpenVG™, and glTF™. Khronos members drive the development and evolution of Khronos specifications and are able to accelerate the delivery of cutting-edge platforms and applications through early access to specification drafts and conformance tests.