3Dlabs and ATI Announce Joint RenderMonkey Initiative

3D hardwaremakers 3Dlabs and ATI announced a joint collaboration with the RenderMonkey shader development tool suite today at the Game Developers Conference. ATI will contintue to have responsibility for the core RenderMonkey shader-creation environment framework, while both 3Dlabs and ATI will undertake development of plug-in modules supporting Microsoft's High-Level Shading Language as well as OpenGL 2.0's real-time shader language. Under the terms of the agreement, OpenGL 2.0 support for RenderMonkey will be distributed free by both ATI and 3Dlabs, in addition to ATI's current RenderMonkey support for Microsoft HLSL shaders.