Just four and a half months after releasing the OpenGL 4 specification, the Khronos Group has released the final version of the OpenGL 4.1 specification. OpenGL 4.0 brought feature parity with Direct3D 11′s new features—in particular, compute shaders and tessellation—and with 4.1, the Khronos Group claims that it is surpassing the functionality offered in Microsoft’s 3D API.

OpenGL 4.1 includes more robust error handling to make running buggy programs safer, richer debugging features to make developing OpenGL software simpler, and a new ability to save and restore programs written to use the shaders found in modern video hardware. Shader programs, an important part of modern 3D software and hardware, are written in a hardware-independent language, and then compiled at runtime by the OpenGL driver. This allows the programs to be properly optimized for the specific GPU hardware. The downside is that compilation can be a slow process, and if it has to be performed each time a game starts, for example, it can lead to noticeable delays. OpenGL 4.1 allows software to cache the compiled programs and therefore