hello,
i have tried to implement the GLSL Fresnel Shader example with jogl, but the GLSL Driver(Runtime) said , that the GLSL “refract” instruction is not supported and the Frame Rate with activated Fresnel Shader will be crash .
Is this a general jogl API Problem or it’s a graphic’s Driver problem?
i have installed a radeon 9800 pro Graphics Card with the latest Device Drivers.
It’s the driver. Try to be patient, GLSL support still suffers.
Okay, but i have installed the latest ati (catalyst 4.12) Driver yesterday and nothing has changed 
The GLSL Infolog’s output: unsuported language item used. the shader run in software.
it’s the fault of the refract command.
i’am to lazy to use the mathematic refract equations instead of the build-in refract command.
This is what I’ve learned from various sources: ATI is currently heavily redesigning their OpenGL drivers. You may have seen this in the latest driver’s release notes (20% faster in driver-limited situations). Possible reasons for such a redesign are Doom 3, games based on the Doom engine and certain DCC apps. This is of course great for everyone, with one downside: better GLSL support is not their primary priority. Drivers > 4.8 have also broken some stuff in GLSL that worked ok in previous versions.
My guess is that when we see support for OpenGL 2.0 (and that applies to NV too), we’ll start seeing usable GLSL implementations. Yes, GLSL is not 100% usable right now (you’ll find many more broken/not implemented stuff).