Kurt Akeley and Mark Segal authored the original OpenGL specification. This is being done in order to improve the marketing of OpenGL, and to remove barriers between the development of OpenGL and OpenGL ES. With so many companies involved with such a diverse set of interests, OpenGL has become very much a general-purpose API with a wide range of capabilities.Īccording to current plans, control of OpenGL will pass to the Khronos Group by the end of 2006. Aside from these corporations, each year many other companies are invited to be part of the OpenGL ARB for one-year terms. Microsoft, one of the founding members, left in March 2003. Voting members of the ARB as of April 2006 include 3D hardware manufacturers Silicon Graphics, 3Dlabs, ATI Technologies, NVIDIA and Intel, and computer manufacturers IBM, Apple Computer, Dell, and Sun Microsystems. The ARB consists of a set of companies with a vested interest in creating a consistent and widely available API. The OpenGL specification is currently overseen by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB), which was formed in 1992. However to avoid licensing costs associated with formally calling itself an OpenGL implementation, it claims merely to be a "very similar" API. Notably, the open source library Mesa is a fully software-based graphics API which is code-compatible with OpenGL. ![]() Various software implementations exist, bringing OpenGL to a variety of platforms that do not have vendor support. Hardware vendors have to meet specific tests to be able to qualify their implementation as an OpenGL implementation.Įfficient vendor-supplied implementations of OpenGL (making use of graphics acceleration hardware to a greater or lesser extent) exist for Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, many Unix platforms, Wii and PlayStation 3. From this specification, hardware vendors create implementations - libraries of functions created to match the functions stated in the OpenGL specification, making use of hardware acceleration where possible. OpenGL is widely used in computer-aided design, virtual reality, scientific visualization, information visualization, flight simulation, and video game development.Īt its most basic level, OpenGL is a specification, meaning it is simply a document that describes a set of functions and the precise behaviors that they must perform. OpenGL was developed by Silicon Graphics and is popular in the video games industry, where it competes with Direct3D on Microsoft Windows platforms. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL ( Open Graphics Library) is a standard specification defining a cross-language cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 3D computer graphics (and 2D computer graphics as well). ![]() Wikipedia has related information at OpenGL
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |