It then becomes known as a standard extension, and the abbreviation ARB is used. It may further happen that the Architecture Review Board "blesses" the extension. In that case, the abbreviation EXT is used. It may happen that more than one vendor agrees to implement the same extended functionality. For example, Nvidia's abbreviation ( NV) is used in defining their proprietary function glCombinerParameterfvNV() and their constant GL_NORMAL_MAP_NV. Each vendor has an alphabetic abbreviation that is used in naming their new functions and constants. An extension is then distributed in two parts: as a header file which contains the extension's function prototypes, and as the vendor's device driver. The OpenGL standard allows individual vendors to provide extended functionality through extensions as new technology is created. ( Microsoft, one of the founding members, left in March 2003.) According to the official OpenGL website, voting members of the ARB as of November 2004 include 3Dlabs, Apple Computer, ATI Technologies, Dell, Evans & Sutherland, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Matrox, Nvidia, SGI 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 overseen by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB), which was formed in 1992.
However, for licensing reasons it claims merely to be a "very similar" API. The open source library Mesa is a fully software-based graphics API which is code-compatible with OpenGL. These implementations are generally provided by display device manufacturers and rely heavily on the hardware provided by that manufacturer.
OpenGL is used in CAD, virtual reality, scientific visualization programs, information visualization and video game development.Īpple Computer implemented the usage of OpenGL beginning with Mac OS X 1.0.Įfficient implementations of OpenGL (leveraging graphics acceleration hardware to a greater or lesser extent) exist for Windows, many Unix platforms, and Mac OS. It is very popular in the video games industry where it competes with Direct3D (on Microsoft Windows) (see Direct3D vs. The interface consists of about 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL ( Open Graphics Library) is a specification defining a cross-language cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 3D computer graphics (and 2D computer graphics as well).
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