OpenGL
…Claimed to be most widely used graphics standard. It is an environment for developing portable, interactive 2D and 3D graphics applications. OpenGL has become the industry’s most widely used and supported 2D and 3D graphics application programming interface (API), bringing thousands of applications to a wide variety of computer platforms. OpenGL fosters innovation and speeds application development by incorporating a broad set of rendering, texture mapping, special effects, and other powerful visualization functions. Developers can leverage the power of OpenGL across all popular desktop and workstation platforms, ensuring wide application deployment…
…The OpenGL API (Application Programming Interface) began as an initiative by SGI to create a single, vendor-independent API for the development of 2D and 3D graphics applications. Prior to the introduction of OpenGL, many hardware vendors had different graphics libraries. This situation made it expensive for software developers to support versions of their applications on multiple hardware platforms, and it made porting of applications from one hardware platform to another very time-consuming and difficult. SGI saw the lack of a standard graphics API as an inhibitor to the growth of the 3D marketplace and decided to lead an industry group in creating such a standard…
…Leading software developers use OpenGL, with its robust rendering libraries, as the 2D/3D graphics foundation for higher-level APIs. Developers leverage the capabilities of OpenGL to deliver highly differentiated, yet widely supported vertical market solutions. For example, Open Inventor provides a cross-platform user interface and flexible scene graph that makes it easy to create OpenGL applications. IRIS Performer leverages OpenGL functionality and delivers additional features tailored for the demanding high frame rate markets such as visual simulation and virtual sets. OpenGL Optimizer is a toolkit for real-time interaction, modification, and rendering of complex surface-based models such as those found in CAD/CAM and special effects creation. OpenGL Volumizer is a high-level immediate mode volume rendering API for the energy, medical and sciences markets. OpenGL Shader provides a common interface to support realistic visual effects, bump mapping, multiple textures, environment maps, volume shading and an unlimited array of new effects using hardware acceleration on standard OpenGL graphics cards…
… OpenGL is the pervasive standard for 3D consumer and professional applications across all major OS platforms. A partial list for Window, Linux and MacOS are available in the products section…
