OpenGL is basically a library to help graphic programmers to do
their work. It can help in 2D or 3D works. But mostly, it is being
used for 3D job. Some games that
used OpenGL are like Quake, Half Life, MDK, Baldur's Gate and etc.
OpenGL started in 1982, where Silicon
Graphics create the ancestors of OpenGL which is IrisGL. IBM choose
IrisGL as the API (Application Programming Interface) for their
workstation, RS/6000. Since there are many problems in IrisGL, SGI
have done many things to solve it. After many enhancements and
modifications to IrisGL, OpenGL is born from it.
One special thing about OpenGL is that,
it is a cross-platform library. It is portable and can be used in any
machine such as Windows, Linux, Unix and Macintoch.
Currently, OpenGL standard is
controlled by a board named OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB)
since 1992. Their job is to upgrade and maintain OpenGL from time to
time, for example from OpenGL 1.1 to OpenGL 1.2, and from OpenGL 1.2
to OpenGL 2.0 and so on. This will help programmers and graphics cards
makers to produce the wonderful graphics we see on the
screen.
This is the official site for OpenGL: http://www.opengl.org/.
|
