The OpenGL Architecture Review Board released a series of manuals along with the specification which have been updated to track changes in the API. OpenGL Extensions Viewer is an awesome, free multiplatform program also available The programmer may query whether or not a primitive was occluded during rendering. Contact Us Legal Notices Privacy Policy Trademark Usage. A few libraries have been designed solely to produce an OpenGL-capable window.
As of version The Vulkan working group has released a major Vulkan 1. This page was last edited on 17 Julyat News Room Events Reviews Press Releases Khronos Logos Newsletters. Dr Aidan Delaney at the University of Brighton has made an SDL2-based fork of the source code for graphics in the Computer Science Games BSc Hons programme. If you spot an error, omission, or typo, please let me know!
Windows iPhone Android Windows Phone BlackBerry Windows Mac Web Apps. Facebook Twitter YouTube News feeds Hosting provided by. B-man33 Aug 16,7: Functions to accurately measure the time taken by an operation; information useful for profiling purposes. Fragment shaders may output different colors to multiple render-targets in one pass; support for multiple render-targets would not be guaranteed until OpenGL 3.
Skip to main content. Pixel data may be packed into a larger primitive type; for example, all four components of an RGBA pixel may be specified as one bit integer. GeForce GTXGeForce GTXGeForce GTXGeForce GTX Ti, GeForce GTX SE, GeForce GTXGeForce GTXGeForce GTX Ti, GeForce GTGeForce GTGeForce GTGeForce GeForce series:
Open Graphics Library OpenGL [3] [4] is a cross-languagecross-platform application programming interface API for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit GPUto achieve hardware-accelerated rendering. Since OpenGL has been managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group. The OpenGL specification describes an abstract API for drawing 2D and 3D graphics. Although it is possible for the API to be implemented entirely in software, it is designed to be implemented mostly or entirely in hardware.
Although the function definitions are superficially similar to those of the programming language Cthey are language-independent. As such, OpenGL has many language bindingssome of the most noteworthy being the JavaScript binding WebGL API, based on OpenGL ES 2. In addition to being language-independent, OpenGL is also cross-platform.
The specification says nothing on the subject of obtaining, and managing an OpenGL context, leaving this as a detail of the underlying windowing system. For the same reason, OpenGL is purely concerned with rendering, providing no APIs related to input, audio, or windowing. OpenGL is an evolving API. New versions of the OpenGL specifications are regularly released by the Khronos Groupeach of which extends the API to support various new features. In addition to the features required by the core API, graphics processing unit GPU vendors may provide additional functionality in the form of extensions.
Extensions may introduce new functions and new constants, and may relax or remove restrictions on existing OpenGL functions. Vendors can use extensions to expose custom APIs without needing support from other vendors or the Khronos Group as a whole, which greatly increases the flexibility of OpenGL.
All extensions are collected in, and defined by, the OpenGL Registry. Each extension is associated with a short identifier, based on the name of the company which developed it. The features introduced by each new version of OpenGL are typically formed from the combined features of several widely implemented extensions, especially extensions of type ARB or EXT. The OpenGL Architecture Review Board released a series of manuals along with the specification which have been updated to track changes in the API.
These are almost universally known by the colors of their covers:. The earliest versions of OpenGL were released with a companion library called the OpenGL Utility Library GLU.
It provided simple, useful features which were unlikely to be supported in contemporary hardware, such as tessellatingand generating mipmaps and primitive shapes. The GLU specification was last updated in and depends on OpenGL features which are now deprecated.
Given that creating an OpenGL context is quite a complex process, and given that it varies between operating systemsautomatic OpenGL context creation has become a common feature of several game-development and user-interface librariesincluding SDLAllegroSFMLFLTKand Qt. A few libraries have been designed solely to produce an OpenGL-capable window.
The first such library was OpenGL Utility Toolkit GLUTlater superseded by freeglut. GLFW is a newer alternative. Given the high workload involved in identifying and loading OpenGL extensions, a few libraries have been designed which load all available extensions and functions automatically.
Examples include GLEEGLEW and glbinding. Extensions are also loaded automatically by most language bindings, such as JOGL and PyOpenGL. Mesa 3D is an open-source implementation of OpenGL. It can do pure software rendering, and it may also use hardware acceleration on BSDLinuxand other platforms by taking advantage of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure.
As of version In the s, developing software that could function with a wide range of graphics hardware was a real challenge. Software developers wrote custom interfaces and drivers for each piece of hardware. This was expensive and resulted in multiplication of effort. By the early s, Silicon Graphics SGI was a leader in 3D graphics for workstations. Their IRIS GL API [12] was considered state-of-the-art [ citation needed ] and became the de facto industry standard, overshadowing the open standards-based PHIGS.
This was because IRIS GL was considered easier to use, and because it supported immediate mode rendering. By contrast, PHIGS was considered difficult to use and outdated in functionality. This in turn caused SGI market share to weaken as more 3D graphics hardware suppliers entered the market.
In an effort to influence the market, SGI decided to turn the IrisGL API into an open standard — OpenGL. However, SGI had many software customers for whom the change from IrisGL to OpenGL would demand significant investment. Moreover, IrisGL had API functions that were irrelevant to 3D graphics. And, IrisGL libraries were unsuitable for opening due to licensing and patent issues [ further explanation needed ]. These factors required SGI to continue to support the advanced and proprietary Iris Inventor and Iris Performer programming APIs while market support for OpenGL matured.
One of the restrictions of IrisGL was that it only provided access to features supported by the underlying hardware. If the graphics hardware did not support a feature, then the application could not use it. OpenGL overcame this problem by providing support in software for features unsupported by hardware, allowing applications to use advanced graphics on relatively low-powered systems. OpenGL standardized access to hardware, pushed the development responsibility of hardware interface programs sometimes called device drivers to hardware manufacturers, and delegated windowing functions to the underlying operating system.
With so many different kinds of graphics hardware, getting them all to speak the same language in this way had a remarkable impact by giving software developers a higher level platform for 3D-software development. In[13] SGI led the creation of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board OpenGL ARBthe group of companies that would maintain and expand the OpenGL specification in the future. The specification was circulated among a few interested parties — but never turned into a product.
Microsoft released Direct3D inwhich eventually became the main competitor of OpenGL. On December 17,[15] Microsoft and SGI initiated the Fahrenheit project, which was a joint effort with the goal of unifying the OpenGL and Direct3D interfaces and adding a scene-graph API too. InHewlett-Packard joined the project. In July the OpenGL Architecture Review Board voted to transfer control of the OpenGL API standard to the Khronos Group.
The first version of OpenGL, version 1. Since then, OpenGL has occasionally been extended by releasing a new version of the specification. Such releases define a baseline set of features which all conforming graphics cards must support, and against which new extensions can more easily be written. Each new version of OpenGL tends to incorporate several extensions which have widespread support among graphics-card vendors, although the details of those extensions may be changed.
One notable feature of OpenGL 1. This is a set of features which are very useful to image-processing applications, but which have limited usefulness elsewhere. Alongside the release of OpenGL 1. However, these would not be incorporated into the core specification until the next release. Most of these were, at the time, rejected by the ARB or otherwise never came to fruition in the form that 3Dlabs proposed.
However, their proposal for a C-style shading language was eventually completed, resulting in the current formulation of the OpenGL Shading Language GLSL or GLslang. Like the assembly-like shading languages it was replacing, it allowed replacing the fixed-function vertex and fragment pipe with shadersthough this time written in a C-like high-level language. The design of GLSL was notable for making relatively few concessions to the limits of the hardware then available.
This hearkened back to the earlier tradition of OpenGL setting an ambitious, forward-looking target for 3D accelerators rather than merely tracking the state of currently available hardware. The final OpenGL 2.
Before the release of OpenGL 3. It consisted of an overhaul to the way that OpenGL works, calling for fundamental changes to the API. The draft introduced a change to object management. That is, to modify an object or to use it, one needs to bind the object to the state system, then make modifications to the state or perform function calls that use the bound object. That is, the basic structure of an object can change at any time, even if the rendering pipeline is asynchronously using that object.
A texture object can be redefined from 2D to 3D. This requires any OpenGL implementations to add a degree of complexity to internal object management. Under the Longs Peak API, object creation would become atomicusing templates to define the properties of an object which would be created with one function call.
The object could then be used immediately across multiple threads. Objects would also be immutable; however, they could have their contents changed and updated. For example, a texture could change its image, but its size and format could not be changed. To support backwards compatibility, the old state based API would still be available, but no new functionality would be exposed via the old API in later versions of OpenGL.
This would have allowed legacy code bases, such as the majority of CAD products, to continue to run while other software could be written against or ported to the new API. Longs Peak was initially due to be finalized in September under the name OpenGL 3. The final specification proved far less revolutionary than the Longs Peak proposal.
Instead of removing all immediate mode and fixed functionality non-shader modethe spec included them as deprecated features. The proposed object model was not included, and no plans have been announced to include it in any future revisions. As a result, the API remained largely the same with a few existing extensions being promoted to core functionality. Among some developer groups this decision caused something of an uproar, [32] with many developers professing that they would switch to DirectX in protest.
Most complaints revolved around the lack of communication by Khronos to the development community and multiple features being discarded that were viewed favorably by many. Other frustrations included the requirement of DirectX 10 level hardware to use OpenGL 3.
Other sources reported that the community reaction was not quite as severe as originally presented, [33] with many vendors showing support for the update. Certain features, marked as deprecated, could be completely disabled by requesting a forward-compatible context from the windowing system.
It was designed to target hardware able to support Direct3D It was designed for hardware able to support Direct3D As in OpenGL 3. Only the most influential extensions are listed below. Nvidia GeForce series and newer, AMD Radeon HD Series and newer, Intel HD Graphics in Intel Ivy Bridge processors and newer.
August 8, [38]. Nvidia GeForce series and newer, AMD Radeon HD Series and newer, and Intel HD Graphics in Intel Haswell processors and newer. August 6, [39]. Nvidia GeForce series and newer, AMD Radeon HD Series and newer, Intel HD Graphics in Intel Haswell processors and newer.
July 22, [40]. Nvidia GeForce series and newer, AMD Radeon HD Series and newer, Intel HD Graphics in Intel Broadwell processors and newer, [41] Tegra K1.
August 11, [7] [42]. Nvidia GeForce series and newer, AMD Radeon HD Series and newer, Intel HD Graphics in Intel Broadwell processors and newer, Tegra K1and Tegra X1. Vulkan, formerly named the "Next Generation OpenGL Initiative" glNext[46] [47] is a grounds-up redesign effort to unify OpenGL and OpenGL ES into one common API that will not be backwards compatible with existing OpenGL versions.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Redirected from OpenGL 4. Not to be confused with OpenCL. Video games outsource real-time rendering calculations to the GPU over OpenGL. The rendered results are not sent back to main memory, but to the framebuffer of video memory instead.
The display controller will then send this data to the display device. Archived from the original on May 30, Retrieved March 14, Retrieved November 7, Retrieved May 2, Retrieved October 8, Retrieved October 24, Retrieved October 31, Retrieved April 17, OpenGL Update for NVIDIA GPUs".
Retrieved 3 March OpenGL built for modern systems". Retrieved August 20, Cross-platform Mantle killer, DX12 competitor". Retrieved August 22, Standards of the Khronos Group.
COLLADA EGL OpenCL OpenGL OpenGL ES OpenGL SC OpenKCam OpenKODE OpenMAX OpenML OpenSL ES OpenVG OpenVX OpenWF OpenXR StreamInput SPIR Vulkan WebCL WebGL SYCL glTF. Retrieved from " https: All articles with dead external links Articles with dead external links from May Articles with permanently dead external links Use mdy dates from May All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from August Wikipedia articles needing clarification from September Articles with DMOZ links.
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This page was last edited on 17 Julyat Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Developers Cookie statement Mobile view. Khronos Group formerly ARB. Open-source license for use of the S. This is a Free Software License B closely modeled on BSD, X, and Mozilla licenses.
Trademark license for new licensees who want to use the OpenGL trademark and logo and claim conformance. Fragment colors may be blended into the framebuffer using bitwise operations. Pixel data may be packed into a larger primitive type; for example, all four components of an RGBA pixel may be specified as one bit integer. Normals may be automatically rescaled by the GL, which in some cases removes the need for a costly normalization. A standard framework on which compressed texture formats may be supported, without needing other compression support.
A standard framework upon which multisample anti-aliasing may be supported, without needing other MSAA support. Several new "texture environment functions": Various ways to customize the blend equation, promoted from the optional imaging subset introduced in version 1. Textures which store depth values, rather than color values; such textures are useful for shadow-casting and displacement maps.
A way to customize the fog intensity per vertex. A set of APIs which emulate multiple calls to DrawArrays or DrawElements, in one function call; in some cases, this may be more efficient. Separate blending functions may be specified for the RGB and Alpha components of the blended pixels.
A stencil mode which causes stencil values to increment with wrapping. Texture environment functions may access all other texture stages, rather than being restricted to the texture bound to their own texture unit. A new texture-coording wrapping mode which causes the texture image to be horizontally or vertically mirrored. The WindowPos API, an alternative to RasterPos which sets the raster-output position in screen space rather than world space.
A new type of GL object, the "buffer", which stores various types of data especially vertex data in fast video memory. The programmer may query whether or not a primitive was occluded during rendering. The high-level OpenGL Shading Languagewhich provides direct access to programmable vertex and fragment processors. Fragment shaders may output different colors to multiple render-targets in one pass; support for multiple render-targets would not be guaranteed until OpenGL 3.
Points may be rendered as small, screen-oriented texture quads; useful when developing particle systems. Texture pixel values may be specified in the gamma-corrected sRGB color space. API functions required by version 1. Half-float bit vertex array and pixel data formats. Use of the sRGB gamma-corrected image data in framebuffers. Functions to perform a fast bit blit between render-targets. The results of vertex processing can be captured into buffers, rather than or in addition to being passed to the rest of the pipeline.
A new type of GL object, the "vertex array object", which stores a set of bindings to vertex arrays; this allows such arrays to be rebound with one function call rather than several calls to EnableVertexAttribArray, VertexAttribPointer, etc. The ability to specify that an index restarts a primitive, so that objects can be called with fewer calls to DrawElements. A set of GL objects representing synchronization primitives, which allow the client to detect when a specific set of tasks has completed.
Per-vertex color data may be specified in BGRA order, matching the convention used by Direct3D. The DrawElements API is extended to automatically add a numerical offset the base vertex to each array index.
A new type of texture, which can be used as a multisampled render target. Allow fragment shaders to read fragment coordinate locations in the same conventions as Direct3D. The developer may configure which vertex determines the properties for flat-shaded vertex components. Fragment shaders can output multiple colors that can be used in one Alpha blending operation. The occlusion-query system is extended to support querying whether entire objects were occluded, rather than querying the exact number of occluded pixels; in some cases, this may be more efficient.
A new GL object which wraps some texture object state, such as interpolation and clamping; allows one texture to be simultaneously accessed in multiple ways. Allows configuring the order in which components in a texture are presented to a shader when it samples them.
Functions to accurately measure the time taken by an operation; information useful for profiling purposes. When performing instanced rendering, instances may be configured using per-instance vertex attributes rather than using a vertex shader parameter to access an array. Image and vertex data may be specified by packing three bit normalized integer values into one bit integer. Two new shader stages tessellation-control and tessellation-evaluation to support efficient geometry generation on GPUs.
The ability to call different subroutines within a shader dynamically, without recompiling the source. Allows requesting that a fragment program is evaluated for each sample within a fragment, which increases the fidelity of multisampled anti-aliasing. A mechanism to supply the arguments to certain Draw functions from buffer-object memory, combined with transform feedback or OpenCLthis allows GPUs to render without synchronising with CPUs.
Full API compatibility with OpenGL ES 2. The ability to retrieve the content of program objects in a binary, vendor-specific format; eliminates the need to recompile shaders whenever the program is run, but the resulting binaries are not transferable between GPUs. The ability to define multiple viewports and scissor rectangles, to be used when generating several scenes at once from a geometry shader. Wikimedia Commons has media related to OpenGL.
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OpenGL vs OpenGL - [Solved] - Graphics Cards
I need more V-RAM and a more future proof GPU, I use my PC for gaming, recording and video editing, current specs are: Texture pixel values may be specified in the gamma-corrected sRGB color space.
Retrieved March 14, InHewlett-Packard joined the project. Retrieved August 20, One notable feature of OpenGL 1. I just finished writing a game using many of these techniques. NVIDIA supports OpenGL and a complete set of OpenGL extensions, designed to give you maximum performance on our GPUs. It is a different story if you were using Linux though. Specifications and documentation for the OpenGL API and OpenGL Shading Language, as well as related APIs such as GLX, are available from OpenGL.
Instead of removing all immediate mode and fixed functionality non-shader modethe spec included them as deprecated features. COLLADA EGL OpenCL OpenGL OpenGL ES OpenGL SC OpenKCam OpenKODE OpenMAX OpenML OpenSL ES OpenVG OpenVX OpenWF OpenXR StreamInput SPIR Vulkan WebCL WebGL SYCL glTF.
This was because IRIS GL was considered easier to use, and because it supported immediate mode rendering.
OpenGL | NVIDIA Developer
In addition to the features required by the core API, graphics processing unit GPU vendors may provide additional functionality in the form of extensions. GeForce GTX , GeForce GTX , GeForce GTX , GeForce GTX Ti, GeForce GTX Titan X GeForce series: Windows The latest windows drivers can downloaded from the NVIDIA driver downloads page. The library is now renderer agnostic. You will need any one of the following Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell or Pascal based GPUs to get access to the OpenGL functionality:.
News Room Events Reviews Press Releases Khronos Logos Newsletters. SDL2 replaces GLFW3 as the main helper library in this fork. This in turn caused SGI market share to weaken as more 3D graphics hardware suppliers entered the market. Video games outsource real-time rendering calculations to the GPU over OpenGL. Given that creating an OpenGL context is quite a complex process, and given that it varies between operating systems , automatic OpenGL context creation has become a common feature of several game-development and user-interface libraries , including SDL , Allegro , SFML , FLTK , and Qt.
It can do pure software rendering, and it may also use hardware acceleration on BSD , Linux , and other platforms by taking advantage of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure. A standard framework upon which multisample anti-aliasing may be supported, without needing other MSAA support. Khronos Recent News Just release - vkmark: We use own and third party cookies to improve our services and your experience.
Home News Press Releases Khronos Releases OpenGL 4. More information is available at www. This is a Free Software License B closely modeled on BSD, X, and Mozilla licenses. This was expensive and resulted in multiplication of effort.
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