ABSTRACT

Right now OpenGL is a mature cross-platform and cross-vendor Application Programming Interface for both two dimensional- and three dimensional-graphics. It has been successfully used in many serious applications and games. OpenGL was based on a proprietary library IRIS GL by SGI Inc. but OpenGL is open and exists on a variety of platforms. OpenGL itself is based on several very simple principles and ideas and it is important to understand them in order to write correct and efficient code. An application working with OpenGL usually creates a window with a framebuffer to render to it. The application should create a context, only after creation of the context OpenGL commands can be used. The server-side state is kept with the context. OpenGL can perform various image transfers – a block of data can be packed/unpacked either to the OpenGL internal format or from it and drawn on the screen or copied into the Graphics Processing Unit memory.