OpenGL – Open Graphics Library – An introduction

OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is an industry standard API used to render 2D and 3D Vector graphics. It is so popular because, it is a portable, cross-language and cross-platform Application Programming Interface written in C language.

OpenGL was initially developed by SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.,) and released to the market in the year 1992.

This is an interface between the Hardware and the computer Applications to render the Graphics. OpenGL is NOT a Programming Language; it is a 3D graphics and modeling library, runs very fast.

OpenGL is a procedural API contains more than hundreds of commands and functions to draw Graphics objects such as points, lines, polygons etc,. It also supports many special effects, like; lightning, shading, blending, transparency, animation, texture mapping and much more.

OpenGL internally maintains a Pipeline concept; where all the commands routes through the pipeline for further processing; and render the Graphics when required. Pipeline is nothing but a process which internally maintains the buffer to store the commands, process them and render the Graphics once buffer is flushed.

// Malin