What does OpenGL stand for?

Open Graphics Library
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a software interface to graphics hardware. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex two and three-dimensional scenes from simple geometric primitives such as points, lines, and polygons.

What is OpenGL used for?

It is commonly used to make UI animations more responsive or to handle embedded video or to draw vector graphics – really any visual element you put on the screen is fair game for OpenGL. OpenGL is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and understanding how to leverage its incredible power is a must for developers.

What are OpenGL extensions?

OpenGL extensions are a means for OpenGL implementations to provide new or expanded functionality that the core of OpenGL does not provide. Some extensions expose features that only one particular hardware vendor exposes, but many extensions are implemented by multiple implementations.

What is OpenGL and how it works?

OpenGL is not a programming language, it is an API whose purpose is to take data from the CPU to the GPU. Thus, as a computer graphics developer, your task is to send data to the GPU through OpenGL objects. Once data reaches the GPU, it goes through the OpenGL Rendering Pipeline.

What can I do with the new OpenGL demo?

This new OpenGL demo shows techniques for rendering snow and ice landscapes. It features: Snow and Ice Rendering, Procedural Terrain and Textures, Sparkling Snow, Frozen Water, Weather Effects, Real-Time Terrain Shadows and much more.

What does OpenGL do for a graphics card?

When running on a standard PC, the OpenGL API is essentially a set of functions that allow us to control the inner-workings of the graphics card. The idea is that it helps us, as developers, to easily create 2D and 3D graphics at fast ‘real-time’ framerates.

Which is the open source implementation of OpenGL?

Mesa 3D is an open-source implementation of OpenGL. 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.

What are shaders in OpenGL and what do we need them for?

The OpenGL wiki gives a good definition: A Shader is a user-defined program designed to run on some stage of a graphics processor. In the past, graphics cards were non-programmable pieces of silicon which performed a set of fixed algorithms: inputs: 3D coordinates of triangles, their colors, light sources