OpenGL

What is OpenGL?

OpenGL is the vendor-neutral, multi-platform standard for high performance 2D/3D graphics on devices ranging from mobile phones to PCs to Supercomputers.

Fundamentals and Resources

• OpenGL.org
• Silicon Graphics OpenGL page
• Apple Computer resources for OpenGL is quite nice
• OpenGL Programming Guide online, also referred to as 'the Red Book' as published by Silicon Graphics
• OpenGL Blue Book v.1.0; this may not be most recent as of 2006, but is useful nevertheless
• Nate Robbins OpenGL page has some nice content on tutorials, OpenGL programs from a variety of sources, and othe useful material
• Nice collection of links, tutorials and other materials from lighthouse3D.com
• OpenGL doc in HTML is handy as on-line programming reference

• Tutorial on the NEHE Game development site is quite nice (many thanks to the most excellent Ken Tilton for this one. (all tutorials start on NeHe main page)
• OpenGL Intro Tutorial from Tulane University CompSci curriculum
• Nice collection of tutorial for OpenGL and Windows contains a very nice variety of techniques on the very many uses of OpenGL

• Mesa 3D open sourcexi implementation of the OpenGL graphics API.
• FTGL is a free, open source library to enable developers to use arbitrary fonts in their OpenGL applications.
  Unlike other OpenGL font libraries FTGL uses standard font file formats so doesn't need a preprocessing step to convert the high quality font data into a lesser quality, proprietary format.
• DXF viewer for OpenGL
• nVidia OpenGL extensions specification lists all the OpenGL extensions specifications that NVIDIA supports.
  nVidia makes my personal 'favorite du jour' graphics display cards.

Normally, OpenGL is built for use in C; however, there are quite a few 'bindings' to other languages so that the OpenGL toolkit can be used 'natively' from within the target language.

C++
• GLT OpenGL C++ Toolkit is a C++ class library for programming interactive 3D graphics with OpenGL.
• GLEW The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library (GLEW) is a cross-platform C/C++ extension loading library. GLEW provides efficient run-time mechanisms for determining which OpenGL extensions are supported on the target platform. OpenGL core and extension functionality is exposed in a single header file. GLEW is available for a variety of operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Irix, and Solaris.

C#
• CSGL; warning, looks like development on this has ceased because it's 'good enough' but not great.....

Python

• PyOpenGL

Fortan

• f90gl for Fortran 90

Java

• J3D
• JOGL
• Using OpenGL in SWT Applications

Perl

• CPAN OpenGL module

Haskell

• OpenGL programming in Haskell - a tutorial

Benchmarks and other tools

• GLView Displays information of the current OpenGL 3D accelerator

Applications and optimizations

OpenGL for video display
• Displaying In-Memory video using OpenGL is useful

Assorted tricks and pointers
• OpenGL and Window System Integration: OpenGL "Gotchas"

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