OpenGL++: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:22, 15 November 2003

Revision as of 13:34, 15 November 2003

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OpenGL++ was intended to offer a selection of routines and standardized data structures to dramatically simplify writing "real" programs using OpenGL. Instead of the programmer having to keep track of the objects in the 3D world and make sure they were culled properly, OpenGL++ would include its own [[scene graph]] system and handle many of the basic manipulation duties for you. In addition OGL++ included a system for modifying the scene graph on the fly, re-arranging it for added performance.

Much of OGL++ was a combination of ideas from earlier SGI projects in the same vienvein, namely [[Open Inventor]] which offered ease-of-use, and [[IRIS Performer]] which re-arranged scene graphs for increased performance. It was later realized that there was no reason the two couldn't be merged, offering both rapid development and high performance.

SGI had already released one effort to merge the functionality of these two as [[Cosmo3D]]. When they then started the OGL++ effort they dropped development of Cosmo3D when it had just reached a beta release, positioning the "front end" package, Cosmo Code, as a [[VRML]] authoring tool. It is not clear how closely related the two packages are, as OGL++ was never released. Much of the OGL++ effort appears to have been aimed at defining a flexible scene graph, which would eventually evolve into an important part of the Fahrenheit effort.