Much of OGL++ was a combination of ideas from earlier SGI projects in the same vein, namely [[Open Inventor]] which offered ease-of-use, and [[OpenGL Performer]] which was written separately from Inventor to deliver a system that optimized scene graphs for increased performance and exploited scalable architectures. It was later intended that a new design could get the best of both worlds while forming the underlying framework for several projects including [[Computer Aided Design|CAD]], [[image processing]], [[flight simulator|visual simulation]], [[scientific visualization]] and user interfaces or 3D manipulators allowing them to interoperate, thereby offering both rapid development and high performance.
SGI hadhas alreadyrecently almostbeen completedinvolved onein efforta tosimilar mergeeffort thein functionalitypartnership of scene graphswith [[CosmoSun 3DMicrosystems]], Cosmo3Dthat was inintended factto theproduce spinoffa fromscene angraph earlierfor collaborationthe with[[Java Sunprogramming whichlanguage]]. wasThis supposedproject toeventually producefailed, aand sceneled graphto forthe Javaseparation inof conjunctionSun withand SGI's new scene graphefforts, Sun andreleasing SGItheirs wentas their[[Java3D]]. separateSGI wayspackaged withsome Java3Dof andtheir Cosmo3D.developments When SGI announcedinto the OGL++[[Cosmo3D]] effortproduce suite, theywhich haltedas a developmentsort of Cosmo3Dmarketing whenname itfor hada justwide reachedvariety aof betasemi-related releaseproducts. By then a CAD/"Large Model Visualization" layer of functionality called OpenGL Optimizer had already been implemented on Cosmo3D and then released as a product. Other "front end" packages like, Cosmo Code, a [[VRML]] authoring tool, were produced by a different division and use of the Cosmo name was merely part of a broader marketing strategy, it ran on OpenGL directly. OGL++ was intended to be a cleaned up and more flexible version of Cosmo3D, most of the Cosmo3D team started work on OGL++ and a lot of the effort was aimed at a specification and implementation that could deliver on the promise of a truly powerful yet generic scene graph.
==At the end==
In the end, there is little to show for any of these efforts. Partnerships with [[Sun Microsystems]], Intel and IBM and Microsoft all led to nothing as SGI jumped from project to project. In retrospect, SGI reacted badly to a rapidly changing environment. An internal desire to create a new improvedan generic but extensible scene graph was constantly sidetracked by a belief that SGI couldn't go it alone. Partnerships were formed and later abandoned due to irreconcilable differences or simply as priorities and internal pressures shifted. OGL++ was the most nacent of these efforts and although it was the option that rapidly gained the strongest interest the power of theits ideafailure forced an unholy alliance between Microsoft and SGI in the form of Fahrenheit, SGI joining because of its long held belief that it couldn't go it alone and Microsoft because it wanted to avert the possibility of a truly open 3D scene graph. Ancillary issues like powerful CAD APIs running on Cosmo3D complicated the picture. In the final analysis the new unified scene graph concept was bounced from project to project, and eventually died in 2000 when Fahrenheit was killed.
Today, no such standardized scene graph exists, and SGI has all but exited the API world. SGI has released the earlier Open Inventor code into [[open source]], but the source to OGL++ was never completed to any satisfactory degree. No specification exists and as with OpenGL the spec and idea behind such an open platform would have been what lent it it's lasting value, not a single implementation of a scene graph idea.
