GetWiki

OpenGL's documentation is also accessible via its official webpage.WEB, July 19, 2011, OpenGL - The Industry's Foundation for High Performance Graphics,weblink March 18, 2021, The Khronos Group, en,

Associated libraries

The earliest versions of OpenGL were released with a companion library called the OpenGL Utility Library (GLU). It provided simple, useful features which were unlikely to be supported in contemporary hardware, such as tessellating, and generating mipmaps and primitive shapes. The GLU specification was last updated in 1998 and depends on OpenGL features which are now deprecated.

Context and window toolkits

Given that creating an OpenGL context is quite a complex process, and given that it varies between operating systems, automatic OpenGL context creation has become a common feature of several game-development and user-interface libraries, including SDL, Allegro, SFML, FLTK, and Qt. A few libraries have been designed solely to produce an OpenGL-capable window. The first such library was OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT), later superseded by freeglut. GLFW is a newer alternative.WEB,weblink A list of GLUT alternatives, maintained by, Khronos Group, May 2, 2013,

• These toolkits are designed to create and manage OpenGL windows, and manage input, but little beyond that.WEB, Related toolkits and APIs,weblink www.opengl.org, OpenGL, October 8, 2014,

• Several "multimedia libraries" can create OpenGL windows, in addition to input, sound and other tasks useful for game-like applications

• Widget toolkits

Extension loading libraries

Given the high workload involved in identifying and loading OpenGL extensions, a few libraries have been designed which load all available extensions and functions automatically. Examples include OpenGL Easy Extension library (GLEE), OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library (GLEW) and glbinding. Extensions are also loaded automatically by most language bindings, such as JOGL and PyOpenGL.

Implementations

(File:Glxinfo example screenshot.png|thumb|Screenshot of glxinfo, showing information of Mesa implementation of OpenGL on a system)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. As of version 20.0, it implements version 4.6 of the OpenGL standard.

History

In the 1980s, developing software that could function with a wide range of graphics hardware was a real challenge. Software developers wrote custom interfaces and drivers for each piece of hardware. This was expensive and resulted in multiplication of effort.By the early 1990s, Silicon Graphics (SGI) was a leader in 3D graphics for workstations. Their IRIS GL APIWEB,weblink IRIS GL, SGI's property, WEB, Kilgard, Mark,weblink OpenGL Prehistory: IRIS GL (slide), www.slideshare.net, 2008, became the industry standard, used more widely than the open standards-based PHIGS.{{Citation needed|date=March 2021}} This was because IRIS GL was considered easier to use,{{By whom|date=March 2021}} and because it supported immediate mode rendering. By contrast, PHIGS was considered difficult to use and outdated in functionality.SGI's competitors (including Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and IBM) were also able to bring to market 3D hardware supported by extensions made to the PHIGS standard, which pressured SGI to open source a version of IRIS GL as a public standard called OpenGL.However, SGI had many customers for whom the change from IRIS GL to OpenGL would demand significant investment. Moreover, IRIS GL had API functions that were irrelevant to 3D graphics. For example, it included a windowing, keyboard and mouse API, in part because it was developed before the X Window System and Sun's NeWS. And, IRIS GL libraries were unsuitable for opening due to licensing and patent issues{{Explain|reason=What patent issues?|date=September 2016}}. These factors required SGI to continue to support the advanced and proprietary Iris Inventor and Iris Performer programming APIs while market support for OpenGL matured.One of the restrictions of IRIS GL was that it only provided access to features supported by the underlying hardware. If the graphics hardware did not support a feature natively, then the application could not use it. OpenGL overcame this problem by providing software implementations of features unsupported by hardware, allowing applications to use advanced graphics on relatively low-powered systems. OpenGL standardized access to hardware, pushed the development responsibility of hardware interface programs (device drivers) to hardware manufacturers, and delegated windowing functions to the underlying operating system. With so many different kinds of graphics hardware, getting them all to speak the same language in this way had a remarkable impact by giving software developers a higher-level platform for 3D-software development.In 1992,WEB,weblink Creation of the OpenGL ARB, February 16, 2007,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070222123208weblink">weblink February 22, 2007, dead, SGI led the creation of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (OpenGL ARB), the group of companies that would maintain and expand the OpenGL specification in the future.In 1994, SGI played with the idea of releasing something called "OpenGL++" which included elements such as a scene-graph API (presumably based on their Performer technology). The specification was circulated among a few interested parties – but never turned into a product.WEB,weblink End of OpenGL++, Khronos Group, In 1996, Microsoft released Direct3D, which eventually became the main competitor of OpenGL. Over 50 game developers signed an open letter to Microsoft, released on June 12, 1997, calling on the company to actively support OpenGL.MAGAZINE, Top Game Developers Call on Microsoft to Actively Support OpenGL, Next Generation (magazine), Next Generation, 32, Imagine Media, August 1997, 17,weblink On December 17, 1997,WEB,weblink Announcement of Fahrenheit, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070927212603weblink">weblink September 27, 2007, Microsoft and SGI initiated the Fahrenheit project, which was a joint effort with the goal of unifying the OpenGL and Direct3D interfaces (and adding a scene-graph API too). In 1998, Hewlett-Packard joined the project.NEWS,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20071005013207weblink">weblink dead, October 5, 2007, Members of Fahrenheit. 1998., Computergram International, 1998, It initially showed some promise of bringing order to the world of interactive 3D computer graphics APIs, but on account of financial constraints at SGI, strategic reasons at Microsoft, and a general lack of industry support, it was abandoned in 1999.WEB,weblink End of Fahrenheit, The Register, In July 2006, the OpenGL Architecture Review Board voted to transfer control of the OpenGL API standard to the Khronos Group.WEB,weblink OpenGL ARB to pass control of OpenGL specification to Khronos Group, July 31, 2006, Khronos press release, WEB,weblink OpenGL ARB to Pass Control of OpenGL Specification to Khronos Group, AccessMyLibrary Archive,

Industry support

{{Expand section|more historical background when support was being added|date=January 2023|small=no}}In June 2018, Apple deprecated OpenGL APIs on all of their platforms (iOS, macOS and tvOS), strongly encouraging developers to use their proprietary Metal API, which was introduced in 2014.NEWS, Smith, Ryan, June 5, 2018, Apple Deprecates OpenGL Across All OSes; Urges Developers to use Metal, www.anandtech.com, Purch,weblink June 5, 2018, id Software has been using OpenGL in their games starting with GLQuake (port of Quake to OpenGL with a few modifications) released in 1997.WEB,weblink GLQuake, Quake Wiki, The company's first licensed engine with OpenGL support was Quake II engine, also known as id Tech 2.WEB, Technology Licensing: id Tech 2,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20091108191715weblink">weblink November 8, 2009, September 17, 2008, In 2016, they released an update for the id Tech 6 that added support for Vulkan, a successor to OpenGL. ID Tech 7 eliminated support for OpenGL.WEB, Doom Wiki: id Tech 7,weblink October 26, 2021, In March 2023, Valve removed OpenGL support from Dota 2.WEB, Dawe, Liam, 2023-03-07, Dota 2 removes OpenGL support, new hero Muerta now live, big update due in April,weblink 2023-03-26, GamingOnLinux, en, Khronos has stopped providing support in OpenGL for a number of modern graphics technologies, e.g. Ray Tracing, video decoding on GPU, anti-aliasing algorithm with deep learning – AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution(FSR)WEB,weblink AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, 2022-05-17, WEB,weblink AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), and Nvidia DLSS.WEB,weblink NVIDIA DLSS, WEB,weblink Getting Started with DLSS, June 2021, Atypical Games, with support from Samsung, updated their game engine to use Vulkan, rather than OpenGL, across all non-Apple platforms.WEB,weblink Jet Set Vulkan : Reflecting on the move to Vulkan, Google's Fuchsia OS uses Vulkan as the native graphics API and requires a Vulkan-conformant GPU. Fuchsia intends to support OpenGL on top of Vulkan by means of ANGLE translation layer.WEB,weblink Magma: Overview, fuchsia.dev, 2023-03-26,

Version history

The first version of OpenGL, version 1.0, was released on June 30, 1992, by Mark Segal and Kurt Akeley. Since then, OpenGL has occasionally been extended by releasing a new version of the specification. Such releases define a baseline set of features which all conforming graphics cards must support, and against which new extensions can more easily be written. Each new version of OpenGL tends to incorporate several extensions which have widespread support among graphics-card vendors, although the details of those extensions may be changed.{| class="wikitable"|+OpenGL version history!Version! scope="col" style="width: 10em;" | Release Date!Features|1.1TITLE=OPENGL PROGRAMMING FOR THE X WINDOW SYSTEM PUBLISHER=ADDISON-WESLEY EDITION=6. PRINT LOCATION=BOSTON, MASS. MUNICH, 6, |Texture objects, Vertex Arrays|1.2|March 16, 1998packed pixel formats,HTTPS://WWW.GAMEDEV.NET/ARTICLES/PROGRAMMING/GRAPHICS/MOVING-BEYOND-OPENGL-11-FOR-WINDOWS-R1929/LAST=ASTLEDATE=APRIL 1, 2003ACCESS-DATE=NOVEMBER 15, 2007, introduction of the imaging subset useful to image-processing applications|1.2.1|October 14, 1998|A concept of ARB extensions|1.3|August 14, 2001Texture mapping>Multitexturing, multisampling, texture compression|1.4|July 24, 2002LAST=ISORNAPUBLISHER=UNIVERSITAT POLITèCNICA DE CATALUNYAISBN=978-84-9880-564-2PAGE=191ACCESS-DATE=AUGUST 21, 2019, |1.5|July 29, 2003|Vertex Buffer Object (VBO), Occlusion Queries|2.0|September 7, 2004GLSL 1.1, Multiple Render Targets>MRT, Non Power of Two textures, Point Sprites,HTTPS://WWW.KHRONOS.ORG/OPENGL/WIKI/PRIMITIVE#POINT_PRIMITIVES>TITLE=POINT PRIMITIVE, Two-sided stencil|2.1|July 2, 2006|GLSL 1.2, Pixel Buffer Object (PBO), sRGB Textures|3.0|August 11, 2008|GLSL 1.3, Texture Arrays, Conditional rendering, Frame Buffer Object (FBO)|3.1|March 24, 2009|GLSL 1.4, Instancing, Texture Buffer Object, Uniform Buffer Object, Primitive restart|3.2|August 3, 2009|GLSL 1.5, Geometry Shader, Multi-sampled textures|3.3|March 11, 2010|GLSL 3.30, Backports as much function as possible from the OpenGL 4.0 specification|4.0|March 11, 2010DATE=MARCH 11, 2010, |4.1|July 26, 2010DATE=JULY 26, 2010, |4.2|August 8, 2011|GLSL 4.20, Shaders with atomic counters, draw transform feedback instanced, shader packing, performance improvements|4.3|August 6, 2012DATE=AUGUST 6, 2012, |4.4DATE=JULY 22, 2013, |GLSL 4.40, Buffer Placement Control, Efficient Asynchronous Queries, Shader Variable Layout, Efficient Multiple Object Binding, Streamlined Porting of Direct3D applications, Bindless Texture Extension, Sparse Texture Extension|4.5|August 11, 2014|GLSL 4.50, Direct State Access (DSA), Flush Control, Robustness, OpenGL ES 3.1 API and shader compatibility, DX11 emulation features|4.6|July 31, 2017|GLSL 4.60, More efficient geometry processing and shader execution, more information, no error context, polygon offset clamp, SPIR-V, anisotropic filtering

OpenGL 2.0

Release date: September 7, 2004OpenGL 2.0 was originally conceived by 3Dlabs to address concerns that OpenGL was stagnating and lacked a strong direction.WEB,weblink OpenGL 3 (3DLabs And The Evolution Of OpenGL), Abi-Chahla, Fedy, Tom's Hardware, September 16, 2008, October 24, 2010, 3Dlabs proposed a number of major additions to the standard. Most of these were, at the time, rejected by the ARB or otherwise never came to fruition in the form that 3Dlabs proposed. However, their proposal for a C-style shading language was eventually completed, resulting in the current formulation of the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL or GLslang). Like the assembly-like shading languages it was replacing, it allowed replacing the fixed-function vertex and fragment pipe with shaders, though this time written in a C-like high-level language.The design of GLSL was notable for making relatively few concessions to the limits of the hardware then available. This harked back to the earlier tradition of OpenGL setting an ambitious, forward-looking target for 3D accelerators rather than merely tracking the state of currently available hardware. The final OpenGL 2.0 specification includes support for GLSL.

Longs Peak and OpenGL 3.0

Before the release of OpenGL 3.0, the new revision had the codename Longs Peak. At the time of its original announcement, Longs Peak was presented as the first major API revision in OpenGL's lifetime. It consisted of an overhaul to the way that OpenGL works, calling for fundamental changes to the API.The draft introduced a change to object management. The GL 2.1 object model was built upon the state-based design of OpenGL. That is, to modify an object or to use it, one needs to bind the object to the state system, then make modifications to the state or perform function calls that use the bound object.Because of OpenGL's use of a state system, objects must be mutable. That is, the basic structure of an object can change at any time, even if the rendering pipeline is asynchronously using that object. A texture object can be redefined from 2D to 3D. This requires any OpenGL implementations to add a degree of complexity to internal object management.Under the Longs Peak API, object creation would become atomic, using templates to define the properties of an object which would be created with one function call. The object could then be used immediately across multiple threads. Objects would also be immutable; however, they could have their contents changed and updated. For example, a texture could change its image, but its size and format could not be changed.To support backwards compatibility, the old state based API would still be available, but no new functionality would be exposed via the old API in later versions of OpenGL. This would have allowed legacy code bases, such as the majority of CAD products, to continue to run while other software could be written against or ported to the new API.Longs Peak was initially due to be finalized in September 2007 under the name OpenGL 3.0, but the Khronos Group announced on October 30 that it had run into several issues that it wished to address before releasing the specification.WEB,weblink OpenGL ARB announces an update on OpenGL 3.0, October 30, 2007, October 31, 2007, As a result, the spec was delayed, and the Khronos Group went into a media blackout until the release of the final OpenGL 3.0 spec.The final specification proved far less revolutionary than the Longs Peak proposal. Instead of removing all immediate mode and fixed functionality (non-shader mode), the spec included them as deprecated features. The proposed object model was not included, and no plans have been announced to include it in any future revisions. As a result, the API remained largely the same with a few existing extensions being promoted to core functionality. Among some developer groups this decision caused something of an uproar,WEB,weblink OpenGL 3.0 Released, Developers Furious – Slashdot, Tech.slashdot.org, November 7, 2012, with many developers professing that they would switch to DirectX in protest. Most complaints revolved around the lack of communication by Khronos to the development community and multiple features being discarded that were viewed favorably by many. Other frustrations included the requirement of DirectX 10 level hardware to use OpenGL 3.0 and the absence of geometry shaders and instanced rendering as core features.Other sources reported that the community reaction was not quite as severe as originally presented,WEB,weblink OpenGL BOF went over well, no pitch forks seen, with many vendors showing support for the update.WEB,weblink The Industry Standard for High Performance Graphics, OpenGL, August 18, 2008, July 31, 2017, WEB,weblink NVIDIA provides early OpenGL 3.0 driver now,

OpenGL 3.0

Release date: August 11, 2008OpenGL 3.0 introduced a deprecation mechanism to simplify future revisions of the API. Certain features, marked as deprecated, could be completely disabled by requesting a forward-compatible context from the windowing system. OpenGL 3.0 features could still be accessed alongside these deprecated features, however, by requesting a full context.Deprecated features include:

• All fixed-function vertex and fragment processing
• Direct-mode rendering, using glBegin and glEnd
• Display lists
• Indexed-color rendering targets
• OpenGL Shading Language versions 1.10 and 1.20

OpenGL 3.1

Release date: March 24, 2009OpenGL 3.1 fully removed all of the features which were deprecated in version 3.0, with the exception of wide lines. From this version onwards, it's not possible to access new features using a full context, or to access deprecated features using a forward-compatible context. An exception to the former rule is made if the implementation supports the ARB_compatibility extension, but this is not guaranteed.Hardware support: Mesa supports ARM Panfrost with Version 21.0.

OpenGL 3.2

Release date: August 3, 2009OpenGL 3.2 further built on the deprecation mechanisms introduced by OpenGL 3.0, by dividing the specification into a core profile and compatibility profile. Compatibility contexts include the previously removed fixed-function APIs, equivalent to the ARB_compatibility extension released alongside OpenGL 3.1, while core contexts do not. OpenGL 3.2 also included an upgrade to GLSL version 1.50.

OpenGL 3.3

Release date: March 11, 2010Mesa supports software Driver SWR, softpipe and for older Nvidia cards with NV50.

OpenGL 4.0

Release date: March 11, 2010OpenGL 4.0 was released alongside version 3.3. It was designed for hardware able to support Direct3D 11.As in OpenGL 3.0, this version of OpenGL contains a high number of fairly inconsequential extensions, designed to thoroughly expose the abilities of Direct3D 11-class hardware. Only the most influential extensions are listed below.Hardware support: Nvidia GeForce 400 series and newer, AMD Radeon HD 5000 series and newer (FP64 shaders implemented by emulation on some TeraScale GPUs), Intel HD Graphics in Intel Ivy Bridge processors and newer.WEB,weblink Intel Iris and HD Graphics Driver for Windows 7/8/8.1 64bit, Intel Download Center, dead,weblink April 2, 2015,

OpenGL 4.1

Release date: July 26, 2010Hardware support: Nvidia GeForce 400 series and newer, AMD Radeon HD 5000 series and newer (FP64 shaders implemented by emulation on some TeraScale GPUs), Intel HD Graphics in Intel Ivy Bridge processors and newer.

• Minimum "maximum texture size" is 16,384 × 16,384 for GPUs implementing this specification.WEB,weblink Expected maximum texture size - Graphics and GPU Programming, GameDev.net,

OpenGL 4.2

Release date: August 8, 2011WEB,weblink Khronos Enriches Cross-Platform 3D Graphics with Release of OpenGL 4.2 Specification, August 8, 2011,

• Support for shaders with atomic counters and load-store-atomic read-modify-write operations to one level of a texture
• Drawing multiple instances of data captured from GPU vertex processing (including tessellation), to enable complex objects to be efficiently repositioned and replicated
• Support for modifying an arbitrary subset of a compressed texture, without having to re-download the whole texture to the GPU for significant performance improvements

Hardware support: Nvidia GeForce 400 series and newer, AMD Radeon HD 5000 series and newer (FP64 shaders implemented by emulation on some TeraScale GPUs), and Intel HD Graphics in Intel Haswell processors and newer. (Linux Mesa: Ivy Bridge and newer)

OpenGL 4.3

Release date: August 6, 2012WEB,weblink Khronos Releases OpenGL 4.3 Specification with Major Enhancements, August 6, 2012,

• Compute shaders leveraging GPU parallelism within the context of the graphics pipeline
• Shader storage buffer objects, allowing shaders to read and write buffer objects like image load/store from 4.2, but through the language rather than function calls.
• Image format parameter queries
• ETC2/EAC texture compression as a standard feature
• Full compatibility with OpenGL ES 3.0 APIs
• Debug abilities to receive debugging messages during application development
• Texture views to interpret textures in different ways without data replication
• Increased memory security and multi-application robustness

Hardware support: AMD Radeon HD 5000 series and newer (FP64 shaders implemented by emulation on some TeraScale GPUs), Intel HD Graphics in Intel Haswell processors and newer. (Linux Mesa: Ivy Bridge without stencil texturing, Haswell and newer), Nvidia GeForce 400 series and newer. VIRGL Emulation for virtual machines supports 4.3+ with Mesa 20.

OpenGL 4.4

Release date: July 22, 2013

• Enforced buffer object usage controls
• Asynchronous queries into buffer objects
• Expression of more layout controls of interface variables in shaders
• Efficient binding of multiple objects simultaneously

Hardware support: AMD Radeon HD 5000 series and newer (FP64 shaders implemented by emulation on some TeraScale GPUs), Intel HD Graphics in Intel Broadwell processors and newer (Linux Mesa: Haswell and newer),WEB,weblink Intel Skylake-S CPUs and 100-series Chipsets Detailed in Apparent Leak, April 17, 2015, NDTV Gadgets, Nvidia GeForce 400 series and newer, Tegra K1.

OpenGL 4.5

Release date: August 11, 2014WEB,weblink Khronos Group Announces Key Advances in OpenGL Ecosystem – Khronos Group Press Release, August 10, 2014, The Khronos Group Inc, April 17, 2015,

• Direct State Access (DSA) – object accessors enable state to be queried and modified without binding objects to contexts, for increased application and middleware efficiency and flexibility.WEB,weblink OpenGL 4.5 released—with one of Direct3D's best features, Ars Technica, August 11, 2014, April 17, 2015,
• Flush Control – applications can control flushing of pending commands before context switching – enabling high-performance multithreaded applications;
• Robustness – providing a secure platform for applications such as WebGL browsers, including preventing a GPU reset affecting any other running applications;
• OpenGL ES 3.1 API and shader compatibility – to enable the easy development and execution of the latest OpenGL ES applications on desktop systems.

Hardware support: AMD Radeon HD 5000 series and newer (FP64 shaders implemented by emulation on some TeraScale GPUs), Intel HD Graphics in Intel Broadwell processors and newer (Linux Mesa: Haswell and newer), Nvidia GeForce 400 series and newer, Tegra K1, and Tegra X1.WEB,weblink SG4121: OpenGL Update for NVIDIA GPUs, Ustream, April 17, 2015, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20150517205154weblink">weblink May 17, 2015, WEB,weblink OpenGL 4.5 Update for NVIDIA GPUs, Kilgard, Mark, August 12, 2014, April 17, 2015,

OpenGL 4.6

Release date: July 31, 2017WEB,weblink Khronos Releases OpenGL 4.6 with SPIR-V Support, July 31, 2017, The Khronos Group Inc, July 31, 2017, WEB, Kessenich, John, Baldwin, Dave, The OpenGL Shading Language, Version 4.60.7, The Khronos Group Inc,weblink August 21, 2019,

• more efficient, GPU-sided, geometry processing
• more efficient shader execution ({{abbr|AZDO|Approaching Zero Driver Overhead}})
• more information through statistics, overflow query and counters
• higher performance through no error handling contexts
• clamping of polygon offset function, solves a shadow rendering problem
• SPIR-V shaders
• Improved anisotropic filtering

Hardware support: AMD Radeon HD 7000 series and newer (FP64 shaders implemented by emulation on some TeraScale GPUs), Intel Haswell and newer, Nvidia GeForce 400 series and newer.WEB,weblink NVIDIA Releases 381.26.11 Linux Driver With OpenGL 4.6 Support, Michael, Larabel, July 31, 2017, Phoronix, Driver support:

• Mesa 19.2 on Linux supports OpenGL 4.6 for Intel Broadwell and newer.WEB,weblink Intel's OpenGL Linux Driver Now Has OpenGL 4.6 Support For Mesa 19.2, Michael, Larabel, August 21, 2019, Phoronix, Mesa 20.0 supports AMD Radeon GPUs,WEB,weblink AMD's RadeonSI Driver Finally Enables OpenGL 4.6, Michael, Larabel, November 27, 2019, Phoronix, while support for Nvidia Kepler+ is in progress. Zink as Emulation Driver with 21.1 and software driver LLVMpipe also support with Mesa 21.0.
• AMD Adrenalin 18.4.1 Graphics Driver on Windows 7 SP1, 10 version 1803 (April 2018 update) for AMD Radeon HD 7700+, HD 8500+ and newer. Released April 2018.WEB,weblink AMD Adrenalin 18.4.1 Graphics Driver Released (OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.1.70) – Geeks3D, www.geeks3d.com, en-US, May 10, 2018, WEB,weblink Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.4.1 Release Notes, support.amd.com, en-US, May 10, 2018,
• Intel 26.20.100.6861 graphics driver on Windows 10. Released May 2019.WEB,weblink Intel Graphics Driver 25.20.100.6861 Released (OpenGL 4.6 + Vulkan 1.1.103) {{!, Geeks3D|date=May 16, 2019 |language=en-US|access-date=May 16, 2019}}WEB, Windows 10 DCH Drivers, Intel DownloadCenter,weblink August 21, 2019,
• NVIDIA GeForce 397.31 Graphics Driver on Windows 7, 8, 10 x86-64 bit only, no 32-bit support. Released April 2018WEB,weblink NVIDIA GeForce 397.31 Graphics Driver Released (OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.1, RTX, CUDA 9.2) – Geeks3D, www.geeks3d.com, April 25, 2018, en-US, May 10, 2018,

Alternative implementations

{{anchor|Deprecation in Apple devices}}Apple deprecated OpenGL in iOS 12 and macOS 10.14 Mojave in favor of Metal, but it is still available as of macOS 14 Sonoma (including on Apple silicon devices).WEB, Apple Developer Documentation,weblink developer.apple.com, The latest version supported for OpenGL is 4.1 from 2011.WEB, Cunningham, Andrew, macOS 10.15 Catalina: The Ars Technica review,weblink Ars Technica, en-us, October 7, 2019, WEB, Axon, Samuel, June 6, 2018, The end of OpenGL support, plus other updates Apple didn't share at the keynote,weblink October 19, 2020, Ars Technica, en-us, A proprietary library from Molten – authors of MoltenVK – called MoltenGL, can translate OpenGL calls to Metal.WEB, Vulkan, and faster OpenGL ES, on iOS and macOS,weblink October 19, 2020, Molten, en-US, There are several projects that attempt to implement OpenGL on top of Vulkan. The Vulkan backend for Google's ANGLE achieved OpenGL ES 3.1 conformance in July 2020.WEB,weblink google/angle: A conformant OpenGL ES implementation for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android., GitHub, The ANGLE Project Authors, December 17, 2020, October 14, 2020, The Mesa3D project also includes such a driver, called Zink.WEB, Zink,weblink The Mesa 3D Graphics Library latest documentation, Microsoft's Windows 11 on Arm added support for OpenGL 3.3 via GLon12, an open source OpenGL implementation on top DirectX 12 via Mesa Gallium.WEB, 2022-03-13, State of Windows on Arm64: a high-level perspective,weblink 2023-10-23, Chips and Cheese, en-US, WEB, Introducing OpenCL and OpenGL on DirectX,weblink 2023-10-23, Collabora {{!, Open Source Consulting |language=en}}WEB, Deep dive into OpenGL over DirectX layering,weblink 2023-10-23, Collabora {{!, Open Source Consulting |language=en}}

{{anchor|glNext}}{{anchor|Vulkan}}Vulkan

Vulkan, formerly named the "Next Generation OpenGL Initiative" (glNext),NEWS, Dingman, Hayden, March 3, 2015, Meet Vulkan, the powerful, platform-agnostic gaming tech taking aim at DirectX 12,weblink PC World, March 3, 2015, NEWS, Bright, Peter, March 3, 2015, Khronos unveils Vulkan: OpenGL built for modern systems,weblink Ars Technica, March 3, 2015, is a ground-up redesign effort to unify OpenGL and OpenGL ES into one common API that will not be backwards compatible with existing OpenGL versions.WEB,weblink Khronos Announces Next Generation OpenGL Initiative, AnandTech, August 20, 2014, WEB,weblink OpenGL 4.5 released, next-gen OpenGL unveiled: Cross-platform Mantle killer, DX12 competitor, August 20, 2014, WEB,weblink Khronos Publishes Its Slides About OpenGL-Next, Phoronix, August 22, 2014, The initial version of Vulkan API was released on February 16, 2016.

See also

• ARB assembly language – OpenGL's legacy low-level shading language
• Comparison of OpenGL and Direct3D
• Direct3D – main competitor of OpenGL
• Glide (API) – a graphics API once used on 3dfx Voodoo cards
• List of OpenGL applications
• Metal (API) – a graphics API for iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS
• OpenAL – cross-platform audio library, designed to resemble OpenGL
• OpenGL ES – OpenGL for embedded systems
• OpenSL ES – API for audio on embedded systems, developed by the Khronos Group
• OpenVG – API for accelerated 2D graphics, developed by the Khronos Group
• RenderMan Interface Specification (RISpec) – Pixar's open API for photorealistic off-line rendering
• VOGL – a debugger for OpenGL
• Vulkan – low-overhead, cross-platform 2D and 3D graphics API, the "next generation OpenGL initiative"
• Graphics pipeline
• WebGPU

References

Further reading

• BOOK, Dave, Shreiner, Graham, Sellers, John M., Kessenich, Bill, Licea-Kane, 2, OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 4.3, 8th, Addison-Wesley, March 30, 2013, 978-0-321-77303-6,
• BOOK, Graham, Sellers, Richard S., Wright, Nicholas, Haemel, OpenGL SuperBible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference, 6th, Addison-Wesley, July 31, 2013, 978-0-321-90294-8,
• BOOK, Randi J., Rost, Randi J. Rost, OpenGL Shading Language, 3rd, Addison-Wesley, July 30, 2009, 978-0-321-63763-5,
• BOOK, Eric, Lengyel, Eric Lengyel, The OpenGL Extensions Guide, Charles River Media, 1-58450-294-0, 2003,weblink
• BOOK, OpenGL Architecture Review Board, OpenGL Architecture Review Board, Dave, Shreiner, OpenGL Reference Manual: The Official Reference Document to OpenGL, Version 1.4, Addison-Wesley, 0-321-17383-X, 2004,
• BOOK, OpenGL Architecture Review Board, OpenGL Architecture Review Board, Dave, Shreiner, Mason, Woo, Jackie, Neider, Tom, Davis, 2, OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, 2006, Version 2, 5th, Addison-Wesley, 0-321-33573-2, registration,weblink

External links

{{Commons category|OpenGL}}

• {{Official website}}
• OpenGL Overview and OpenGL.org's Wiki with more information on OpenGL Language bindings
• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20161112121902weblink">SGI's OpenGL website
• {{curlie|Computers/Programming/Graphics/Libraries/OpenGL|OpenGL}}
• Khronos Group, Inc.

{{Khronos Group standards}}{{Authority control}}