OpenGL ?

[CTA4LC4PON3]

ok im confused as to what opengl is and what it does and how to use it. HIS 4850

just wondering does it make gaming better? is it auto enabled? is it for programmers only?

 

[masteryoda34]

OpenGL is a application programming interface for computer graphics. It is a competitor to Microsoft's DirectX.

Unless you're writing 3D applications, you probably don't need to worry about it. Most games use DirectX today also.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

It's an API that provides function calls to simplify and standardize drawing graphics to your computer screen (well that's close enough to a description of it). Unless you're programming something with graphics (beyond simple guis) you have no reason to worry about it.

 

[FalseChristian]

id Software uses OpenGL as it's alot easier to use than Direct3D.

 

[BFG10K]

Also source-ports tend to use OpenGL because it's cross-platform.

 

[taltamir]

also old openGL games actually work, every single old openGL game I have works, while none of my old DX games work properly.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: FalseChristian
id Software uses OpenGL as it's alot easier to use than Direct3D.

Absolutely not true.

There are reasons to use Opengl, but Ease of use is not one of them. DirectX is just as complex to use as Opengl. They are fairly similar.

The main reasons for using Opengl are that.

*Not getting locked into an MS platform.
*Standard hasn't really changed much in years.

There are probably some other reasons floating around, but not many. Most will agree that the current rendering situation has DirectX in front of Opengl. The 3.0 opengl standard was supposed to be a whole lot of things and achieved none of them.

 

[Modelworks]

When programming you need a way to talk to the video card. One way of doing that is to use a set of small bits of code to do each feature you want. DirectX and OpenGL are specifications on what those small bits of code are and how they can be used. So each time I want to draw a dot on the screen I don't have to tell it a bunch of stuff like what the video card can do, what kind of card it is, instead I can tell it draw a dot at x,y and make it blue.

OpenGL has been around for over 10 years and there are a lot of applications that use it, that is both a blessing and a curse for the API. Games started out using it because it was one of the best known API for graphics at the time. That same open nature made it slow to change, there was no rush. MS had marketing and paid development to devote to development of DirectX.

With OpenGL making radical changes is hard to do without breaking a lot of older applications. With revision 3.0 they marked the things that would become deprecated in the future to give developers time to adjust to the future changes.

They are taking the approach of gradually changing the API vs doing an abrupt change, even though the latter would give people new features now at the cost of legacy applications. 3.1 has been released and gives people more of what they wanted with 3.0. 3.2 is due soon.

OpenGL 3.0 is compatible with version numbers less than 3.0 . 3.1 is not, requiring programs to not use features marked as deprecated in version 3.0.

It is very similar to how MS is doing the change between DX versions. If they made windows DX10/11 only there would be a huge outcry since there are still a lot of DX9 titles. Instead they are putting the information out about where things are headed and giving programmers time to adapt.