Where can I get OpenGL?

lukin

OpenGL, the graphics API, can I download it from anywhere? Did a search on google and here for it but turned up nothing.
There must be a trial version out there somewhere.

airetam_storm

Im prob wrong but do you mean a glide wrapper?

DonkeyStyle \o/

http://www.opengl.org
Is that any help?

aidan_walsh

lukin wrote:

OpenGL, the graphics API, can I download it from anywhere? Did a search on google and here for it but turned up nothing.
There must be a trial version out there somewhere.

OpenGL is implemented in video cards. Any programs that use it will come with the API. You don't need to download it seperately, its not like DirectX in that regard.

However, if you're looking for an API to implement it in your program with, you'd probably best tell us what language you're using.

lukin

It'll probably be Java I'll be using with it. Forgive my ignorance but I don't know exactly what OpenGL is, I am ging to be using it next year in college and I just wanted to get a bit of experience.
I thought it was just a program you install and run?

aidan_walsh

If you want to use it with Java, take a look at the JOGL bindings.

lukin

Will do, thanks.

steveland?

We used Java3D last year in college (2nd year DCU, Digital Media Engineering)

If you're using Java3D then have a look on java.sun.com and download the Java3D API with OpenGL impelemtation

rsynnott

Java3D's prob'ly your best bet, but it isn't OpenGL as such; it simply (sometimes) uses OpenGL to render graphics.

Syth

lukin wrote:

It'll probably be Java I'll be using with it. Forgive my ignorance but I don't know exactly what OpenGL is, I am ging to be using it next year in college and I just wanted to get a bit of experience.
I thought it was just a program you install and run?

OpenGL is more of a way of drawing things. Video cards 'understand' OpenGL, so people can write code using OpenGL and the graphics card will understand it and draw the correct thing on the screen. It should come with your graphics card driver.

There is also a non-hardware accelerated version called Mesa3D

rsynnott

Syth wrote:

OpenGL is more of a way of drawing things. Video cards 'understand' OpenGL, so people can write code using OpenGL and the graphics card will understand it and draw the correct thing on the screen. It should come with your graphics card driver.

?While there may be chips that speak OpenGL, consumer hardware certainly doesn't. A driver makes the OpneGL or directx into something the graphics card finds usable.

Syth wrote:

There is also a non-hardware accelerated version called Mesa3D

No, Mesa is an opensource implementation which supports hardware acceleration. Read its FAQ.

Syth

rsynnott wrote:

?While there may be chips that speak OpenGL, consumer hardware certainly doesn't. A driver makes the OpneGL or directx into something the graphics card finds usable.


No, Mesa is an opensource implementation which supports hardware acceleration. Read its FAQ.

Ah whoops. Thanks for clearing that up and helping me understand opengel more.

Farls

JOGL is the way forward, Java3D is a thing of the past that sun are in the middle off pulling the plug on and putting all their efforts into JOGL.

I done my FYP using JOGL last year and its amazing to work with the link in the post above shows all.

Theirs a good started book out there by gene davis to get you started.

Farlz

Zombrex

lukin wrote:

Forgive my ignorance but I don't know exactly what OpenGL is, I am ging to be using it next year in college and I just wanted to get a bit of experience.

OpenGL is a graphic library that allows programmers to write applications that can access the advance hardware found in modern graphics cards without having to actually know what graphics card your program will actually be running on.

While all modern graphics cards (from nVidia, ATI etc) appear to do the same thing (3D graphics, vectors, polygons etc etc) how each one does what they do can differ greatly.

In the bad old days, programmers had to write a bit of code to handle each type of graphics card they expected their application or game might run on. This lead to huge extra work for the programmers, because while their 3D engine might work the same way for each graphics card, how the graphics card actually drew the image differed between cards. Operating Systems such as Windows and Unix are supposed to help this problem by abstracting out calls to low level hardware to common universal function calls, but operating systems are notorious for being slow when it comes to graphics applications. What was need was a fast, platform independent abstraction level. SGI (Silicon Graphics Indy) came up with the OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) standard to help solve this problem.

With OpenGL you make a call in your program to an OpenGL function, and the OpenGL implementation for your graphics card (the driver that comes with the card when you install it) figures out how that OpenGL function should actually be done with that particular graphics card.

It means that the programmer doesn't have to worry about all the hundreds of different makes of graphics card his program could run on. He just calls the OpenGL functions and as long as the graphics card driver supports OpenGL the program will work with that graphics card.

DirectX is a similar type of thing, specifically for Windows and handling sound cards, joysticks, multiplayer internet connections etc as well(basically everything you need for a game). While DirectX is actually a set of libraries written and maintained by Microsoft that you download, OpenGL is just a standard, each graphics card make is responsible for turning the standard into code that programmers can actually use (this is called a SDK, software development kit)