IRIX is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system and the industry-standard OpenGL graphics API.
OpenGL is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.
X3D is a set of royalty-free ISO/IEC standards for declaratively representing 3D computer graphics. X3D includes multiple graphics file formats, programming-language API definitions, and run-time specifications for both delivery and integration of interactive network-capable 3D data. X3D version 4.0 has been approved by Web3D Consortium, and is under final review by ISO/IEC as a revised International Standard (IS).
OpenGL++ was a graphics library written in C++ that supported object-oriented data structures on top of the OpenGL 3D graphics system. The project started as the result of a partnership between SGI, IBM and Intel, and later, Digital Equipment Corporation. It was intended to provide a higher level API than the "bare metal" support of OpenGL, as well as being an implementation for Java3D. Work on OpenGL++ ended when SGI decided to partner with Microsoft instead, leading to the Fahrenheit project, which also died.
IRIS GL is a proprietary graphics API created by Silicon Graphics (SGI) in the early 1980s for producing 2D and 3D computer graphics on their IRIX-based IRIS graphical workstations. Later SGI removed their proprietary code, reworked various system calls, and released IRIS GL as the industry standard OpenGL.
Game programming, a subset of game development, is the software development of video games. Game programming requires substantial skill in software engineering and computer programming in a given language, as well as specialization in one or more of the following areas: simulation, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, physics, audio programming, and input. For multiplayer games, knowledge of network programming is required. In some genres, e.g. fighting games, advanced network programming is often demanded, as the netcode and its properties are considered by players and critics to be some of the most important metrics of the game's quality. For massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), even further knowledge of database programming and advanced networking programming are required. Though often engaged in by professional game programmers, there is a thriving scene of independent developers who lack a relationship with a publishing company.
OpenVG is an API designed for hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics. Its primary platforms are mobile phones, gaming & media consoles and consumer electronic devices. It was designed to help manufacturers create more attractive user interfaces by offloading computationally intensive graphics processing from the CPU onto a GPU to save energy. The OpenGL ES library provides similar functionality for 3D graphics. OpenVG is managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group.
The Khronos Group, Inc. is an open, non-profit, member-driven consortium of 170 organizations developing, publishing and maintaining royalty-free interoperability standards for 3D graphics, virtual reality, augmented reality, parallel computation, vision acceleration and machine learning. The open standards and associated conformance tests enable software applications and middleware to effectively harness authoring and accelerated playback of dynamic media across a wide variety of platforms and devices. The group is based in Beaverton, Oregon.
OpenGL for Embedded Systems is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accelerated using a graphics processing unit (GPU). It is designed for embedded systems like smartphones, tablet computers, video game consoles and PDAs. OpenGL ES is the "most widely deployed 3D graphics API in history".
COLLADA is an interchange file format for interactive 3D applications. It is managed by the nonprofit technology consortium, the Khronos Group, and has been adopted by ISO as a publicly available specification, ISO/PAS 17506.
A shading language is a graphics programming language adapted to programming shader effects. Shading languages usually consist of special data types like "vector", "matrix", "color" and "normal".
OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) is a high-level shading language with a syntax based on the C programming language. It was created by the OpenGL ARB to give developers more direct control of the graphics pipeline without having to use ARB assembly language or hardware-specific languages.
Web3D, also called 3D Web, is a group of technologies to display and navigate websites using 3D computer graphics.
OpenCL is a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms consisting of central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), digital signal processors (DSPs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and other processors or hardware accelerators. OpenCL specifies a programming language for programming these devices and application programming interfaces (APIs) to control the platform and execute programs on the compute devices. OpenCL provides a standard interface for parallel computing using task- and data-based parallelism.
WebGL is a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelerated usage of physics, image processing, and effects in the HTML canvas. WebGL elements can be mixed with other HTML elements and composited with other parts of the page or page background.
EGL is an interface between Khronos rendering APIs and the underlying native platform windowing system. EGL handles graphics context management, surface/buffer binding, rendering synchronization, and enables "high-performance, accelerated, mixed-mode 2D and 3D rendering using other Khronos APIs." EGL is managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group.
Vladimir Vukićević, is a Serbian-born American software engineer who has worked on many open source projects. He is known mostly for his work on open-source graphics libraries, including those used in the Mozilla project, and for being the creator of WebGL.
Vulkan is a low-level, low-overhead cross-platform API and open standard for 3D graphics and computing. It was intended to address the shortcomings of OpenGL, and allow developers more control over the GPU. It is designed to support a wide variety of GPUs, CPUs and operating systems, and it is also designed to work with modern multi-core CPUs.
Standard Portable Intermediate Representation (SPIR) is an intermediate language for parallel computing and graphics by Khronos Group. It is used in multiple execution environments, including the Vulkan graphics API and the OpenCL compute API, to represent a shader or kernel. It is also used as an interchange language for cross compilation.
glTF is a standard file format for three-dimensional scenes and models. A glTF file uses one of two possible file extensions: .gltf (JSON/ASCII) or .glb (binary). Both .gltf and .glb files may reference external binary and texture resources. Alternatively, both formats may be self-contained by directly embedding binary data buffers. An open standard developed and maintained by the Khronos Group, it supports 3D model geometry, appearance, scene graph hierarchy, and animation. It is intended to be a streamlined, interoperable format for the delivery of 3D assets, while minimizing file size and runtime processing by apps. As such, its creators have described it as the "JPEG of 3D."
