Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of opengl-intro

Timestamp:

Jun 26, 2013, 6:31:20 PM (11 years ago)

Author:

leon

Comment:

--

opengl-intro

@@ +1 @@
+= Visualization with OpenGL =
+Essential approaches to programming computer graphics with Open Graphics
+Language (OpenGL) graphics library are described. This document serves as
+the basis for exercises in PRACE Summer of HPC Visualization training.
+Rationale for giving introduction to OpenGL is that such knowledge is
+important when developing codes that require some specific visualization
+for which OpenGL can be handy. Programming Graphical Processing Unit
+(GPU) through ''shaders'' is an important technique to accelerate
+graphics and other embarrassing parallel problems. OpenGL evolved from
+immediate mode to GPU only processing with the advent of OpenGL Shading
+Language (GLSL). Introduction to the subject is given by recipes to
+follow, discussing important techniques for visualization that can also
+be extended to general GPU programming for parallel computing. Instead of
+jumping to the latest OpenGL specification we use minimum required OpenGL
+2.1 with the extensions currently available on modest hardware and still
+be able to use modern OpenGL 3.1+ programming principles.
+
+
+== Introduction ==
+For the visualization of specific phenomena is usually not possible to use
+a general purpose visualization tools. Such cases occur especially in the
+visualization of engineering and physics problems. The modeling results are
+usually not only simple function plots but complex objects such as graphs,
+hierarchical structure, animation, motion mechanism, control channels,
+volume models of specific forms, ...
+
+Through the time different standards were effective for computer graphics.
+This is mainly due to the complexity of implementation and closed code in
+the past. OpenGL remains the only widely accepted open standard, which was
+first introduced on Silicon Graphics workstations (SGI). There exist also a
+Microsoft Direct3D, which is limited to PCs with Windows and is not as easy
+to use as OpenGL, which is due to its openness and capacity provided on all
+operating systems and hardware platforms. OpenGL stagnated for some time
+with upgrades to the original SGI specification. Many extensions previously
+available from hardware vendors are now standardized with OpenGL 3+ where
+things dramatically changed. ''Immediate mode'' programming where
+communication from OS to GPU was regular practice and major obstacle to
+graphics performance. Programming knowledge of OpenGL 1.x is therefore not
+recommended for nowadays and can simply be forgotten and treated as legacy.