CHAPTER 8

OpenGL Implementations

The OpenGL specification offers considerable flexibility to implementors. The OpenGL rendering pipeline is also an evolving design; as implementation technologies advance and new ideas surface and are proven through trial and iteration, they become part of the specification. This has both advantages and disadvantages. It ensures that the standard remains relevant for new applications by embracing new functionality required by those applications. At the same time it creates some fragmentation since different vendors may ship OpenGL implementations that correspond to different versions of the specification. This puts a greater burden on the application developer to understand the differences in functionality between ...

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