Computer Graphics Standards

3D Core Graphics System

1977 standard

GKS, GKS 3D

Graphical Kernel System, 1988

PHIGS, PHIGS+

Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System, 1988

OpenGL

Open Graphics Library, 1993

Derived from SGI's GL library

Currently OpenGL 1.1

QuickDraw 3D

Apple, 1995

Direct3D

Microsoft, 1995(?), targetted as a game API

Open Inventor

Silicon Graphics (SGI), 1993(?)

Object oriented layer on top of OpenGL

MPEG

Motion Pictures Experts Group

MPEG 4 to incorporate model-based compression

VRML

Virtual Reality Modelling Language, 1994

Web browsing in 3D

composability, scalability, extensability

 

Plug-in Architectures

• core functionality provided by graphics package
• additional functionality available through 3^rd party plugins, much like browser plugins
• dynamically-linked libraries