IRIS GL

In 1982, SGI began development of IRIS GL. It soon became much more popular than the ANSI standard PHIGS, as developers considered it more intuitive and flexible. In the years after 1982, IRIS GL began licensing it to many companies, including IBM. Fragmentation soon became an issue with IRIS GL's popularity, in the implementations and a much bigger one with many different windowing systems. In 1985, the X window system came around, and finally there was a somewhat common system. The system was considered more transparent and reliable.

Later, a competitor came along from Sun Microsystems and Digital Equipment Corporation, relying much more on the X window system. It was technically called X3D, though soon became more commonly known as PHIGS Extension To X (PEX). By the late 1980's, full implementations were available. Around that time, developers that used IRIS GL started to demand a portable, open graphics standard from SGI to support the most machines possible.

In 1989, to comply with the demands and not be replaced, SGI started development of OpenGL. Two years later, the OpenGL ARB was formed with people from many different companies. In September of 1991, it was announced by SGI that IRIS GL was available for general licensing, making it fully open. They also announced that several companies, including Intel and Microsoft endorsed the GL.{{cite web |title=SILICON GRAPHICS OPENS IRIS GRAPHICS LIBRARY FOR GENERAL LICENSING |url=http://www.sgistuff.net/hardware/graphics/documents/iris-gl-announce.txt |website=sgistuff.net |access-date=11 March 2025}}

In June 1992, the OpenGL 1.0 specification was released, with as much portability as possibly.{{cite book |last1=Martz |first1=Paul |title=OpenGL Distilled |publisher=Addison-Wesley |date=2006 |url=https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/opengl-r-distilled/0321336798/ch01.html#ch01lev1sec1 |access-date=1 March 2025}} (free trial) Unlike PEX, OpenGL did not rely on the window system, it being a completely separate part to ensure their previous goals were met. To avoid namespace conflicts, every function was prefixed with "gl". Many modules were also either cleaned up, removed, or renamed.{{cite book |last1=Kilgrad |first1=Mark |title=OpenGL programming for the X window system |pages=4-5 |date=1996 |publisher=Addison-Wesley |isbn=0201483599 |url=https://archive.org/details/openglprogrammin0000kilg |access-date=1 March 2025}}

IRIS GL was a graphics library for the IRIX workstations. Window creation and input were built in.

It provided special routines for handling 3D graphics, allowing the user to specify a 3D transformation, and then having it automatically be applied with every vertex passed in. Due to the lack of programmable shaders, shading is specified with many parameters including diffuse, specular, ambient, and emission.

There existed routines like rect that allowed a programmer to specify vertices from a more high-level perspective.

The GL also had basic typesetting support using raster fonts, and also support for NURBS curves{{cite web |title=Graphics Library Programming Guide |url=https://bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris4d/007-1210-020_Graphics_Library_Programming_Guide_v2.0_May_1990.pdf |website=Bitsavers |publisher=SGI |access-date=12 April 2025 |date=1990}}

• Silicon Graphics Image for file extension .iris
• SGI IRIS
• IrisVision - first port to PCs

{{reflist}}

• {{Cite conference

| first = James

| last = Clark

| title = The Geometry Engine: A VLSI Geometry System for Graphics

| book-title = Proceedings of the 9th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques

| pages = 127–133

| date = July 1982

| url = https://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/PDFs/geometry-engine.pdf

| access-date = 2015-06-08

| archive-date = 2016-04-02

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160402232433/http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/PDFs/geometry-engine.pdf

| url-status = dead

}}

• {{cite web |title=Graphics Library Programming Guide |url=https://bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris4d/007-1210-020_Graphics_Library_Programming_Guide_v2.0_May_1990.pdf |website=Bitsavers |publisher=SGI |access-date=12 April 2025 |date=1990}}
• {{cite web |title=Graphics Library Reference Manual, C Edition |url=https://bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris4d/007-1203-040_Graphics_Library_Reference_Manual_C_Edition_v4.0_Sep_1990.pdf |website=Bitsavers |publisher=SGI |access-date=12 April 2025 |date=September 1990}}

• [http://www.opengl.org/ Official OpenGL website]

Category:3D graphics software

Category:Application programming interfaces

Category:Graphics libraries

Category:Graphics standards

Category:SGI graphics

Category:Video game development software