SGI Windows NT Toolbox

OpenGL: The Road Ahead

In addition to building the new Fahrenheit technologies SGI and the OpenGL ARB will continue to make heavy investments in advancing OpenGL.

OpenGL On March 9th 1998, the OpenGL ARB ratified the newest specification, OpenGL 1.2. The specification evolved with inputs from both ARB and interested non-ARB parties. OpenGL's philosophy is to follow evolutionary trends in hardware. As such, the process of enhancing OpenGL includes evaluating OpenGL extensions and determining which ones are so widely used and accepted that they should be incorporated into the core functionality of OpenGL. In the OpenGL 1.2 Specification, eight extensions were brought into the core.

SGI and the ARB expect to see OpenGL 1.2 implementations available across a wide variety of platforms in Q4 '98.

Lastly, SGI and Microsoft are currently working on an OpenGL ICD (Installable Client Driver) Device Driver Kit (DDK) for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT(R). This new driver kit will allow PC IHVs to easily create quality, high-performance OpenGL hardware accelerators for the growing number of OpenGL based graphics applications on the Windows platform. This DDK will be available to graphics board and chip vendors in July 1998.


The materials on this web site include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, detailed from time to time in the company's SEC reports, including the report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 1997 and the report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 1997.