Stefan Röttger

← 2D Visualization Tools | ● | Graphics Hardware →

OpenGL is an abstraction layer of the graphics hardware.

Direct Mode:

The graphics hardware is told directly, which objects of a 3D scene to render, by sending commands down the so called computer graphics pipeline:

Retained Mode:

A hierarchical model of the scene is constructed first, the so called scene graph.

Then for each frame to be rendered the scene graph is traversed and translated into direct rendering commands the hardware understands:

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