Open GL

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“Open GL frequently Asked Questions by expert members with experience in Open GL. These questions and answers will help you strengthen your technical skills, prepare for the new job test and quickly revise the concepts”



17 Open GL Questions And Answers

1⟩ Open GL Interview Questions Part 1

Display lists play important role in OpenGL. What it is?

How Display lists are implemented in OpenGL?

How can we manage state of our application with display lists?

What is a BitMap? How it can be rendered in OpenGL?

Name & give syntax of methods used for reading, writing, & copying image pixel data.

Briefly explain imaging pipeline.

What do you understand by Texture mapping? What are basic steps involved in it?

What is the use case of texture arrays?

Explain usage of glTextEnv() or texturing methods.

What are main types of buffers OpenGL ecosystem consists of? Give their uses also.

Name & explain tests that can applied to individual fragments .

What is Accumulation Buffer in context of OpenGL? For what purposes it is used?

Can you name the OpenGL methods used in polygon tessellation?

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2⟩ Open GL Interview Questions Part 2

Give a brief comparison between ambient, diffuse, specular, & emissive light.

Write a little code snippet for creating a light source.

What do you understand by attenuation factor? What is its role in lighting?

Name the lighting models that are available in OpenGL.

Explain the effect of diffuse & specular reflection over a material.

How to achieve lighting effects in color index mode?

What do you understand by antialiasing? Is it good to use antialiasing in our application? If yes, then why most of the applications do not use it ?

What do you understand by blending? What role it plays in rendering graphics ? How it can be implemented in OpenGL?

Write a small program to add fog effect to the application.

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3⟩ Open GL Interview Questions Part 3

What is the set of operations that are needed to perform to display a 3d representation over 2d screen?

Name the major stages of vertex transformations.

Name & give syntax of general purpose transformation commands.

Explain viewing & modeling transformations briefly.

What is projection transformation? Give difference between perspective & orthographic projections.

What do you understand by color perception?

What is difference between color index mode & RGBA mode?

How do we specify color of a geometrical object in both RGBA & color index mode?

What is a shading model? Why we need it? List shading models that are available in OpenGL.

What do you understand by hidden surface removal? Name few of algorithms used for the same.

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4⟩ Open GL Interview Questions Part 4

How to apply color to a geometrical object? Give the syntax of glColor3f() method.

What is difference between glColor3f() & glClearColor() ?

Under which circumstances glFlush() method is used? How it is different from glFinish()?

What kind of restrictions OpenGL imposes on primitive polygons? Why?

Specify the syntax of rendering a vertex in OpenGL.

Using glBegin() & glEnd() how do we create primitive geometric drawings such as quadrilaterals, polygons etc?

What are vertex arrays? How do they help in increasing performance of application?

What are interleaved arrays? Where they are used?

How to construct curved surfaces using polygon approximations?

Explain 3d viewing pipline.

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5⟩ Who needs to license OpenGL? Who doesnt?

Companies which will be creating or selling binaries of the

OpenGL library will need to license OpenGL. Typical examples of

licensees include hardware vendors, such as Digital Equipment,

and IBM who would distribute OpenGL with the system software on

their workstations or PCs. Also, some software vendors, such as

Portable Graphics and Template Graphics, have a business in creating

and distributing versions of OpenGL, and they need to license OpenGL.

Applications developers do NOT need to license OpenGL. If a

developer wants to use OpenGL, that developer needs to obtain

copies of a linkable OpenGL library for a particular machine.

Those OpenGL libraries may be bundled in with the development

and/or run-time options or may be purchased from a third-party

software vendor, without licensing the source code or use of the

OpenGL(R) trademark.

Since many implementations will be a shared library on a hardware

platform, the royalty sometimes will be charged for each hardware

platform. In those cases, it would not be charged for each

application which used OpenGL.

In general, licensing a source code implementation of OpenGL

would not be useful for an application developer, because the

binary created from that implementation would not be accelerated

and optimized to run on the graphics hardware of a machine.

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6⟩ Open GL Interview Questions Part 5

What is OpenGL (or Open Graphics Library)? Give Brief introduction about it.

Name major competitors of OpenGL . Also give main advantages & disadvantages OpenGL have over other graphics libraries in the market.

Give the main advantages that OpenGL have over Microsoft’s proprietary Direct3D.

OpenGL is written in which language? Is it possible to implement (or use) same library in programming languages other than that?

Is OpenGL API platform independent? Is it possible to port the library to embedded systems such as mobile phones etc?

Name few OpenGL related libraries that simplifies the programming task by providing a layer of abstraction over OpenGL.

How OpenGl can be considered as a state machine?

Explain OpenGL rendering pipeline.

What is term named Rasterization means? How is it different from vector graphics?

How do we clear a window in OpenGL? Also write a code snippet for the same.

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7⟩ What are the conformance tests?

The conformance tests are a suite of programs which judge the

success of an OpenGL implementation. Each implementor is

required to run these tests and pass them in order to call their

implementation with the registered trademark OpenGL. Passing the

conformance tests ensures source code compatibility of

applications across all OpenGL implementations.

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8⟩ What is Silicon Graphics policy on "free"implementations of APIs which resemble the OpenGL API?

Silicon Graphics, as licensor of the OpenGL(R) trademark, does not

permit non-licensed use of the OpenGL trademark, nor does it permit

non-licensed use of the OpenGL conformance tests. Silicon Graphics

provides a source code sample implementation of OpenGL, but only to

companies and organizations which agree to the terms and conditions of

an OpenGL license.

Silicon Graphics does give permission to others to create and distribute

their own implementations of the OpenGL API, provided they do not

state nor imply they have the right to use the OpenGL(R) trademark to

name their product, nor make claims to conformance based upon the ARB

controlled OpenGL conformance tests. Silicon Graphics agrees to allow

others to copy the OpenGL header files, as much as is necessary, for

the creation of other implementations.

Silicon Graphics is in no way associated nor endorsing these

other graphics libraries. Silicon Graphics does not make any

claims or guarantees as to the quality, performance, nor

completeness of an unlicensed library.

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9⟩ What is Mesa 3D and where can I get it?

The "Mesa 3-D graphics library" (or just Mesa) is a free

implementation of the OpenGL API. It has been compiled and

tested on most major Unix/X systems. All you should need is an

ANSI C compiler and X.

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10⟩ How does a university or research institutionacquire access to OpenGL source code?

There is a university/research institution licensing program. A

university license entitles the institution to generate binaries and

copy them anywhere, so long as nothing leaves the institution. The

OpenGL source and derived binaries can only be used for non-commercial

purposes on-campus.

A university license costs $500 US. This license provides source

code for a sample implementation of OpenGL. This source code is

best designed for porting onto a system which supports the X

Window System. You can drop this into the X Consortium's X11

server source tree and build a server with the OpenGL extension.

To do this properly, you should have the MIT source for an X

Server and some experience modifying it.

Note that this gets you a software renderer only. If your

machine includes a graphics accelerator, the sample

implementation is not designed to take any advantage of it.

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11⟩ How is the OpenGL governed? Who decides what changes can bemade?

OpenGL is controlled by an independent board, the Architecture

Review Board (ARB). Each member of the ARB has one vote. The

permanent members of the ARB are Digital Equipment, IBM, Intel,

Microsoft, and Silicon Graphics. Additional members will be added

over time. The ARB governs the future of OpenGL, proposing and

approving changes to the specification, new releases, and conformance

testing.

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13⟩ What is the philosophy behind the structure of the ARB?

The ARB is intended to be able to respond quickly and flexibly to

evolutionary changes in computer graphics technology. The ARB is

currently "lean and mean" to encourage speedy communication and

decision-making. Its members are highly motivated in ensuring the

success of OpenGL.

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15⟩ How do additional members join the OpenGL ARB?

The intention is that additional members may be added on a

permanent basis or for a one-year term. The one-year term members

would be voting members, added on a rotating basis, so that

different viewpoints (such as ISV's) could be incorporated into new

releases. Under the by-laws, SGI formally nominates new members.

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16⟩ So if I am not a member of the ARB, am I shut out ofthe decision making process?

There are many methods by which you can influence the evolution of

OpenGL.

1) Contribute to the comp.graphics.opengl news group. Most members of

the ARB read the news group religiously.

2) Contact any member of the ARB and convince that member that your

proposal is worth their advocacy. Any ARB member may present a

proposal, and all ARB members have equal say.

3) Come to OpenGL ARB and speak directly to ARB.

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17⟩ Are ARB meetings open to observers?

The ARB meeting will be open to observers, but we want to keep the

meeting small. Currently, up to five non-voting representatives

who inform the ARB secretary in advance, can observe and participate in

the ARB meeting. At any time, the ARB reserves the right to change

the number of observers.

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