Silicon Graphics (SGI) and a group of other major players in the computer graphics industry have released the latest specification for the OpenGL application programming interface, OpenGL 1.4. The new version includes a number of improvements designed to better take advantage of the latest 3D graphics hardware. SGI and Nokia also said that they are planning to work on a version of OpenGL for mobile phones, handheld computers and other portable devices.
For gaming, OpenGL has been largely superseded with the Windows operating system by Microsoft's DirectX. However, OpenGL is widely used with other operating systems, such as Mac OS X, Linux and Unix. In addition, a number of best-selling 3D games, such as "Doom" and "Quake," rely on OpenGL. It is also more widely used for technical computing--such as simulations or building visualizations of buildings and landscapes--and for computer-aided industrial design.
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