Wave Issue 9712 5/21/97 Article 5-01

***SGI Lays out its OpenGL Roadmap
by John Latta

SGI continues to refine and articulate its direction for OpenGL. SGI is
working closely with the OpenGL ARB to implement a three-tiered structure
for OpenGL. As disclosed by SGI previously there is a layer on top of the
low level API OpenGL called OpenGL++. This is now called the Scene Graph
Toolkit which is a high level object-oriented API. Based on the experience
gained from Inventor and Performer this tool kit is to raise OpenGL a level
in abstraction so that it is easier to use and create applications. At the
same time the developer will have access to OpenGL for performance
sensitive implementations. Underlying the Scene Graph Toolkit will be a
data structure that will be accessed by the API. It is anticipated that a
file format will eventually be defined for the scene graph to enable
portability but the details of this remain to be worked out in the ARB. SGI
recognizes that a strength of Performer is the many file formats it
supports and this should not be lost in the implementation of the Toolkit.

The third tier level is vertical market applications. Already announced was
the Optimizer to support the CAD/CAM/CAE market. SGI now discloses a
vertical segment based on Open Inventor as a user interface, Image Vision
for imaging and the VRML toolkit.

SGI makes a strong statement about the role of open standards. In this
roadmap SGI is articulating a direction but the implementation is left to
the industry that is using OpenGL. This approach has been extended with
Optimizer but Microsoft and HP have challenged this with its announcement
of DirectModel.

www.sgi.com/