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14
High-Quality
3D with
OpenGL 2
Chapter 13 describes how to use OpenGL to deliver realistic 3D graphics on
any PC computer hardware. Even for scenes with several hundred thousand
polygons, the specially designed GPU on the display adapter is able to render
high-resolution images at more than 50 frames per second, i.e., in real time.
OpenGL provides an API which hides from the application program any de-
tail of whether the 3D pictures appear as a result of a traditional software
renderer or a hard-wired version of the rendering pipeline. Despite the un-
doubted quality of the 3D that OpenGL, delivers it has limitations; it utilizes
Gouraud shading, for example, instead of Phong shading.
In the advent of the GPU, with its increasing speed and