OpenGL și Java3D

OpenGL was developed by Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) in 1992 and is widely used in CAD, virtual reality, scientific visualization, information visualization, and flight simulation. It is also used in video games, where it competes with Direct3D on Microsoft Windows platforms

In computing, Java 2D is an API for drawing two-dimensional graphics using the Java programming language. Every Java 2D drawing operation can ultimately be treated as filling a shape using a paint and compositing the result onto the screen.

The Java 3D API is a hierarchy of JavaTM classes which serve as the interface to a sophisticated three-dimensional graphics and sound rendering system. Java 3D provides high-level constructs to create and manipulate 3D geometry, and to build the structures used to render that geometry. Using this API, developers can efficiently create precise virtual universes in a wide variety of sizes, from astronomical to subatomic. Despite all of this functionality, the API is straightforward to use. The details of rendering are handled automatically. By taking advantage of Java threads, the Java 3D renderer is capable of rendering in parallel. The renderer can also automatically optimize for improved rendering performance.

The OpenGL specification was revised by OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB) founded in 1992. The ARB was formed by a set of companies interested in the creation of a consistent and widely available API. Microsoft, one of the founding members, left the project in 2003.Efficient vendor-supplied implementations of OpenGL (making use of graphics acceleration hardware to a greater or lesser extent) exist for Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, many Unix platforms, PlayStation 3, and even the TI-89 graphing calculator. Various software implementations exist, bringing OpenGL to a variety of platforms that do not have vendor support .OpenGL's basic operation is to accept primitives such as points, lines and polygons, and convert them into pixels