OpenGL® Distilled is a concise book about the essential, commonly used features of modern OpenGL, the industry-standard cross-platform API for high-performance 3D computer graphics. By focusing on essential OpenGL features, eliminating discussion of algorithms, and pointing the reader to sources of additional information, OpenGL® Distilled provides useful information quickly and concisely. OpenGL version 1.0 was introduced by SGI in 1992 and quickly dominated the 3D software development industry. It is available for several versions of Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Unix, and for Apple Mac OS. Graphics hardware manufacturers supporting OpenGL include 3Dlabs, ATI, Intel, Matrox, NVIDIA, and SGI.

The fact that OpenGL is an open standard is certainly one reason for its popularity. The OpenGL feature set is determined by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB), a governing body composed of representatives from several major hardware and software companies. This group meets regularly to discuss and approve additions and modifications to the OpenGL specification. The ARB's multivendor nature ensures that OpenGL runs equally well on a wide variety of graphics architectures.

This book documents OpenGL version 2.0, released in September 2004. Although OpenGL has evolved significantly since its initial release, each version has remained compatible with previous versions. The benefits of backward compatibility are obvious, and several companies have taken advantage of OpenGL's stability to amortize the expense of software development.

Over time, some older OpenGL features fell into disfavor as the ARB added new rendering methods and paradigms to the OpenGL standard. Still other features never quite caught on with the developer community for a variety of reasons, such as corner-case or platform-specific applicability, overlapping or limited functionality, or nearly universal inefficient implementation.