The API
As you can clearly see, there is one hell of a lot of calculation that goes into rendering 3D imagery and to have it move in full, fluid motion. There is no way that game programmers want to have to re-work through all of this stuff every time they want to create a new gaming title. One thing that would really help the developer is to have a go between interface between their own programming code and the raw hardware. This is where the API comes in. Short for Application Programming Interface, this is the interface between a 3D program and the 3D graphics board. It talks to the hardware for the software. In order to use 3D with any speed, you must be using a game that is written for the API that your video board supports. A programmer can program their software to use the function calls of a particular graphics API, allowing them to do otherwise complex 3D renderings without the knowledge of the underlying graphics hardware.
There are two primary graphics APIs:
- Direct3D. This is part of the DirectX multimedia API suite included into all Microsoft operating systems. As you might have guessed, this means this is a Windows-specific API and not cross platform. Many claim that its performance isn’t that great. For this reason, many companies still prefer to use API’s tailored for certain graphics boards.
- OpenGL. This is a cross-platform, vendor-independent API developed by SGI. OpenGL is being developed further to hopefully become the standard Direct3D failed to be. Many current high-end video hardware is now being shipped complete with OpenGL drivers.
There are a number of other APIs out there for game developers to use, but these are the most popular ones.
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