[self-interest] OpenGL

[Steve Dekorte]

On Friday, June 20, 2003, at 02:34 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
> In some graphics systems you can choose between the immediate and
> retained modes, while others always work in one or the other. In the
> immediate mode any command you give will result in a change to the
> image, while in the retained mode the command will alter a data
> structure kept by the graphics system which will later convert that
> structure into an image.

I see. Yes, I think OpenGL is basically immediate. You can have display 
lists though - that is, define a set of drawing commands that can be 
invoked with a handle. But the typically implementations still push all 
drawing commands from RAM to the video card.

That said, the drawing commands may be less data than sending a bitmap 
and even if not, faster overall as the CPU is a poor renderer.

Cheers,
Steve