GRAPHICS APIs

Due to the difficulties working with video cards at a programming level, interfaces which abstract the complexity and diversity of the graphic card primitives appeared. Some major ones include:

* Direct3D: Released by Microsoft in 1996, is a component of DirectX. Designed to be used exclusively in Windows, it is used by the majority of Windows video games. The latest version of DirectX is DirectX 10, although the majority of computers still rely on graphics cards that use DirectX 9.0c.


* OpenGL: Developed by Silicon Graphics in the early 1990s, OpenGL is a free, open, multi-language and multi-platform API. It is widely used in CAD, virtual reality, scientific visualization, information visualization, flight simulation and some games, particularly on Linux and other Unix like operating systems. The latest version is OpenGL 3.0.


* QuickDraw: Macintosh graphics API.


* X Window System core protocol: Basis of X Window System used extensively on UNIX and Linux.


* Glide: A proprietary 3D graphics API developed by 3dfx and implemented on their Voodoo graphics cards.