Summary
In this chapter, you have taken a whirlwind trip down OpenGL’s graphics pipeline. You have been (very) briefly introduced to each major stage and have created a program that uses each one of them, if only to do nothing impressive. We’ve glossed over or even neglected to mention several useful features of OpenGL with the intention of getting you from zero to rendering in as few pages as possible. You’ve also seen how OpenGL’s pipeline and functionality can be enhanced by using extensions, which some of the examples later in the book will rely on. Over the next few chapters, you’ll learn more fundamentals of computer graphics and of OpenGL, and then we’ll take a second trip down the pipeline, dig deeper into the topics from this chapter, and get into some of the things we skipped in this preview of what OpenGL can do.