Bipul Mohanto

Bipul Mohanto

Doctoral Researcher: Foveated Rendering, Global Illumination, Applied Human Perception, Forward and Deferred Shading, Computational Color, Computer Vision

Popular 3D Graphics APIs

less than 1 minute read

Published:

High-level API

  1. OpenGL
    1. OpenGL loaders (creates function specification only)
      1. GLUT
      2. FreeGLUT (recommended by Prof. Yuksel)
      3. Glad
      4. GLEW (widely used)
      5. Other
    2. OpenGL Windowing APIs for OpenGL are below:
      1. GLFW: OWL already have it in 3rdParty Library
      2. Qt

        Low level APIs are (Ref.)

  2. Microsoft DirectX 11, 12, DXR
    1. NVidia Falcor (DXR-based)
  3. Vulkan Raytracing (VKR)
  4. NVidia OptiX
    1. Project-OWL
    2. shocker-0x15
  5. Metal (MacOS)

I am not sure about Embree so far.

  1. Intel (CPU-based-renderer)
    1. Intel Embree
    2. Intel OSPRay

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At the time of writing this (October, 2025), there are limited publicly available rendering engine that works for real-time stereo path tracing. The slow convergence with pixel dense display in VR is limiting real-time stereo path tracer. However, with the RT-core and GPU architecture improvements, I am noticing the recent trend of physically accurate light simulation in real-time rendering, e.g., games. Therefore, definitely with time, the real-time stereo path-tracing (and with other advanced global illumination algorithms) would be a real thing once we will overcome frame-rate constraint. Physically-accurate light simulation will minimized the difference between real and virtual world and extend the path of true immersion. Currently, 90 fps has become a golden standard for VR. However, the higher is the better for immersion.

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Tamashii is an excellent scientific rendering framework under development by the Department of Computer Graphics, TU Wien. Its main goal is to simplify the creation of research applications in the field of computer graphics by providing a fundamental structure in the form of libraries implementing resource loading, input handling, user interface creation, a complete rendering framework, and graphics API abstraction. The backend graphics API is Vulkan. However, Tamashii only supports single display systems, and \textbf{has not been modified for VR.}

NVIDIA Falcor Real-Time Rendering Framework Beginner Guide Part 1

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Works for NVidia Falcor 8.0, 7.0, and 6.0

Tried to write some instructions from my side on top of the original NVidia Falcor documentation (v6.0, 7.0, and 8.0), as the original Falcor’s documentation often found old and many things has changed since. This post is equivalent to Falcor’s README doc.