20 - Opengl

For over a decade following its inception in 1992, OpenGL served as the primary interface for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. During this period, the API relied heavily on a "fixed-function" pipeline. Developers would feed geometric data and lighting parameters to the hardware, and the GPU would execute a pre-determined set of calculations to render the scene. While efficient for standard lighting and texturing, this model lacked flexibility.

By the early 2000s, the demand for cinematic visual effects in video games and simulations outpaced the capabilities of fixed-function hardware. Graphics card manufacturers like NVIDIA and ATI (now AMD) began introducing proprietary extensions for programmable shaders. OpenGL 2.0, ratified by the Khronos Group in September 2004, represented the formalization of this shift. It was not merely an incremental update; it was a fundamental restructuring of how developers interacted with graphics hardware. opengl 20

The defining feature of OpenGL 2.0 was the introduction of the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) and the standardization of the programmable pipeline. This shifted the API from a configuration-based model to a programming-based model. For over a decade following its inception in

The OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB) decided to bring shaders into the core standard. And it would run on any conforming OpenGL 2

OpenGL 2.0’s headline feature: GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language) — a C-like language for vertex and fragment shaders.

For the first time, you could write:

#version 110
uniform float time;
void main() 
    gl_Position = ftransform();

And it would run on any conforming OpenGL 2.0 hardware (like ATI Radeon 9700, NVIDIA GeForce FX series).