Mesa 3D

Mesa 3D is an open source graphics library, initially developed by Brian Paul in August 1993, that provides a generic OpenGL implementation for rendering 3-Dimensional graphics on multiple platforms. Though Mesa is not an officially licensed OpenGL implementation, the structure, syntax and semantics of the API is that of OpenGL.

Advantages

• In its current form, Mesa 3D is available and can be compiled on virtually all modern platforms.

• Though not an official implementation, the Mesa 3D authors have worked to keep the API in line with the most current OpenGL standards and conformance tests, as set forth by the OpenGL ARB.

• Mesa 3D is distributed under the XFree86 copyright license.

Disadvantages

• To provide maximum cross-platform capabilities, Mesa 3D is relegated to being a software renderer. As such, it does not take advantage of any hardware acceleration capabilities that other OpenGL implementations normally would (such as those provided by a card vendor). Thus, the speed for graphically-intensive applications which use Mesa can be quite limited.

External Links

• Mesa 3D Homepage – Information and documentation for the latest version of Mesa 3D.