Preface

Real-time rendering is in quite demand in computer science today, and OpenSceneGraph, being one of the best 3D graphics toolkits, is being used widely in the fields of virtual reality, scientific visualization, visual simulation, modeling, games, mobile applications, and so on. Although you can use the powerful OpenSceneGraph, which is based on the low-level OpenGL API, to implement applications that simulate different environments in the 3D world, developing picture-perfect applications is easier said than done.

This book has been written with the goal of helping readers become familiar with the structure and main functionalities of OpenSceneGraph, and guiding them to develop virtual-reality applications using this powerful 3D graphics engine. This book covers the essence of OpenSceneGraph, providing programmers with detailed explanations and examples of scene graph APIs.

This book helps you take full advantages of the key features and functionalities of OpenSceneGraph. You will learn almost all of the core elements required in a virtual reality application, including memory management, geometry creation, the structure of the scene graph, realistic rendering effects, scene navigation, animation, interaction with input devices and external user interfaces, file reading and writing, and so on.

With the essential knowledge contained in this book, you will be able to start using OpenSceneGraph in your own projects and research fields, and extend its functionalities by referring to OpenSceneGraph's source code, official examples, and API documentation.

This handy book divides the core functionalities of the proved and comprehensive OpenSceneGraph 3D graphics engine into different aspects, which are introduced in separate chapters. Each chapter can be treated as an individual lesson that covers one important field of OpenSceneGraph programming, along with several examples illustrating concrete usages and solutions. The sequence of the chapters is organized from the easy topics to the more difficult concepts, to help you to gradually build your knowledge and skills in with OpenSceneGraph.

By the end of the whole book, you will have gained a ready-to-use OpenSceneGraph development environment for yourself, and will have the ability to develop OpenSceneGraph -based applications and extend practical functionalities for your own purposes.

With plenty of examples to get you started quickly, you'll master developing with OpenSceneGraph in no time.