OpenGL ES is the software which provides interface for graphics hardware. Interface consists of a set of rules and functions that allow a programmer to specify what operations are involved in producing high-quality graphical images and specfically color images of three-dimensional objects.It is cross-platform API for full-function 2D and 3D graphics on embedded systems – including consoles, phones, appliances and vehicles.It also has the various versions of OpenGL ES specification now exist in the market lets have a look at them.
OpenGL ES 1.0
OpenGL ES 1.0 is very light weight version which contains quad and polygon rendering primitives, texgen, line and polygon stipple, ABR image pixel class operation are not supported, nor are bitmaps or 3D textures, polygon mode and antialiased polygon rendering are not supported, although rendering using multisample is still possible , several of the more technical drawing modes are eliminated, including frontbuffer and accumulation buffer. Bitmap operations and specifically copying pixels are prohibited.
OpenGL ES 1.1
OpenGL ES 1.1 adds the new features to the OpenGL ES 1.0 which is the mandatory support for multitexture images, automatic mipmap generation, vertex buffer objects, state queries, user clip planes and greater control over point rendering.
OpenGL ES 2.0
OpenGL ES 2.0 is publically launched in March 2007. It eliminates most of the fixed-function rendering pipeline in favor of a programmable one which further followed in Open ES 3.0 . Another thing which important in this version is that the Control flow in shaders is generally limited to forward branching and to loops where the maximum number of iterations can easily be determined at compile time. In this graphic programmers also replaced by the shaders which results as OpenGL ES 2.0 is not backward compatible with OpenGL ES 1.1. OpenGL ES 2.0 becomes popular as Android 2.2 , iPad, iPad mini, Blackberry 10 and Nokia’s Symbian also uses this graphical interface for betterment of their products graphics.
OpenGL ES 3.0
The OpenGl ES 3.0 publically released in August 2012. It is is backwards compatible with OpenGL ES 2.0, It also enabling applications to incrementally add new visual features to applications. In this verion of OpenGL ES features are added like multiple enhancements to the rendering pipeline to enable acceleration of advanced visual effects, In this version the facility is provided for eliminating the need for a different set of textures for each platform and it also improves the 3D textures and depth in the textures. This new version is used in Android 4.3 which announced on 24 July 2013, Sony Xperia Z, HTC One, and Samsung Galaxy S4.
