Studying VRML or openGL?

Question

I will have to follow 1 course at my accademy. One is about openGL the other about VRML.

What would you choose? (course name: virtual reality)

Answer 1

The OpenGL course sounds like it would be much more useful, up-to-date and practical.

From knowing OpenGL you can spread out into a lot of other areas that are closely or somewhat related - games programming, hardware acceleration, user interfaces, visualisation, GPU computing, applications for smartphones and consoles, etc.

Answer 2

VRML is not used for much of anything now. OpenGL is widely used in visualization and also used in games, although not as much as DirectX.

Learning OpenGL will help you much more in both practical terms and learning the basis of 3D graphics programming. Of course, with a course on OpenGL, the things that are focused on can make a great deal of difference. Modern OpenGL coding is heavily shader driven, with vertex buffers taking care of the bulk of the geometry definition aspect.

Answer 3

OpenGL is the practical answer. It's wildly used today, so your investment of time will not be wasted.

Now, doing 3D isn't the easiest thing in the world to pick. A good background is mathematics (linear algebra especially) is quite helpful. The barrier to entry can be pretty high. This is where VRML really shines. It's extremely easy to pick up and understand. Knowledge of advanced mathematics is not required, as VRML has abstracted that all away.

If you're a Java developer, another 3D API to look into is Java3D