OpenGL ES versus OpenGL

Question

What are the differences between OpenGL ES and OpenGL ?

Answer 1

Two of the more significant differences between OpenGL ES and OpenGL are the removal of the glBegin ... glEnd calling semantics for primitive rendering (in favor of vertex arrays) and the introduction of fixed-point data types for vertex coordinates and attributes to better support the computational abilities of embedded processors, which often lack an FPU

Have a look here: OpenGL_ES

Answer 2

I think you'll get a better answer if you ask "what are the differences between OpenGL and OpenGL ES ".

There are profound differences between OpenGL ES 1.1 and ES 2.0, OpenGL 1.5 and 2.0, and OpenGL 3.0 and 4.0.

As others have described ES was written for embedded systems. It also represents the first "house cleaning" of the GL specification since its inception. OpenGL had a) many ways to do the same thing (e.g. you could draw a quad/rect two different ways and blit a pixel image two different ways, etc). ES is simpler than OpenGL with fewer features as a general statement because it's designed for less sophisticated hardware.

I urge you not to look at OpenGL ES 1.1 as it is the past and does not represent the way OpenGL or OpenGL ES is moving architecturally in the future.

Answer 3

OpenGL ES is the opengl api for embedded systems. It is simpler than the normal opengl in terms of the number of the api functions, but may be harder to use, since you will have to use vertex buffers and write more shaders.

When you use a normal opengl, you can use glBegin and glEnd to enclose the geometry primitives you need to draw, but when using Opengl ES, you will have to use vertex buffers. I guess this is for performance concerns.

Currently, there are two Opengl ES versions, the 1.1 version can only support the fixed rendering pipeline, while the 2.0 version supports glsl shader. However it has no fixed rendering pipeline. In other word, you will have to write your own shader for everything.

Opengl ES is mainly used on cell phones and web (webgl). According to the spec, your desktop opengl driver can support all opengl es apis.

Answer 4

OpenGL ES means Open Graphics Library for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES or GLES) is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accelerated using a graphics processing unit (GPU). It is designed for embedded systems like smartphones, computer tablets, video game consoles and PDAs.

The OpenGL|ES Official Website: http://www.opengl.org/

you also can get more information from wiki : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL_ES

Answer 5

OpenGL is 2D and 3D graphics API bringing thousands of applications to a wide variety of computer platform.

OpenGL ES is well-defined subsets of desktop OpenGL.

OpenGL® ES is a royalty-free, cross-platform API for full-function 2D and 3D graphics on embedded systems - including consoles, phones, appliances and vehicles. It consists of well-defined subsets of desktop OpenGL, ...

See this link.

P.S.

WebGL shares specification with OpenGL ES, i.e. if you have learned desktop OpenGL, it is simple to learn the others(OpenGL ES, WebGL).

Answer 6

The modern answer, for ES 3.0 compared to OpenGL 4.6, is way different than the accepted answer. Now, all of the fixed-pipeline stuff is gone.

ES, for EMBEDDED SYSTEMS, is far less robust.