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In 1992, SGI led the creation of the OpenGL architectural review board ( OpenGL ARB ), the group of companies that would maintain and expand the OpenGL specification for years to come.

OpenGL evolved from ( and is very similar in style to ) SGI's earlier 3D interface, IrisGL.

One of the restrictions of IrisGL was that it only provided access to features supported by the underlying hardware.

If the graphics hardware did not support a feature, then the application could not use it.

OpenGL overcame this problem by providing support in software for features unsupported by hardware, allowing applications to use advanced graphics on relatively low-powered systems.