OpenGL

I chose OpenGL for the engine because I had some prior experience with it and initially thought it would be the easiest graphics API to pick up for my project. OpenGL offers a good balance between flexibility and performance, making it a suitable choice for a 2D engine. Additionally, its wide community support and resources made it easier to get started.

However, I encountered some limitations when exploring ray tracing with OpenGL. While OpenGL is powerful for traditional rasterization techniques, implementing ray tracing requires more advanced features and optimizations that are better supported in other APIs like Vulkan or DirectX 12. The lack of native support for real-time ray tracing in OpenGL meant that achieving the level of visual fidelity I wanted was more challenging and resource-intensive. This pushed me to focus on traditional rendering techniques and consider ray tracing as a future development direction if I decide to explore newer technologies.

Some useful links I've bookmarked for OpenGL:

• https://docs.gl/#
• https://github.com/nigels-com/glew
• https://www.glfw.org/docs/latest/quick.html