Open Inventor^TM is an object-oriented 3D toolkit offering a comprehensive solution to interactive graphics programming problems. It presents a programming model based on a 3D scene database that dramatically simplifies graphics programming. It includes a rich set of objects such as cubes, polygons, text, materials, cameras, lights, trackballs, handle boxes, 3D viewers, and editors that speed up your programming
time and extend your 3D programming capabilities.

Open Inventor:

• is built on top of OpenGL®
• defines a standard file format for 3D data interchange
• introduces a simple event model for 3D interaction
• provides animation objects called Engines
• provides high performance object picking
• is window system and platform independent
• is a cross-platform 3D graphics development system
• supports PostScript printing
• encourages programmers to create new customized objects
• is fun to use

SGI has received numerous requests for a GNU/Linux® version of Open Inventor. By open-sourcing this toolkit we are making it available on Linux and at the same time enabling this large and very active user community to study, understand and enhance Open Inventor. Earlier this year SGI released the source code of the OpenGL Sample Implementation to the open source community, clearing the way for high-quality OpenGL implementations on Linux. The release of Open Inventor further highlights SGI's commitment to providing hardware and software technologies that are relevant to graphics developers.