What background knowledge is required/useful if I want to work with the OpenSceneGraph?
As the OSG is written in C++ you’ll need to be able to program in that language. One way to look at the OSG is to treat it as an object-oriented wrapper around OpenGL. This is actually a far too simplistic view, as the OSG does a lot more than just issue OpenGL commands for you. However, it does indicate the need to have to knowledge of how OpenGL works in order to use the OpenSceneGraph in a sensible way. Anything you therefore know about OpenGL will be of value when using the OSG. A lot of questions from people just starting out with OpenSceneGraph are actually questions about the basics of OpenGL. Other topics that are of interest to newcomers to OSG are: • Memory management through reference counting. See the relevant question below, under “Development General”. • The use of design patterns, such as Visitor and Observer. For those already familiar with (real-time) 3D rendering, but not OSG, some features turn out to be common pitfalls: • By default, the OpenSceneGraph manages the c
