About OpenGL course

Ludicrous as it was to think that Dr. Vijay D. Gokhale sir would start a full-fledged course in ‘Real Time Rendering’, because of the reasons cited in ‘About Seminar’ tab, the strong and proactive initiative coming from various students, most notably from those in nVidia, prompted him to start the course. The path from sir’s unofficial nod to it’s official implementation was rather bumpy because of sir’s few announcements and preconditions which had born out the ideals he had strictly adhered to; throughout his teaching career. Some of them were nothing short of audacious (to the extent of being termed as ‘outright MAD’) such as

• No technical pre-requisites were required for enrolling the course as heavy as Real Time Rendering. Not even a single programming language! Sir promised to teach programming itself through RTR to those who were not familiar with it.
• No declared time limit for the course. Total time period would be as long as it would to take slowly, rigorously complete the syllabus keeping the most beginner candidate in mind. That potentially meant candidates unfamiliar to programming itself.
• Real time rendering will be taught not with OpenGL on Windows desktop, but with
  • OpenGL on Windows, Linux, MAC OS-X which are desktop platforms. (Both fixed function & Programmable pipelines will be covered)
  • OpenGL ES on Android and iOS which are mobile platforms.
  • WEB-GL on web platform. (Above two platforms, being recent one’s support only programmable pipeline of OpenGL)
  • Direct X on Windows desktop and mobile platforms.

Sir expected only one pre-requisite – the sincerity. The course was to run every Saturday-Sunday; though with not declared time-limit, the estimated one was 15 months. Attendance was to be compulsory & strictly monitored, there were going to be assignments every week along with the assessment. In short it was content-wise a professional course which was going to be run in school like ‘GURUKUL’ environment. Therefore, one would now understand why “strong and proactive initiative” mentioned in the first paragraph from professional working in prestigious companies like nVidia was instrumental for the commencement of the course. In it’s own miraculous way, whooping 97 candidates, approximately half of them working professionals, crossed the philosophical & moral hurdles placed by sir, and enrolled for the course. Thus, Dr. Vijay D. Gokhale sir, through ASTROMEDICOMP, launched, THE VERY FIRST OF ITS KIND IN THE WORLD, MORE THAN A YEAR LONG, FULL FLEDGED COURSE in REAL TIME RENDERING.

Coming to the present, the course has reached the quarter stage at the time of writing and has already shown tremendous results. Nine groups have been formed each having group leader and an interesting name (e.g. “Render Group”, “Pixel Group”) of it’s own. With only fixed function pipeline covered so far each group has produced a demo which has awed not only sir but also the general populace in computer science unaware of the real time rendering. Surprisingly, the candidates who were not familiar with programming have shown tremendous results and importantly, everybody is enjoying the process.

In the conclusion, it can only be said that the course is proving to be a unique opportunity to master the most important skill in the field of computer science, viz. the elusive art of coding, from one of the outstanding programmer in the world. And general feeling amongst participants is that this is a reward in itself. Real time rendering outputs are proving to be icing in the cake.