Everywhere I look I see teams formed that require the 3d programmers to know opengl and sdl or opengl and ogre ect.. I was just wondering if it is possible to make an entire game based on just the opengl engine, or would functions be a more appropriate term? The opengl library seems to have everything needed to program a game in 3d so would engines like ogre and sdl be for a bigger variety or what? I have a list of things i wish to accomplish while i'm working on 3d programming but i don't want to stray too far into the business because I am only planning on learning these few things before i go back to win32 api and networking. If i can create a program using these 3d effects without any third party game engine just check it off or something.. shaders - antistropic filtering - antialiasing - vertical sync - high dynamic range lighting - high dynamic deffusion lighting (i think that's what it's called, like the flashlight in cs:source kind of..) - cel shading - Blending - High definition textures - Reflections - Water effects (this might just be multitextured with reflections, i'm not too sure) - And that's about it.. I am pretty sure opengl can do all of the above but i justwant to get a better understanding of why people would create a new game engine if ogl can do everything anyways. Thanks in advanced EDIT: I would also like to add model importing to the list. It's possible to use any model type, but which extensions specifically?

I think your confusing terminology. OpenGL is not a 3D Engine, its a 3D API. 3D Engines use 3D APIs to render stuff. For example, the Unreal Engine is a 3D engine which can use either Direct3D or OpenGL as 3D API to do its rendering.

That's what i was thinking. People would create a 3d engine to ease the use of the 3d api then right? Perhaps even manipulate it a little bit? In the long run it would be shorter work to do if you decided to use a game engine, but more experience would come out of using the 3D api for all your work correct?

I can't compile ogre3D on this computer anyways, I tried to install it with dev-c++ 4 times and messed up everytime, when i tried installing with visual C++, I would try to install the PSDK but my windows installer is corrupt or something. I've tried to re-install windows installer and everything. I kept trying till I came to the conclusion, I can't use ogre.

About the comparison between using a 3d engine opposed to a 3d api to render your scenes, with more difficulty included in 3D coding, could a 3d engine vs a 3d api be compared to winsock vs raknet? The sockets would obviously be easier, but would it make the same type of simplicity as the 3d programming?