This guide describes a programming interface (with ANSI C and C++ bindings) for creating real-time graphics applications with high-performance rendering in an easy-to-use 3D graphics toolkit. OpenGL Performer interfaces with the OpenGL library and runs on the IRIX, Linux, or Microsoft Windows operating system. Topics covered include an overview of real-time image generation and OpenGL Performer, information on application and scene-graph structure, details of database traversal, hints on load management and special effects, a description of the dozens of file loaders provided with OpenGL Performer, and information about the low-level libpr rendering library, math tools, statistics gathering and reporting, application tuning, and the C++ programmer's API.