Salutations!
Would anyone be kind enough to provide a general overiew as to what exactly is OpenGL. I searched the internet however, most of the material I came across didn't quite clearly state the different between OpenGL and GLUT. Also, what is SDL?
I am quite familiar with C++ however I have never uses OpenGl before. Any links to tutorials or related materials will be greatly appriciated.
Thanks :)
"OpenGL is the industry's most widely used, supported and best documented 2D/3D graphics API making it inexpensive & easy to obtain information on implementing OpenGL in hardware and software"Its a graphics library that provides an interface for the user to draw 2d
or 3d.
Glut and SDL are similar.
"GLUT (pronounced like the glut in gluttony) is the OpenGL Utility Toolkit, a window system independent toolkit for writing OpenGL programs. It implements a simple windowing application programming interface (API) for OpenGL. GLUT makes it considerably easier to learn about and explore OpenGL programming. GLUT provides a portable API so you can write a single OpenGL program that works across all PC and workstation OS platforms."glut and sdl provide an interface for the user to handle creating window.
They help it make it easier to program applications. For example, using
glut, you can handle creating a window, and communicating with the
mouse and keyboard, and use opengl to just draw stuff.
Just using, SDL you can do 2d graphics as well.
So, OpenGL manages all the output and displays graphics on the screen. GLUT on the other hand is used to collect input and is used because it is system independent.
If I want to make a program just from windows, can I use the windows API instead of GLUT?
Also, thanks for your previous reply :)
Yes. The main use of glut is to create a window and handle events. Windows API can do the same, so you can use win32 with opengl. In fact
in NEHE tutorial, thats what they use.
Thanks for your replies. They helped quite a lot.
We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.