OpenGL Blues
What those tutorials were probably getting at though is that there are a couple of ways to use Opengl. Typically, if you're using a Win32 app, you're going to be creating your window and doing all your setup yourself. If you're going to be using a console app, the way to go is probably GLUT, the GL Utility Toolkit(I think). This is just a library that makes it a lot easier to initialize OpenGL and get yourself up and running. It's commonly used for demos, but I don't think too many commercial apps use it, as it's not installed in Windows by default.
Hope this was helpful
Jonathan
Well, I suppose I should stop typing now.
-Nick
In Tribes (and Tribes2) we used a console app because we wanted to use the same executable for the dedicated server as well as the client. In client mode, it just created a window and used wglCreateContext to "bind" OpenGl to that window DC (just like you would for a win32 app). In dedicated mode it does not create a window, avoiding a ton of windows/opengl overhead, and simply echos info to the console.
--Rick
You might want to check out GLUI:
GLUI is a GLUT-based C++ user interface library which provides controls such as buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, and spinners to OpenGL applications. It is window-system independent, relying on
GLUT to handle all system-dependent issues, such as window and mouse management. Features of the GLUI User Interface Library include:
- Complete integration with GLUT toolkit
- Simple creation of a new user interface window with a single line of code
- Support for multiple user interface windows
- Standard user interface controls such as:
- Buttons
- Checkboxes for boolean variables
- Radio Buttons for mutually-exclusive options
- Editable text boxes for inputting text, integers, and floating-point values
- Spinners for interactively manipulating integer and floating-point values
- Static text fields
- Panels for grouping sets of controls
- Separator lines to help visually organize groups of controls
- Controls can generate callbacks when their values change
- Variables can be linked to controls and automatically updated when the value of the control changes ("live variables")
- Controls can be automatically synchronized to reflect changes in live variables
- Controls can trigger GLUT redisplay events when their values change
- Layout and sizing of controls is automatic
- Controls can be grouped into columns
- User can cycle through controls using Tab key
I never used it before so I can't recomend it from experience, I ran across it the other day while looking for a cross platform GUI.
Also, if you were to write your program as a console app I would think it would be easier to port to Linix if you ever decided to do so.
