Graphics Programming Using OpenGL and MFC

Graphics Programming Using OpenGL and MFC

Introduction

OpenGL is a library of graphics routines available on a wide variety of hardware platforms and operating systems, including Windows 95,Windows NT, OS/2, Digital's Open VMS, and X Windows.

OpenGL was developed by Silicon Graphics Incorporated in the year 1992, and was eventually accepted as an industrial standard for hardcore 3D graphics. The OpenGL Architecture Review Board maintains the library ensuring that OpenGL is implemented properly on various platforms. This makes porting the programs across the platforms much easier. OpenGL routines are well structured, highly stable, intuitive, scalable from PCs to Super Computers and guaranteed to produce consistent visual displays across various platforms.

This article intents to introduce a VC++ programmer, to the concepts and usage of OpenGL library on Windows NT 3.5 (or higher) platform.

OpenGL Support On WINDOWS NT

Following libraries are packed with Windows NT to support OpenGL.

* The main OpenGL library Contains the core APIs that are guaranteed to be implemented on any platform that supports OpenGL. APIs in this library has a prefix ' gl '. These APIs are used to draw shapes, perform transformations, produce lighting effects, map textures etc.
* OpenGL Utility Library Contains higher-level helper functions that internally use the core APIs to work. APIs in this library has a prefix ' glu ' and helps the programmer in polygon tessellation, texture scaling etc. These APIs are also guaranteed to be implemented on all platforms that supports OpenGL.
* OpenGL Auxiliary Library Contains some special APIs that are platform dependent and may not be available on all platforms.
* Apart from the APIs in the above libraries, there are some APIs that are unique to Windows NT implementation of OpenGL. These APIs have a prefix ' wgl ' and acts as an interface between Windows and OpenGL.

To use these APIs in your application, you have to set links to OPENGL32.LIB (core APIs), GLU32.LIB (utilities) and GLAUX.LIB (auxiliary library functions). The header files to be included are gl\gl.h (core APIs), gl\glu.h (utility library APIs) and gl\glaux.h (auxiliary library functions).

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