New to opengl

Hi all,

I know C++ and a bit of VC++ and wanna start with OPENGL.

I am not sure whether i am to continue with C++ or VC++.

Moreover if any language is choosen, how to write my first program.

What are the prerequisites, i must install (I am working on windows 98 / XP)

Regards &Thanks in advance

Jayash

Hi !

Not sure what you mean here C++ is a language, VC++ is an IDE that includes a C++ compiler…

If you already have Visual Studio, then go ahead and use it, it’s a nice IDE and a very good debugger.

You also have everything you need to develop OpenGL applications.

Your computer must have the opengl dll (opengl32.dll) all windows version but w95 comes with it so that’s not a problem, you also need an import library to link with your application (opengl32.lib), VC++ already has it and so does most other compilers.

If you don’t want to use VC++ there are a number of other alternatives, you can buy one or use one of the free ones.
MinGW (www.mingw.org)
LCC (this is a C only compiler)
Open watcom (www.openwatcom.org)

Just to name a few.

This website has lots of links to documentation and tutorials on OpenGL.

The NeHe tutorials are the most common starting point as it look’s.

If you want to stay platform independent you can use an extra library to take care of the OS specific stuff (creating windows and so on).

GLUT, GLFW for example, SDL can also be used with OpenGL.

Browse around a little on this website, use google (www.google.com), this is an amazing source of information.

Good luck
Mikael

Thanks for your valuable suggestions.

Jayash