Portability

Ive developed an app using VC++6.0 (MFC) and OpenGL. I dont have the means to test it on multiple platforms. Does anyone have some insight as to how portable it would be. I know its good on Windows machines…how about others? Do graphics cards come into play a great deal? What about memory?
Thanx for your thoughts.

If you are using MFC it will be Windows only. Likewise, using the Win32 API will make it Windows only. You shouldn’t have to take hardware into consideration unless you are using extensions. Then you just check for the existence of the extensions and if they don’t exist find an alternate method to do what you want.

Can you explain what you mean by extensions?

Extensions are a way for hardware vendors to expose functionality in their cards that aren’t a part of standard OpenGL. In Windows you use the wglGetProcAddress in order to get a pointer to the extension functions (if there are any, some of them are just different constants.) You can use glGetString(GL_EXTENSIONS) to get a list of all extensions a card supports.

Check the main page of this site for a link to a better explanation of extensions. There is also a link to a registry of extensions that explain what individual extensions can do.

Thanx. I took a look. Safe to say i think that if i didnt know what they were, fat chance i was using them…