Hello there,
First of all, I’m sorry because this question seems to be asked again and again. But after reading all the related thread, I still can’t get a satisfied answer. So here I am.
In short, my question is:
1.) Where can I get the latest OpenGL implementation?
2.) How it works?
I know it’s weird to put these two together. Let me explan my confusion a little more…
I’ve several years Direct3D development experience. Since Direct3D is all M$'s work. Where can I get the latest one? Go get a big-fat SDK, install it, and done. How it works? After installing the latest big-fat SDK, I include the latest headers, link to the latest .lib which contains dll stub info., and then my program will link to the latest dll if necessary. Simple enough!
However, for me it’s a different story in OpenGL. After exhasuted searching, all I got is spec. No implementation(except Mesa), no big-fat SDK.
There was a thread said that:“it’s your graphics card vendor’s job to provide you the latest implementation.” So I installed nVidia OpenGL 3.0 driver. Everything went well. nVidia OpenGL SDK 10 was compiled,and all examples were executed without a problem.
But HOW on earth it can be compiled and be executed?
I searched through the include path, and the only gl.h is the one in my VC declaring itself ver.1.1. The only opengl32.dll I found is the one in the system path, with description of “Microsoft corp., date: 2004”.
Also, the date of the linked openGL32.lib is 2005.
With all these deprecated stuff, how comes a package implemented with the latest spec. can compile and run? How can I make sure I follow the latest spec. without a latest header at least?
Thanks for reading this long post.
Any help will be appreciated.