OpenGL Software Development Kit / News: Recent posts

Support for OpenGL 4.4 is now live. Joy!

OpenGL 4.4 is here and... GL Load doesn't support it. Yet.

In the near future, there will be a 0.5.1 release of the SDK, including support for the new 4.4 specification in GL Load. Ordinarily, this would have been done the day of 4.4's release, but there were... complications.

See, about a month ago, the ARB completely rewrote their spec files, going from a proprietary format to an XML-based one. While the XML system is (mostly) better, it is different, and therefore requires porting the code generator over to it.... read more

The main focus for the 0.6 release will be on a scene graph system. It's intended to interface with mesh, image, and other systems, all to make managing scenes that contain objects much easier.

The graph will have a file format, intended to make using the graph system much easier. The user will have hooks to be able to direct file loading through user-defined functions. That way, you can define your own root paths, or systems for deciding what kind of thing to load, or whatever.... read more

The 0.5 release of the Unofficial OpenGL SDK has now landed. This is a release candidate release; the Linux build has not yet been tested. Download it and have a go with it.

Changes from 0.4.4:

• Added Boost to the distribution, as well as support for user-provided Boost.
• Added GL Load Gen to the distribution.
• From GL Load
  • GL Load is now generated using glLoadGen's generation system. This should not impact your use of the system.
  • BREAKING CHANGE: GL Load's C++ API now doesn't need to prefix its enums with GL_.
  • BREAKING CHANGE: Several of GL Load's headers have changed.
• From GL Mesh
  • splits the glmesh::Draw::Attrib functions into their own utility class, so that the interface can be used in the new glmesh::CpuDataWriter. This class is used for creating vertex arrays on the CPU, to be used in later uploads to the GPU.
  • glmesh::VertexFormat::Enable class now can use ARB_vertex_attrib_binding.
  • glmesh::VertexFormat has functions to bind attributes, either all of them or individually. This makes it easy to use it with a VAO; you bind the VAO, call glmesh::VertexFormat::BindAttributes, and you're done. There is also glmesh::VertexFormat::BindAttribFormats for ARB_vertex_attrib_binding usage
  • A number of mesh generators
• From GL Util
  • The Debug system now has functions to get string names and descriptions for OpenGL errors and framebuffer status codes.
  • The program compiling/linking helpers now include RAII-style objects for holding shaders and programs.

Originally, I had decided to only employ limited use of Boost in the library's interface. In that way, if you didn't want to include Boost directly, you could avoid it. Since that time, I rethought this position, and came to a different conclusion.

The library needs Boost. There are internals that rely on it. And to be honest, there are a lot of forward-facing interfaces that could really be improved with Boost tech.... read more

The 0.5.0 release of the SDK will ship with a portion of Boost 1.51. This is because Boost features are simply too useful to not incorporate into a C++ project. Programming certain kinds of C++ logic without some of Boost's creature comforts is just not enjoyable.

Care will be taken in many cases to not force Boost into the interface of the SDK. The SDK is however a static library, so the DLL issues that usually plague header-only libraries won't affect the SDK. Even so, there will be certain "Boost headers" that will expose certain features of Boost to the user. These are mainly so that you can take advantage of them.... read more

glLoadGen has now been integrated as a component of the OpenGL Software Development Kit (not in a release as of yet). This has caused some issues.

The headers and source code for GL Load are generated by a code generation scheme. Before glLoadGen was integrated, it was an internal system. That system was effectively spun off into glLoadGen (more or less). It has been re-integrated, with some improvements.... read more

The 0.4.4 release has a basic font system now. It is a part of the Utility library. It is not a full-fledged text rendering and layout system. It is for the most basic of font needs: I have some text and want to put it on the screen.

It doesn't rely on FreeType or anything on a system; it is 100% cross-platform. That's because the fonts themselves are actually stored in the library itself, to be linked directly in your .exe file. Don't worry about code bloat; if you never actually call the font creation function, you won't get any of that in your executable.... read more

Version 0.4.0 is now released. It includes:

Utilities for shader and program loading, mouse-based view and object controls, and a few other miscellaneous tools.

GL Mesh system for immediate mode-style drawing. It is 100% compatible with core OpenGL 3.2+.

The Unofficial OpenGL Software Development Kit has made its first Alpha release. This release includes basic functionality helpful to all users of OpenGL who want to get started making graphics.