Using OpenGL in Visual C++

By Alan Oursland

With the release of NT 3.5, OpenGL became a part of the Windows operating system. Now with support for OpenGL in Windows 95 and Windows 98 and low priced graphics accelerators becoming readily available even on low end machines, the prospects of using OpenGL on any Windows machine is becoming more attractive every day. If you are interested in creating quality 2-D or 3-D graphics in Windows, or if you already know another variant of GL, keep reading. This tutorial will show you how to use OpenGL and some of its basic commands.

GL is a programming interface designed by Silicon Graphics. OpenGL is a generic version of the interface made available to a wide variety of outside vendors in the interest of standardization of the language.

OpenGL allows you to create high quality 3-D images without dealing with the heavy math usually associated with computer graphics. OpenGL handles graphics primitives, 2-D and 3-D transformations, lighting, shading, Z-buffering, hidden surface removal, and a host of other features. I'll use some of these topics in the sample programs following; others I'll leave to you to explore yourself. If you want to learn more about OpenGL you can search the MSDN website for the keyword "OpenGL".

Here is the list of topics covered in this series:

1. Writing an OpenGL Program
2. Simple 2-D Graphics
3. Transformations and the Matrix Stack
4. Simple 3-D Graphics

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