[DUMB+NOOB] Downloading libraries?

[Daniel Nieto]

Hi!, im totally new to opengl and all related (even though i'm a Blender user) but i have a very stupid question...

How can i "download" openGL, i mean, i've read that there are various versions of opengl, i saw the 2.1 but how do i know i have it?

Anyway, i've seen in my c++ compiler there is a GL directory, i have a question, all the compilers comes with that directory?, did i installed it? which version is it? and at last but not less important (for me) how can i start doing a simple openGL application, do i need GLUT? or what? :confused: :confused: :confused: thank you guys!!! i hope i didnt make you mad, since this is a very noob post!

[V-man]

Use the wiki, luke
It's the topmost post

[dorbie]

The easiest way:

Figure out which graphics card you have.
Download & install the latest drivers.
Download & install the SDK from the card's chip maker.

You may need glut, it depends on what you try to compile, it is not essential since it only provides very simple cross platform windowing & event abstraction, but obviously if something you want to compile uses it you have to grab the library or port to an alternative method of getting a gl context (and whatever else they might use GLUT for).

There are other libraries that may help, especially for cross platform cross card development like GLeW.

NeHe is a good place to start

http://nehe.gamedev.net/

Start with lesson one it has a setting up guide, dunno how up to date it is, but is uses glaux (kina like GLUT but worse and deprecated), which is a significant bad point. So only use it for early practice and move on as soon as you can.