help

hi,
thanx alot for your help. i went to a number of sites for the download and found the opengl multipipie sdk 1.2 free for download. i also found the mesa3d sdk.
BUT

(1)- at the sgi website i found out that for running opengl there should be IRIX 6.5 installed on my system…what is that?..i’m using windows 98

(2)- is this exactly the same sdk u are talking about because there were other related products on the sgi website available for download?

(3)- is opengl 1.4 or 1.3 sdk available for purchase only or free for download … if free then where is it?

sorry if this mail bothers you…but please help me , i’m a newbie.

bye

Irix is a version of unix that runs on silicon graphics workstations. If sgi says you need it to run openGl then you are at the wrong site. They must be talking about sgi specific things. You can most certianly run openGL on windows 98 unless your graphics card doesnt support it. Most do however. OpenGl 1.4 is not avaliable as far as I know but if anyone knows that it is please let me know as well.

check the link - opengl kit for windows - http://www.berkelium.com/OpenGL/sgi-download.html

as for as i know opengl kit is free

goodluck

SGI supports a Linux/unix type os system, and on there system those things are needed for openGL.
www.openGL.com is hosted by SGI for OpenGL support on all OS systems.

For windows openGL support comes from Microsoft which currently only supports version 1.2, but the video card makers with have support of newer openGL 1.3 and 1.4 extensions in the video card drivers.

Due to the lack of openGL windows support by Microsoft, there is no SDK per say for or support anything above 1.2, but Microsoft does ship with the Visual C++, the openGL 1.2 librarys.

If you go to sites like ATI and nvadia, you can find examples of how to access the newer openGL features not supported on the windows platform, via using openGL extension.

Depending on what compiler you are using, you may already have all the libraries needed to start programming openGL.

mesa3d is a linux openGL work alike 3D API.

Originally posted by Desert Eagle:
[b]hi,
thanx alot for your help. i went to a number of sites for the download and found the opengl multipipie sdk 1.2 free for download. i also found the mesa3d sdk.
BUT

(1)- at the sgi website i found out that for running opengl there should be IRIX 6.5 installed on my system…what is that?..i’m using windows 98

(2)- is this exactly the same sdk u are talking about because there were other related products on the sgi website available for download?

(3)- is opengl 1.4 or 1.3 sdk available for purchase only or free for download … if free then where is it?

sorry if this mail bothers you…but please help me , i’m a newbie.

bye[/b]

The Microsoft drivers are only version 1.1, not 1.2.

Because of the way the opengl32.dll is setup, only those functions are directly exposed. However, if you’re OpenGL implementation supports 1.2 or greater, you can get the entry points to those functions the same way you would get the entry point for extension functions. That is, you use wglGetProcAddress.

There is also a glext.h header that contains some useful definitions if you don’t want to have to have to pre-define everything yourself.

With that being said, 1.1 is plenty sufficient for learning OpenGL. The higher versions offer additional functions for various stuff, but you still need to use the 1.1 functions for things.

so that means if i have Microsoft Visual C++ there is already an opengl sdk in it? (and that i just have to install VC++ and start programming opengl and not worry about anything else)?

thanx alot for your help and replies. you guys are getting me to the right track.

will you mind telling me from where did you guys get the opengl sdk?

bye

That’s right. Everything you need to program with OpenGL usually comes with your compiler. nVidia and ATI also have additional SDKs that can be used to make it easier to program with extensions (I think). I tend to just use the base stuff myself, though.