OpenGL File Confusion

OpenGL
1

First off I’d like to inform everyone that I have read the Getting Started web page, so no need to link me to it :slight_smile:

My main concern is what in the world all of these OpenGL files are for.

Currently I only have gl.h and glu.h on my system, which came with Visual Studio .NET 2003. This apparently is only OpenGL version 1.0. I have been searching forever to find a gl.h that has opengl version 2.0 source code, but I must be missing something.

On the Getting Started webpage, it shows glext.h, which has GL_VERSION_2_0 defined in it, so I’m guessing this is OpenGL version 2.0? I’m very confused as to why it is called an extension. Why isn’t it just gl.h instead of glext.h?

If anyone could clear up the file confusion I would greatly appreciate it. Also with OpenGL 2.0, will the WGL functions still work? I use WGL to create my window for OpenGL.

Thanks for your time!

2

On Windows OS, MS implement only OpenGL 1.1. To get OpenGL 2.0 features you must manually map entry points of new extensions. In short… check is extension supported in GL_EXTENSION string and if it is supported use wglGetProcAddress to get valid entry point for each new function. glext.h provide only function definition. Implementation is in driver.

Of course, you can use GLEW (do google for it) library that do all this boring codein for you.

yooyo

3

Funny though that everything yooyo said was stated on this famous Getting Started page :smiley:

Ok I have to admit that this is not the clearer thing. Dear Microsoft …

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