I am an electrical engineering student that is working on his Senior design project. For our project we are updating a vehicle’s dashboard (Been done before but we don’t care). The vehicle will be interfaced with a computer which will collect the stats of the various areas of the vehicle and then out put them on to a screen. We are going to be running a dual monitor setup one will be touch. can i run a openGL gauge interface in the same application as some kind of cocoa/windows/kde window that is in fullscreen mode in the other monitor. I openGL overkill for what we’re trying to do and could someone point us in the right direction to accomplish this. I was think it would be easier to create the gauges in photoshop and then just rotate the gauge needle can this be done in OpenGL.
Sorry for all the questions I have never used OpenGL before i thought it could work cause it can be ported a lot easier from platform to platform.
OpenGl is great for this, it will definitely look better than most other solutions and is flexible enough for any gauge displays you could ever imagine.
It’s not overkill, but even if it was, isn’t that a little what you’re trying to do.
could you tell me of other ways that i could accompish this task besides using openGL (I’m going to use opengl) so that I can compare the technologies and see what else is out there. I’m having a hard time finding other ways to render graphics like this. FYI we’re working on linux.
You could certainly do the app you describe in OpenGL.
With OpenGL you would probably use 2D textures for your gauges, and bring in bitmapped scans of the gauges. Make the needle a separate object, and create a routine that takes a min/max value range, a min/max rotation angle to display the needle, and a current value, and rotates the needle to the appropriate spot.
I’d suggest using GLUT, since it will give you easy-to-use cross-platform user interface tools like keyboard and mouse management, menus, windows, etc.
You could also use a cross-platform code library or application framework.
OpenStep, which is the open source version of NextStep (the basis of Apple’s Cocoa) is a possibility.
When you saw use bitmap scans for my gauges you mean create the gauges in photoshop and export them as bitmaps and use them as backgrounds in OpenGL.
Sorry everyone for all the questions I just have never used this technology before and I am just trying to figure out how i would accomplish my task with it.