Chapter 2Getting Started

by Richard S. Wright, Jr.

What You’ll Learn in this Chapter:

• Where OpenGL came from and where it’s going

• How the extension mechanism works and why it’s important

• About the core profile and deprecated functionality

• How to detect OpenGL programming errors

• How to pass performance hints to OpenGL

• How to get a basic project up and going in Visual C++ or Xcode

• How to use GLUT for a basic program framework

Now that you have had an introduction to the basic terminology and the ideas behind 3D graphics, it’s time to get down to business. Before using OpenGL, we need to talk about what OpenGL is and what it is not so that you have an understanding of both the power and the limits of this Application Programming Interface ...

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