[fpc-pascal] dglOpenGL <-> GL, GLu, GLExt

[Sven Barth]

On 23.02.2013 14:45, Juha Manninen wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 11:12 PM, Marco van de Voort <marcov at stack.nl> wrote:
>>> Q: how am I supposed to initialize OpenGL when using units provided by FPC?
>>
>> The unit does it at startup. That has as disadvantage that the filename
>> can't be changed (or at least that first try can't be avoided).
>>
>> After that, you iirc need to do load<something with glversion> from unit
>> glext to load the extensions for later versions.
>
>
> Thanks Marco.
>
> I didn't quite understand what is load<something with glversion>.

In unit GLext you have functions like Load_GL_version_1_3 which will 
load all core functions provided in OpenGL 1.3 or 
Load_GL_ARB_multitexture which will load all ARB functions related to 
multitexturing (of course you should only do this if your version 
supports/needs this). This is necessary, because in different OpenGL 
versions different APIs were either part of the "core API" or where at 
least standardized, but still optional in the "ARB API" or where 
provided by specific vendors only "Ext API". So you need to decide first 
which OpenGL version you want to support where you might need to test 
first whether the version is supported at all at your client's computer 
by creating an approbiate context (Note: I don't know how this can be 
influenced with TOpenGLControl).

E.g. for current computer graphics you'll most likely want to have 
support for shaders for which you need to have at least OpenGL 2.0. If 
you want to have geometry shaders as well you need to use OpenGL 3.0 or 
newer. With newer versions you also can't use the fixed function 
pipeline anymore (glBegin() ... glEnd() ) [with the capabilities of 
shaders this isn't feasible anymore]

>
> My experiments advance slowly. The original DeleD code validate OpenGL
> by checking if
>      @glActiveTextureARB, @glClientActiveTextureARB and @glMultiTexCoord2fARB
> are assigned.
>

The Load_GL_... return a Boolean to tell you whether the functions could 
be loaded. I just checked the code of e.g. Load_GL_ARB_multitexture and 
it does even check for you whether the extension is supported.

> I create fOpenGLControl1 the same way than in the Lazarus example, but
> I don't know what to put into the OnPaint and OnResize event handlers.
> Now the code does not crash but obviously does not draw anything either.

OnResize can be used to recalculate the projection matrix if the Window 
with the OpenGL control was resized.

OnPaint is the event where you do your rendering (and AFAIK call 
OpenGLControl.SwapBuffers at the end).

> constructor TOGLForm.Create(AOwner: TComponent);
> //var PixelFormat: Integer;
>             // our windows pixel format
> //    PFD: PixelFormatDescriptor;
>             // describes the pixel format
> begin
>      inherited;
>      Initialize;
>      Set8087CW($133f);    // disable fpu exceptions when doing OpenGL rendering

Note: If you really want to disable FPU exceptions you should use 
SetExceptionMask ( 
http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/rtl/math/setexceptionmask.html ) 
instead as Set8087CW is supported on x86 only.

Regards,
Sven