The OpenGL Kit provides an interface between your BeOS application and
the OpenGL graphics library, which is provided with BeOS. The one class
in the OpenGL Kit,
BGLView,
lets you display graphics rendered using
OpenGL on a computer running the BeOS.
The
BGLView
class is used to create a view within a window that contains
OpenGL-rendered data. Derived from
BView,
it adds functions for locking
and unlocking the OpenGL context associated with the view, as well as for
copying pixel data into and out of the graphics buffer, and swapping the
front and back buffers.
If you want to use OpenGL graphics in a
BDirectWindow,
create your
BDirectWindow
and attach a
BGLView
to it.
BeOS has included an OpenGL implementation since the first Preview Release for PowerPC processors. This implementation of OpenGL is complete, and GLU is supported as well. The optional AUX and GLUT libraries, however, aren't supported at this time.
Also, the current implementation of OpenGL on BeOS supports only 32-bit
graphic buffers. Your
BGLView
or BGLScreen
can be in any graphics mode
you want, but the graphics buffer offscreen is always 32-bit.
Complete descriptions of the features and use of OpenGL are beyond the scope of this book; however, you can get full documentation of OpenGL as well as sample code at the OpenGL web site at http://www.opengl.org.
There are also some sample OpenGL programs that have already been ported to BeOS available for download on the Be web site; visit http://www.be.com/developers/topics/opengl.html.
