GLUT is like sooo awsome

Zylyx_ · Post by **Zylyx_** » Sun Jan 17, 2010 8:16 pm

I almost feel guilty using it

I am however gonna have to write my actual main application using Win32. Who else here finds GLUT to be really good?

Despite many saying how it has limited functionality, I think you can make fairly descent simple 3D games in GLUT (not like a full Quake clone, but like a racing game or even a rather sophisticated 2D game).

From what I can see, most beginning graphics programmers go from GLUT to SDL to native OS, but I found myself going from Win32 to GLUT with a lot of satisfaction.

Maybe that's because I'm still a graphics n00b

.

c0burn · Post by **c0burn** » Sun Jan 17, 2010 8:30 pm

Just use SDL. Will handle the windowing/input side of things for you, while being multi platform.

Labman · Post by **Labman** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 12:00 pm

Glut is ok for tech demos, but for anything more serious SDL is the way to go, actually SDL isn't bad for tech demos either

mh · Post by mh » Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:41 pm

It depends. If you've already got SDL and you know it, then it makes sense to use it; otherwise GLUT is just perfectly fine if all you need is to quickly put together an app for the purposes of trying out something (being multi-platform wouldn't matter a damn in that context). Plus there is such a huge existing codebase of GLUT apps out there.

revelator · Post by **revelator** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 6:46 pm

and glut is also mutiplatform

freeglut (yes builds on mingw to with some small modifications)

then theres glew which is more or less a wrapper around opengl's api holding basically all the api calls so you can link directly to the opengl calls without having to typedef a lot of crap in your engine.

theres loads of nice libraries for opengl tbh.

Zylyx_ · Post by **Zylyx_** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 9:11 pm

Yeah, I use FreeGLUT and Glee (for handling extension support). Most of my programming in OpenGL is done in Win32, but I use GLUT to try different things out, before porting them to my native Windows framework.

It's good fun!

P.S. My big project this semester is to make a tech demo showing off terrain rendering with lots of eye candy, making use of only the fixed function pipeline. I'm thinking lens flares, cube mapped water, detail textures, emboss bump mapping, billboard grass and bushes, OBJ or 3DS tree models, and lots of other things.

Pics coming soon.