There exists a number of tools useful for performance profiling and debugging OpenGL. I’ll here give a short description of such program and how they are used.
An OpenGL program is a program linked with the OpenGL library, which is responsible for communicating with the graphics-card through the driver.
Posted in C++, OpenGL, WebGL | Tags: debugging, debugging tools
The traditional way to debug OpenGL is to insert glGetError() after each OpenGL function call as described in the previous blog post Debugging OpenGL part 1 – using glGetError(). Using glGetError is both cumbersome and time consuming. One of the new features in OpenGL 4.3 is the ability to get a callback whenever an OpenGL-related error occur. In this blog I’ll give a short introduction to how to use this new functionality using FreeGLUT and GLEW.
I’ll here describe how to debug OpenGL using the glGetError() function in OpenGL 3.x core profile or higher where the gluErrorString() is no longer available. Read More…
There exists quite a few platform abstraction libraries which allow you to create an OpenGL context. Most of these wrappers (FreeGLUT, GLFW, SDL) are small libraries that only supports the most basic stuff such as simple event loops and mouse/keyboard input. This is great if you want to create a 2D or 3D game without any advanced GUI elements. If you on the other hand want to create a program mixing GUI elements with 3D context (for instance a level editor or a model viewer) you need a more powerful library such as Qt (pronounced “cute”).
Posted in C++, Game development, OpenGL | Tags: Qt
“WebGL: Up and running” is an excellent introduction to WebGL with good examples and a nice overview of the technology. For most of the book the JavaScript library Three.JS is used to simplify the examples. This gets you up and running fast, but also means that you will get more familiar with Three.JS than with WebGL itself. Read More…
Posted in Game development, WebGL | Tags: Book review, javascript library, js, three.js, WebGL
