
Using wxWidgets with OpenGL
wxWidgets can be used with Silicon Graphic's OpenGL language for 3D graphics programming. This
is a low-level API (compared with VRML, for example) but is high-performance and portable.
wxGLCanvas is a wrapper available on Unix and Windows platforms. It allows you to use OpenGL on
SGI and Windows platforms, or Mesa (a free OpenGL clone) on most Unix systems,
including Linux.
The image on the left shows Wolfram Gloger's isosurf example running under OpenGL for Windows.
You can move the image with the mouse, and on an MMX-enabled PC it's very fast.
What you need
OpenGL and Mesa:
- On Unix systems without OpenGL installed, you'll need
Mesa,
which emulates OpenGL.
- On Windows 95 or NT systems, install
OpenGL for Windows
from Silicon Graphics. More information about this package is available online at the
OpenGL Web site.
- Note 1: this library needs Microsoft Visual C++ or Borland C++.
- Note 2: if you have VC++, you may have OpenGL headers and libraries
already installed, so downloading OpenGL may be unnecessary. Either version will do.
wxGLCanvas is now built into wxWidgets 2, from version 2.1.14. This
contains classes for wxGTK, wxMSW and wxMotif. See the wxGLCanvas entry in the manual for how to enable this
class.
See also
wxOIWrapper, a wrapper class
to incorporate OpenInventor SoXt widgets into wxWidgets 1.
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