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Are you interested in it?
Are you doing any OpenGL programming?

Hi,

I am interested in OpenGL. Although I do not do any active programming atm.
I had a look at all the NeHe's Tutorials and wrote some very small (actually it was just one ) fx when I was dealing with C [year 2000].
At that time I tried to compare Direct3D and OpenGL. According to my experiences I realised, that for my purposes OpenGL fits better to me than Direct3D.
Nevertheless, since 3 years I didn't do any 3D gfx anymore because of lack of time.

But, interesting topics like the following keeps my interest in OpenGL alive:

http://mitglied.lycos.de/Graphicfreak/

personlly opengl is the best, but i don't activly do any projects in it

Hi dmoc,

I am very interresting in OpenGL Stuff. Last year, I wrote three little PureBasic libs to help peoples in how to initiate fullscreen and regular OpenGL Windows. Since this time, I use all my free time in trying to code with PB some Procedures that I translate after with Fasm. The goal of it, is to learn as much as I can and, trying to code an integrated engine for all PureBasic OpenGL lovers like me!

What is your project?

Roger Beausoleil

I have a working engine. Just tying up a few issues with opengl states (something I kept putting off). The design is proving to be pretty robust but, as ever, I can see much room for improvement. When I say "design" I mean the fundamental stuff like managing data and especially in such a way that it becomes easier to add new features rather than more difficult (a sure sign of a bad design). It has just about satisfied my initial requirements: lw object handling, small and fast (except it *should* have been Linux based - damn ). On my 600MHz PIII, GF256, it's beating results I've got in other 3D languages/ libs There's many things that could be added to it, eg, game engine features, use of extensions, quaterions, plus general matrix stuff, etc, ... all of which are pointless without a sound foundation (which I'm about 95% certain I now have). I'm debating with myself at the mo to opensource it, mainly to accelerate further development. Sorry if this sounds like a tease, it isn't, it's just difficult deciding to let go of months of work. And of course it looks like the world and their dog want to tie themselves into m$ controlled solution (Direct-veXed) and be shafted every year or so... oops moan mode accidentally activated... moan mode: off. Anyway, apart from you guys, doesn't look like there's much interest in PG-GL

Just saw this discussion, sorry. (I'm not that frequent anymore...)

Promised 3D functionality was something that let me buy PureBasic over 2 years ago.
But I had to learn: 3D IS NOT 3D.

Almost everybody out there in PB-USERLAND thinks of games when they hear 3D.

I think about CAD/EDA stuff.
I was disappointed to learn that OGRE has no 3D-lines for CAD or other things.... (like Allegro)

Now I'm eager to know:

Do you have real 3D drawing capabilities for CAD/EDA or is your engine intended to be used for GAMES only

Can you give a brief list of the capabilities

Thanks

First a correction, "PG-GL" should have been "PB-GL".

No, I don't really have any interest in games but why should a design be restrictive? From my research most of the so called "game-features" are implemented at a higher level than the core engine, eg, partitioning, physics, particle engine, etc. So surely a flexible robost core design should not rule out anything? Granted, hard core performance freaks will take whatever shortcuts required to get the maximum performance for a given application and in the process turn a generic engine into an app specific engine. How does this relate to your question? What is it about CAD/EDA (by EDA I assume you mean Electronic Design Automation?) that means the core of an engine should differ from that used for games? Sorry, I don't mean to be evasive, just digging for further info. With my limited experience of CAD (AutoDesk) and EDA (Apollo) I am unlikely to suggest that anything I am doing would be suitable for these types of apps for some time yet. But then add database and scripting functionality to a flexible engine and I would say your off to a good start. These are things I have thought about but my # 1 priority at the moment is to get my engine to a level I can use it for commercial development in the area of "visualisation and direct manipulation", an area which few have even heard of but I would suggest is/ will be increasingly important as 3D technology (chips and displays) become common place.

My engine includes the following...

GNL - A node library tailored for managing graphics related data
XGL - A basic OpenGL set-up library (eventually to encapsulate all OpenGL functionality)
LWU - A generic LW utility library
LWI - An app specific interface to LWU
XSG - The main part: scenegraphing and rendering
+ various features to allow me to more easily recode a BB3D app I started yonks ago.

At the moment I am trying to implement a better method for opengl state management, after which it will be fully usuable, at least for my purposes. Maybe like you I bought PB because of it being cross-platform and was promising to add 3D functionality... and I wanted to do rapid prototyping of 3D apps on Linux. But maybe also like you, two years later I'm dissappointed. @Fred, sorry but for all the good things you have added, we still do not have this functionality I considered many times jumping back to C/C++ but I have stuck with PB because I believe it should be possible to just *glance* at a chunk of code and "know" what it is doing. Also I believe the majority of a programmer's thinking time should be on the application, not the language or the compiler. In this respect PB beats most other languages, despite the added benefit of other languages/ IDE's/ Libs, etc. Although I am increasingly drawn to Java especially now with OpenGL bindings and realtime libs and fantastic IDE's

PS: My engine is designed to eventually allow handling of any type of OpenGL primitives, including lines. Upto recently I have had to concentrate on triangles specifically but I have not hardcoded this, eg, primitive types are stored with geometry data and used when rendering vertex arrays.

Yes with EDA I ment Electronic Design Automation and with your experience I'm glad you understand what I mean.

I know that I would never ever accomplish to write stuff like real professional CAD/EDA applications, but I hoped to be able to write little apps to suite my needs ( fun, fun, fun )

Data visualisation is nowadays also implemented in these kind of programs, because today Engineers would like to SEE how all fits together - in colored 3D.

And yes, after all I said, I would like to have primitives for vectorial drawing like:
pixels, lines, rectangles, circles, ellipses, arcs, Bezier splines, polygons filled or without a pattern etc.

This is exactly the field where OGRE has nothing, nada, niente, nichts, null.
And with OGRE as a 3D-Engine PureBasic is only good for Games.

Hmm, this reminds me to look at Allegro again (...if it's still alive and maybe usable)

Allegro is one of the most powerfull libraries i've seen , so maybe... just maybe Fred could make a working version also for PB on Windows, linux and MACOS X *hint* *hint*....

To be honest, nowdays with the CPU and GPU power available 2 / 3 fps are not that significant, especially on non-game software... And let's face it, it's not the gfx that make the game great (Remember CIVILIZATION, still voted the n.º 1 game of all times?)

I also think OGL is very good API, well coded and implemented... Probably far better than DX... 9 is it???

Just my 2 cents...

@dmoc:
Your engine sounds really cool.
From my point of view, it would be cool, if there would some very simple commands to deal with very basic 3D primitives, because I am personally interested in simple FX and so on.My aim is not to write a new DOOM-Clone or so.
Are there any working examples to showcase you core-engine yet ?

Anyway, I hope you have enough time+motivation to continue your development. Please do keep us informed!

Yep, I plan a little tech-demo hopefully in the next week. At the mo all my development centers around supporting one target app (which I desperately hope will earn me a little money at some point). In a few days (touch-wood) I can create a demo that doesn't give away what my main app is, for commercial reasons, but that will still demonstrate all the features. I'll keep ya posted.

PS: One of my original reasons for rolling my own engine was exactly that: wanting to do little effects/demos without the overkill of a full blown game engine or the associated learning curve of some of the C/C++ libs.

Cool - looking forward to see it ...

Unpatiently,

dmoc wrote:In a few days (touch-wood) I can create a demo that doesn't give away what my main app is, for commercial reasons, but that will still demonstrate all the features.

Ah! Oh ! More Lemmings !!!! 3D Now !!!

Ah! Oh ! More Lemmings !!!!

???

dmoc: your project seems very promizing, if you need any special support to finish it, don't hesitate to tell.