OpenGL/MesaGL -> TosGL?

From: Doug Little <doug_at_innerworkings.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 11:59:09 +0100

I've posted this to both the Falcon040 and BadMood lists, because it may be interesting for both parties.

Would anyone be interested if I was to say that the Falcon is inches away from a reasonable software
implementation of the wonderful OpenGL graphics library?

I have recently obtained sourcecode for an OpenGL compliant (and compatible) library called Mesa,
which comes with an 'offscreen' device driver (a kind of dummy device driver using software to output
the graphic primitives to an offscreen memory buffer). This is ideal for an Atari port, and would allow
a great many OpenGL applications to be ported to the Atari platform.

Mesa is not 100% OpenGL compliant, but it's close. It exists on most platforms already, including
PC, Mac, Linux, BeOS, NeXT, VAX and even Amiga. I think it's worth the effort involved to get it onto
the Atari as well.

If anyone out there is interested in OpenGL or any kind of standardised 3D graphics support on the
Atari (especially if you are likely to play with the stuff yourself) then drop me a msg.

BTW, I have already managed to get some of the libraries to build on the Falcon - there are some
C++ files needing ported across to TOS but apart from that there is not a tremendous amount of
work needed to get it all working reasonably well. It's fairly portable stuff.

Doug.
Received on to. juli 23 1998 - 21:56:00 CEST