glhelper

Helper & thin abstraction classes for OpenGL 4.5.
No compromises! Assumes full availability of direct state access, texture/buffer storage and so on.

This is not a complete API abstraction, rather a bunch of helper classes!

Platform/Programming Language

• Makes heavy use of some C++11 stuff like enum class, initializer lists, variadic templates...
• Should be platform independent but I only tested win x64 NVIDIA.

Development

Used in some personal (experimental!) projects. Functionallity is mostly extendend on personal necessity.
However, feedback from fellow OpenGL users is warmly welcome :) I am aware of the lack of unit tests. But since I lack time and motivation to write them, I just use the projects using this library as (bad-coverage) tests.

Contents

• Shader abstraction
  • File loading
  • #include parsing & resolve
  • Reflection via OpenGL functions (e.g. for uniform variable positions etc.)
    • Info can be used to fill arbitrary memory
  • "hooks" for reloading (very useful for recompile on file change)
• Buffer
  • Can be used as Vertex/Index/Uniform/ShaderStorage/IndirectDraw/IndirectDispatch -Buffer
  • Memorizes creation information and bindings (avoids redundant ones)
  • Various checks for wrapped functionallity
• Persistent Ring-Buffer
  • Helper class on top of buffer to provide an easy interface for a low driver overhead write-only ring buffer ("AZDO style")
  • Warns automatically if GPU-CPU syncs happen
• Vertex Array Object
  • Comfortable abstraction for usage as vertex format declaration
    (possible using ARB_vertex_attrib_binding, which is Core in OpenGL 4.3)
• Textures
  • Memorizes creation information and bindings (avoids redundant ones)
  • 2D, 3D, Views
• TextureBufferView
  • Wrapper for Buffer to use it as texture buffer
• Sampler
  • Simplified creation
  • Reuse of already created sampler objects (all existing ones are hashed)
• Framebuffer
  • Easy creation from multiple textures
• State Wrapping
  • [Only glEnable/Disable so far]
  • Redundant state change checking and enums
• Error handling & Check mechanism
• Wraps many OpenGL defines in enums to avoid invalid GL calls and provide an overview over all possibilities

Notes on how to use

• Not intended to be compiled into a library. Just add the code to the project and add your own glhelperconfig.hpp.
  (just copy defaultconfig/glhelperconfig.hpp and change it according to your needs)
• Assumes that there is a OpenGL header <GL/GL.h> which defines everything that is needed (I use GLEW).
• Context creation etc. is (intentionally) up to the user!
  • I recommend GLFW :)

Todos

(just notes, in no specific order)

• multi bind-functions for vertex/index/uniform/shaderstorage buffers
• better buffer destructor: Iterates currently over all possible bindings to update intern binding tables
• add support for cube textures
• add support for 2d texture arrays
• add support for 3d texture arrays
• add wrapper for drawing and viewport settings
• add wrapper for glGet
  • at least for constant device properties like texture size, UBO padding, ...