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6074 :: Type safe opengl

• Nycto (orginal) [2020-03-15T21:31:53+01:00] view original

  About a year ago, I started poking at OpenGL because it is was something I'd never done. I realized that a lot of it made my skin tingle because of how much it lacked type safety. So much of it seems to depend on arbitrary hand waving -- calling methods in the right order, using the correct data types, knowing what constants apply in various situations. But, obviously, adding abstractions usually adds overhead. So I started an experiment with macros to see if I could make OpenGL more type safe with minimal overhead.

  • Uses Enums instead of arbitrary constants
  • Distinct types for all IDs
  • Uses macros to automatically bind Nim objects into things like Vertex Buffers and Uniforms
  • Basic texture loading methods
  • Abstraction for compiling and using shaders
  • Wrappers around anything delicate -- like initialization

  Basically, my goal is to make it a Nim compile error if anything would cause your OpenGL code not to work.

  Then my wife had a baby and things got busy. Fast forward a year and I'm picking it back up. But I decided I needed some feedback. While I've been in the industry for many years, I'm not really an expert in graphics programming -- which makes me a bad judge of whether this is actually headed in the right direction. So I suppose I'm interested in getting some constructive feedback.

  The code: https://github.com/Nycto/safegl-nim

  Docs: https://nycto.github.io/safegl-nim/safegl.html

  And an example: https://github.com/Nycto/safegl-nim/blob/master/example/src/example.nim

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• geotre (orginal) [2020-03-16T01:30:22+01:00] view original

  Looks nice!

  I believe this package has similar goals, not sure if you have come across it before: https://github.com/jackmott/easygl

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• Nycto (orginal) [2020-03-16T01:53:24+01:00] view original

  I remember looking at that. It’s still a bit more low level than I would like. For example, you still need to manually cram OpenGL types into boilerplate function calls:

  https://github.com/jackmott/easygl/blob/master/examples/getting_started/shaderstut.nim#L41

  That kind of stuff can be generated automatically by integrating with Nim’s type system via macros:

  https://github.com/Nycto/safegl-nim/blob/master/src/safegl/vertex.nim#L39

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• Nycto (orginal) [2020-03-16T03:44:40+01:00] view original

  That one is new to me — I’ll have to dig in. Looks like they dropped max support, though, which is a non-starter for my needs

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• ksandvik (orginal) [2020-03-16T05:07:58+01:00] view original

  Also note that the industry is moving to Vulcan.

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• Nycto (orginal) [2020-03-16T15:22:21+01:00] view original

  I considered that. But after reading about Godot keeping around support for OpenGL, I decided it wasn’t an unreasonable investment. And the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

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