3D Graphics with VB6 and OpenGL????

[dflw]

Hello,

I was wondering whether or not it was possible to make a 3D enviroment with good graphics with VB6 and OpenGL. I think I have seen it done at http://nehe.gamedev.net/. They had many tutorials with 3D enviroments and 3D rotating boxes, with a code conversion to VB6. I downloaded the code and viewed it with VB, so I guess it is possible? But they used OpenGL....does OpenGL come with newer graphics cards or systems? or do I need to buy it?

[Zaei]

OpenGL is free, and is already installed on all Win32 Operating systems.

Z.

[Tanus]

OpenGL stands for Open (source i'm presuming?) Graphics Library. Basically a library of code that makes it a hell of a lot easier to access the parts of video hardware acceleration (well, that's how i think of it).

[Zaei]

It isn't open source (if it was, microsoft probably wouldnt touch it), but yes, it makes it much easier to get at the hardware. The way it works is there are a few core OGL libraries, and then each card vendor (ATI, nVidia, etc) releases an OGL extension set, that exposes each chip's harware to the extremes. Unfortunatly, these libraries arent standard, and what will work on one card, say a geForce2, wont work on a Radeon, because the extensions are not the same. This means that the programmer has to write His own interfaces that will determine what card the user has, and call the correct code, or write code for a specific video card, or write OGL standard code, and not use extensions.

Z.