RE: Designing a renderer

Dirk wrote:

> E.g: Let's say we have a base class IRenderer which is
> implemented by two derived class COGLRendererImpl and
> CDXRendererImpl. Both derived classes implement a virtual
> function IRenderer::Init(...). The arguments vary with
> the OS. On a Windows platform you have to pass the HWND
> for the window, on a Linux system that could be totally
> different.

	I don't know how others handle this, but I have a windowing system
abstraction layer that hides all the platform specifics such as window
handles and such, and just lets me create, size, move windows.  One subclass
of the window class is a 3D context window, which can be sized and moved,
and can be initialized with a specific pixel format.  This should be Linux
friendly since the platform implementation details are hidden.

	I don't expose any private variables in the class header, instead I handle
all of the platform specifics within the .cpp files using maps to associate
data with the interface classes as needed.  In Win32 there is very little
that must be stored aside from the hwnd and hdc, just about everything else
can be queried from the Win32 API.

	I don't know enough about Direct3D to design for it, but OpenGL makes this
easy because my 3D context window can handle all wgl* specifics like
MakeCurrent and SwapBuffers, and otherwise I can just call OpenGL functions
anywhere in my code and the current context receives them automagically.

YMMV,
Garett Bass
[email protected]



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