2 <title>Wine and OpenGL</title>
5 written by Lionel Ulmer <lionel.ulmer@free.fr>, last modification : 2000/06/13
8 (Extracted from <filename>wine/documentation/opengl</filename>)
11 <sect1 id="opengl-required">
12 <title>I What is needed to have OpenGL support in Wine</title>
15 Basically, if you have a Linux OpenGL ABI compliant libGL
16 (<ulink url="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/ABI/">
17 http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/ABI/</ulink>)
18 installed on your computer, you should everything that is
22 To be more clear, I will detail one step after another what
23 the <command>configure</command> script checks.
26 If, after Wine compiles, OpenGL support is not compiled in,
27 you can always check <filename>config.log</filename> to see
28 which of the following points failed.
32 <title>I.1 Header files</title>
35 The needed header files to build OpenGL support in Wine are :
40 <term><filename>gl.h:</filename></term>
42 <para>the definition of all OpenGL core functions, types and enumerants</para>
46 <term><filename>glx.h:</filename></term>
48 <para>how OpenGL integrates in the X Window environment</para>
52 <term><filename>glext.h:</filename></term>
54 <para>the list of all registered OpenGL extensions</para>
60 The latter file (<filename>glext.h</filename>) is, as of
61 now, not necessary to build Wine. But as this file can be
62 easily obtained from SGI
63 (<ulink url="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/ABI/glext.h">
64 http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/ABI/glext.h</ulink>),
65 and that all OpenGL should provide one, I decided to keep it here.
70 <title>I.2 OpenGL library thread-safety</title>
73 After that, the script checks if the OpenGL library relies
74 or not on the pthread library to provide thread safety (most
75 'modern' OpenGL libraries do).
78 If the OpenGL library explicitely links in libpthread (you
79 can check it with a <command>ldd libGL.so</command>), you
80 need to force OpenGL support by starting
81 <command>configure</command> with the
82 <parameter>--enable-opengl</parameter> flag.
85 The reason to this is that Wine contains some hacks done by
86 Ove to cohabit with pthread that are known to work well in
87 most of the cases (glibc 2.1.x). On the other hand, we never
88 got Wine to work with glibc 2.0.6. Thus, I deemed preferable
89 to play it safe : by default, I suppose that the hack won't
90 work and that it's the user's responsability to enable it.
93 Anyway, it should be pretty safe to build with
94 <parameter>--enable-opengl</parameter>.
99 <title>I.3 OpenGL library itself</title>
102 To check for the presence of 'libGL' on the system, the
103 script checks if it defines the
104 <function>glXCreateContext</function> function. There should
110 <title>I.4 glXGetProcAddressARB function</title>
113 The core of Wine's OpenGL implementation (at least for all
114 extensions) is the <function>glXGetProcAddressARB</function>
115 function. Your OpenGL library needs to have this function
116 defined for Wine to be able to support OpenGL.
119 If your library does not provide it, you are out of luck.
123 this is not completely true as one could rewrite a
124 <function>glXGetProcAddressARB</function> replacement
125 using <function>dlopen</function> and friends, but well,
126 telling people to upgrade is easier :-).
132 <sect1 id="opengl-configure">
133 <title>II How to configure</title>
136 Configuration is quite easy : once OpenGL support has been
137 built in Wine, this internal OpenGL driver will be used each
138 time an application tries to load
139 <filename>opengl32.dll</filename>.
142 Due to restrictions (that do not exist in Windows) on OpenGL
143 contexts, if you want to prevent the screen to flicker when
144 using OpenGL applications (all games are using double-buffered
145 contexts), you need to set the following option in your
146 <filename>.winerc</filename> / <filename>wine.ini</filename>
147 in the [x11drv] section :
150 DesktopDoubleBuffered = Y
153 and to run Wine with the <parameter>--desktop</parameter>
158 <sect1 id="opengl-works">
159 <title>III How it all works</title>
162 The core OpenGL function calls are the same between Windows
163 and Linux. So what is the difficulty to support it in Wine ?
164 Well, there are two different problems :
170 the interface to the windowing system is different for
171 each OS. It's called 'GLX' for Linux (well, for X Window)
172 and 'wgl' for Windows. Thus, one need first to emulate one
173 (wgl) with the other (GLX).
178 the calling convention between Windows (the 'Pascal'
179 convention or 'stdcall') is different from the one used on
180 Linux (the 'C' convention or 'cdecl'). This means that
181 each call to an OpenGL function must be 'translated' and
182 cannot be used directly by the Windows program.
188 Add to this some braindead programs (using GL calls without
189 setting-up a context or deleting three time the same context)
190 and you have still some work to do :-)
194 <title>III.1 The Windowing system integration</title>
197 This integration is done at two levels :
203 At GDI level for all pixel format selection routines (ie
204 choosing if one wants a depth / alpha buffer, the size
205 of these buffers, ...) and to do the 'page flipping' in
206 double buffer mode. This is implemented in
207 <filename>graphics/x11drv/opengl.c</filename> (all these
208 functions are part of Wine's graphic driver function
209 pointer table and thus could be reimplented if ever Wine
210 works on another Windowing system than X).
215 In the <filename>OpenGL32.DLL</filename> itself for all
216 other functionalities (context creation / deletion,
217 querying of extension functions, ...). This is done in
218 <filename>dlls/opengl32/wgl.c</filename>.
225 <title>III.2 The thunks</title>
228 The thunks are the Wine code that does the calling
229 convention translation and they are auto-generated by a Perl
230 script. In Wine's CVS tree, these thunks are already
231 generated for you. Now, if you want to do it yourself, there
232 is how it all works....
235 The script is located in <filename>dlls/opengl32</filename>
236 and is called <command>make_opengl</command>. It requires
237 Perl5 to work and takes two arguments :
243 The first is the path to the OpenGL registry. Now, you
244 will all ask 'but what is the OpenGL registry ?' :-)
245 Well, it's part of the OpenGL sample implementation
246 source tree from SGI (more informations at this URL :
247 <ulink url="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/">
248 http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/</ulink>.
251 To summarize, these files contain human-readable but
252 easily parsed information on ALL OpenGL core functions
253 and ALL registered extensions (for example the
254 prototype, the OpenGL version, ...).
259 the second is the OpenGL version to 'simulate'. This
260 fixes the list of functions that the Windows application
261 can link directly to without having to query them from
262 the OpenGL driver. Windows is based, for now, on OpenGL
263 1.1, but the thunks that are in the CVS tree are
264 generated for OpenGL 1.2.
267 This option can have three values:
268 <literal>1.0</literal>, <literal>1.1</literal> and
269 <literal>1.2</literal>.
275 This script generates three files :
281 <filename>opengl32.spec</filename> gives Wine's linker
282 the signature of all function in the
283 <filename>OpenGL32.DLL</filename> library so that the
284 application can link them. Only 'core' functions are
290 <filename>opengl_norm.c</filename> contains all the
291 thunks for the 'core' functions. Your OpenGL library
292 must provide ALL the function used in this file as these
293 are not queried at run time.
298 <filename>opengl_ext.c</filename> contains all the
299 functions that are not part of the 'core' functions.
300 Contrary to the thunks in
301 <filename>opengl_norm.c</filename>, these functions do
302 not depend at all on what your libGL provides.
305 In fact, before using one of these thunks, the Windows
306 program first needs to 'query' the function pointer. At
307 this point, the corresponding thunk is useless. But as
308 we first query the same function in libGL and store the
309 returned function pointer in the thunk, the latter
317 <sect1 id="opengl-problems">
318 <title>IV Known problems - shortcomings</title>
321 <title>IV.1 Missing GLU32.DLL</title>
324 GLU is a library that is layered upon OpenGL. There is a
325 100% correspondence between the
326 <filename>libGLU.so</filename> that is used on Linux and
327 <filename>GLU32.DLL</filename>.
330 As for the moment, I did not create a set of thunks to support this
331 library natively in Wine (it would easy to do, but I am waiting for
332 a better solution than adding another autogenerated thunk file), you
333 can always download anywhere on the net (it's free) a
334 <filename>GLU32.DLL</filename> file (by browsing, for example,
335 <ulink url="http://ftpsearch.lycos.com/">
336 http://ftpsearch.lycos.com/</ulink>).
341 <title>IV.2 OpenGL not detected at configure time</title>
344 See section (I) for a detailed explanation of the
345 <filename>configure</filename> requirements.
350 <title>IV.3 When running an OpenGL application, the screen flickers</title>
353 See section (II) for how to create the context
354 double-buffered and thus preventing this flicker effect.
359 <title>IV.4 Wine gives me the following error message : </title>
362 Extension defined in the OpenGL library but NOT in opengl_ext.c...
363 Please report (lionel.ulmer@free.fr) !
367 This means that the extension requested by the application
368 is found in the libGL used by Linux (ie the call to
369 <function>glXGetProcAddressARB</function> returns a
370 non-<constant>NULL</constant> pointer) but that this string
371 was NOT found in Wine's extension registry.
374 This can come from two causes :
380 The <filename>opengl_ext.c</filename> file is too old
381 and needs to be generated again.
386 Use of obsolete extensions that are not supported
387 anymore by SGI or of 'private' extensions that are not
388 registered. An example of the former are
389 <function>glMTexCoord2fSGIS</function> and
390 <function>glSelectTextureSGIS</function> as used by
391 Quake 2 (and apparently also by old versions of Half
392 Life). If documentation can be found on these functions,
393 they can be added to Wine's extension set.
399 If you have this, run with <parameter>--debugmsg
400 +opengl</parameter> and send me
401 <email>lionel.ulmer@free.fr</email> the TRACE.
406 <title>IV.5 <filename>libopengl32.so</filename> is built but it is still not working</title>
409 This may be caused by some missing functions required by
410 <filename>opengl_norm.c</filename> but that your Linux
411 OpenGL library does not provide.
414 To check for this, do the following steps :
420 create a dummy <filename>.c</filename> file :
430 try to compile it by linking both libwine and
431 libopengl32 (this command line supposes that you
432 installed the Wine libraries in
433 <filename>/usr/local/lib</filename>, YMMV) :
436 gcc dummy.c -L/usr/local/lib -lwine -lopengl32
441 if it works, the problem is somewhere else (and you can
442 send me an email). If not, you could re-generate the
443 thunk files for OpenGL 1.1 for example (and send me your
444 OpenGL version so that this problem can be detected at
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