If I decide to write an application for OpenGL 3, should I wait until Microsoft releases an updated version of the platform SDK with headers that support this version? How do you select which version of the API to use - through a preprocessor define in the code, or does updating to the latest platform SDK simply upgrade to whatever is the latest version (can't imagine this last option, but you never know.).
Does that mean that these drivers implement certain functionality in software to emulate new functionality that isn't in the hardware?
nVidia have drivers for older video cards to support OpenGL 3. (btw I'm using nVidia in this question as an example because I'm buying one of their cards, but obviously I'd like to be vendor agnostic for the software I develop).įirst, there is the GPU which needs to support an OpenGL version. I've read up on the OpenGL 2.0/3.0/3.1 debacle on the OpenGL forums and elsewhere but it's still not clear how this will work out for me as a developer (new to OpenGL). I'm trying to understand how graphics card versions, OpenGL versions and the API headers work together.
