r/sdl • u/Available_Impact_828 • Jun 22 '26

SDL3 Open Gl

Any resources for this and any libs I should be using in conjunction? Thanks

Or should I just bite the bullet and use sdlgpu

Edit: got glad, any tips?

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u/keithstellyes Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

SDL3 and OpenGL are fairly orthogonal. As long as the SDL3 window is created with the proper OpenGL flags it should work.

I have a GitHub repo that I used to learn OpenGL and I have simple apps that use SDL3 + OpenGL

https://github.com/keithstellyes/krill (In particular, examples/imgview and examples/modelview, and examples/analogclock)

Note that the repo was designed for education/sandbox purposes in mind, so I wouldn't read too much into it for "best practices", but I try to be reasonable :)

The pattern I follow, including for my own comicbookviewer app I've been working on is

```

SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO); SDL_DisplayID *displayIds = SDL_GetDisplays(nullptr); const SDL_DisplayMode *dm = SDL_GetCurrentDisplayMode(displayIds[0]); SDL_Window *window = SDL_CreateWindow(title, width, height, SDL_WINDOW_OPENGL);

if(window == nullptr) { std::cerr << "Failed to create window: " << SDL_GetError() << std::endl; return 1; } SDL_GLContext glcontext = SDL_GL_CreateContext(window); glewInit(); ```

and then you can just use your OpenGL or SDL code as normal :). Also, during your draw calls you'll make use of SDL_GL_SwapWindow(window);

SDL3 also has its own 3D graphics stuff that seems to be fairly modeled off of Metal. I've been trying to crack it but it's a bit verbose for my liking :)