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I am developing a 3D application for RPi 3 B+ using OpenGL ES. As I know there are plenty of tutorials and books but they are mostly for either OpenGL-ES 3.0, Android or iOS. I far as I know RPi 3 supports OpenGLES 2.0 but I am unable to get proper and latest developments regarding OpenGL-ES2.0. I am completely new to OpenGL/OpenGL-ES. Recently I got enrolled in OpenGL course using C++ but later realised that it's not possible on RPi3 as OpenGL and OpenGL-ES are totally different.

I also have tried PyOpenGL on RPi3, able to run it (it uses gl_Begin and gl_End, which is the immediate mode, so it is old and outdated as OpenGLES 2.0 doesn't support it). But I am not sure how it is able to render cube without problems.

Also regarding windowing library, I am able to use and create OpenGL context using GLFW but also I have read on Khronos website that EGL acts as windowing system for mobile systems. So I am confused even more now whether to use GLFW or EGL

So can somebody point me in the right direction especially :

  1. From where do I start learning OpenGL ES 2.0 for RPi-3 B+
  2. Which books to refer
  3. Whether should I continue using GLFW or should I use EGL.

I am comfortable with Python and C/C++. Any kind of help is appreciated, Thanks.

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    Your question is rather broad and soliciting opinions, so I suggest you scope it on a specific aspect if possible. At the very least, I would exclude the part about which books to prefer and which 3D library to use.
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    Commented Oct 29, 2018 at 10:16

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There's an implementation of OpenGL 1.X API using OpenGL ES, which I was able to successfully build on several ARM devices (Orange Pi, Pandora). Since the repo has a branch called rpi, I assume it works on RPi as well.

The library helps a lot when you want to run older OpenGL games on ARM. For learning purposes, you'll want to check how much of OpenGL 2.0+ features your course will be using, so that you don't have to switch platforms halfway through.

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  • Yes, but I think unless you do it Broadcom's way like the examples in /opt/vc (aka userland github.com/raspberrypi/userland) you aren't taking full advantage of the GPU/QPU. And those all seem to involve dispmanx, Broadcom's proprietary overlay manager. Maybe GLFW can put this stuff in windows, my impression is that dispmanx just puts it in a new layer on top of everything else. Yes, GLFW works with X, you can flip to a different pane in your pager, etc. But it's slow. Dispmanx works with the framebuffer, it's on all the panes.
    – Alan Corey
    Commented Mar 5, 2019 at 20:47

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