Question

I am looking for the ability to open OpenGL contexts and draw native OpenGL in windows, macOS, linux distros with X, android and iOS

I don’t want to rely on the “native” device framework for the actual UI, I don’t need to use native components, all I want is an OpenGL context to natively draw in OpenGL. Many of the cross platform SDKs like Marmalade and MoSync focus on making use of the native UI components and stuff like that, all I need is an OpenGl context to draw as I intend to, absolutely no native UI functionality is required, however, access to native hardware features like microphone, camera and other sensors is desired if possible, as well as access to audio/video/network.

I don’t want to use QT, I want to do something that is closer to the hardware to work on the low level. The general idea is to make a lightweight cross platform hardware accelerated GUI, written on a level low enough to be truly hardware native, without relying on any native software framework. I know for android I may have to use a java wrapper to launch the native code, but the idea is to have this wrapper minimized, with very little modifications needed to deploy the low level and thus hopefully TRULY cross-platform code, that is only dependent on OpenGL hardware and OpenGL context for it to work wit.h

So I need a bare minimum solution to avoid using non-cross platform features as much as possible.

At the time the only library that comes to my mind is SDL, but I am not sure it supports android and iOS property, so besides library recommendations, more information on how SDL handles android and iOS devices and their hardware is welcomed too.

Answer 1

How about:

• GLFW
• SDL
• GLUT (FreeGLUT or OpenGLUT)
• Blender’s GHOST framework?

Essentially they open a window, create a OpenGL context on it, deliver you the input events and leave the rest up to you.