Question

Is it possible in OpenGL to separate the window into multiple vertical “panels” such that each displays a different set of shapes?

I would want to synchronize the horizontal axes across those panels, but the vertical axes would be completely independent (location as well as scale).

Answer 1

The first thing that comes to mind is to apply multiple calls to glViewport(). You have to render each vertical strip in turn and then set the viewport to render to the next vertical strip and repeat. I do this to split the screen in half and render a scene from two different viewpoints, but there’s no reason that you should have to render the same scene in the second or n-th viewport.

So my {edited} code looks something like this:

glEnable(GL_SCISSOR_TEST);
...
// Draw the left scene
glViewport(0,0,halfWidth,fullHeight);
glScissor(0,0,halfWidth,fullHeight);
glClear(...);
glPushMatrix();
setLeftEyeModelView();
renderScene();
glPopMatrix();

// Draw the right scene
glViewport(halfWidth,0,halfWidth,fullHeight);
glScissor(halfWidth,0,halfWidth,fullHeight);
glClear(...);
glPushMatrix();
setRightEyeModelView();
renderScene();
glPopMatrix();