Loading an OpenGL 4.1 context on OSX

Question

I'm trying to learn OpenGL on OSX Mavericks which supports upto OpenGL 4.1 as of today.

I'm keeping it basic and compiling using gcc (g++), but when loading the open GL context through Freeglut OSX loads the legacy OpenGL profile.

I've tried this: OpenGL 3.3 on OSX with FreeGLUT but with no luck, a glGetString call returns these values:

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M OpenGL Engine
2.1 NVIDIA-8.24.9 310.40.25f01

Anyone have any ideas?

i'm calling FreeGlut with the following context calls:

glutInitContextVersion(3,2);
glutInitContextProfile(GLUT_CORE_PROFILE);

Edit: Just tried the same application in Windows rather than OSX and got this error:

2.1 context requested but wglCreateContextAttribsARB is not available. Falling back to legacy context creation

Here is my application entry point

    int main (int argc, char * argv[])
{
try{
    glutInit(&argc, argv);


    glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_RGBA);

    glutInitWindowSize(512,512);

    glutInitContextVersion(4,2);

    glutInitContextFlags(GLUT_FORWARD_COMPATIBLE);
    glutInitContextProfile(GLUT_CORE_PROFILE);

    cout << "Called GLUT with 'GLUT_FORWARD_COMPATIBLE' \n";
    //cout << VAO_IDs::NumVAOs;

    glutCreateWindow("Triangles!");

    cout << "Calling GLEW. " << endl;
    glewExperimental = GL_TRUE;
    if(glewInit())
    {
        cerr << "unable to initialise GLEW.. Exiting " << endl;
    }
    cout << "calling init " << endl;
    init();
    cout << "Setting display function " << endl;
    glutDisplayFunc(display);
    cout << "Entering loop " << endl;
    glutMainLoop();
    }
    catch (exception)
    {
        cerr << "ERROR! " <<endl;
    }

    }

---

OK So...

Recompiled on a Windows PC, worked no issue, maybe an issue with FreeGLUT on OSX or OSX itself or a combination.

At least now I have code I can test OSX with...

Answer 1

OSX Mavericks has no support of OpenGL 4.2. Hence, it is impossible to create a 4.2 context. The last supported version is 4.1 + some extensions which are made into Core in 4.2.

If you want to ship today the only option is using OpenGL 4.1 with extensions.

Here is the code for GLFW3:

glfwWindowHint( GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MAJOR, 4 );
glfwWindowHint( GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MINOR, 1 );
glfwWindowHint( GLFW_OPENGL_FORWARD_COMPAT, GL_TRUE );
glfwWindowHint( GLFW_OPENGL_PROFILE, GLFW_OPENGL_CORE_PROFILE );