Request the most recent version of OpenGL context

Question

I'm developing an application that can use any OpenGL version from 4.6 down to 2.0 by gradually disabling some features and optimizations. This means that it can live with 2.0 but prefers the latest supported version to be able to use all the available features from OpenGL 3.x-4.x. Also, it handles all the differences between core and compatibility contexts, so it should work with any profile.

It seems that on Windows there won't be a problem, because I can just omit the version and the profile and automatically get a compatibility context with the latest supported version.

But things work differently on macOS and with Mesa. There I have to request a core forward compatible context of some specific version, even though I don't want a specific version, I want the latest one.

How do I handle this problem? Do I have to try all the versions 4.6, 4.5, 4.4, 4.3, 4.2, 4.1, 4.0, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, 3.0, 2.1, 2.0 in a loop until the context is successfully created? Or is there a better solution?

If there is no better general solution, I would like to know how it works in practice with different drivers on different platforms.

Answer 1

I did some quick tests.

On Windows AMD Radeon (Ryzen 7):

1. Requesting any context version up to 2.1 results in a 4.6 Compatibility context. This is exactly what I want.
2. Requesting any context version above 2.1 results in the context of the requested version.
3. I assume it works the same on Linux proprietary drivers.
4. It probably works the same on Intel and NVidia but I can't test it now.

On Mesa for Windows 20.3.2

1. Requesting any context version up to 3.1 results in a 3.1 context.
2. Requesting any context version above 3.1 results in a 4.5 Core context. This is exactly what I want.
3. I assume it works the same on Linux open-source drivers
4. Requesting any OpenGL ES version between 2.0-3.2 results in a 3.2 context. This is exactly what I want.

On Android (Adreno 640)

1. Requesting any OpenGL ES version between 2.0-3.2 results in a 3.2 context.
2. I assume that it works the same with other vendors on Android.

It seems like only the first context creation is slow. In both cases, an additional attempt to create a context adds about 4 ms to the application's startup time on my system, whereas the whole context + window creation is about 300 ms with a native driver or 70 ms with Mesa.

I don't have a macOS to test so I'm going to use a conservative approach by trying forward-compatible 4.1, 3.3, 3.2, then 2.1. Anyway, most Macs support exactly 4.1, so for them, the context will be created with the first attempt.

This is what the documentation for iOS OpenGL ES recommends to do:

To support multiple versions of OpenGL ES as rendering options in your app, you should first attempt to initialize a rendering context of the newest version you want to target. If the returned object is nil, initialize a context of an older version instead.

So in GLFW pseudocode, my strategy for OpenGL looks like this:

glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CLIENT_API, GLFW_OPENGL_API);
GLFWwindow* wnd;
#ifdef __APPLE__ // macOS
const std::array<char, 2> versions[] = {{4, 1}, {3, 3}, {3, 2}, {2, 1}};
glfwWindowHint(GLFW_OPENGL_FORWARD_COMPAT, true);
for(auto ver: versions)
{
    if(ver[0] < 3) glfwWindowHint(GLFW_OPENGL_FORWARD_COMPAT, false);
    glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MAJOR, ver[0]);
    glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MINOR, ver[1]);
    wnd = glfwCreateWindow(...);
    if(wnd) break;
}
glfwMakeContextCurrent(wnd);
#else // Windows, Linux and other GLFW supported OSes
glfwWindowHint(GLFW_VISIBLE, false);
wnd = glfwCreateWindow(...);
glfwMakeContextCurrent(wnd);
std::string_view versionStr = glGetString(GL_VERSION);
if(versionStr[0] < '4' && versionStr.contains("Mesa"))
{
    glfwDestroyWindow(wnd);
    glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MAJOR, 3);
    glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MINOR, 2);
    wnd = glfwCreateWindow(...);
    glfwMakeContextCurrent(wnd);
}
glfwShowWindow(wnd);
#endif

The code for OpenGL ES would look similar but simpler. Mobile platforms will use a different library instead of GLFW (GLFM/SDL or native EGL). For iOS, I have to try ES 3.0 then ES 2.0. For Mesa and Android, I just request a 2.0 context and get the latest one (3.2). However, for Android, I assume that Mali and other vendors work the same.

Please, let me know in the comments if you can test my assumptions to confirm or deny them.

Answer 2

If you ask for OpenGL version X.Y, the system can give you any supported version of OpenGL which is backwards compatible with X.Y. That is, to ask for X.Y means "I have written my code against GL version X.Y, so don't give me something that would break my code."

However, the core profile of OpenGL 3.2+ is not backwards compatible with 2.0. Indeed, this is the entire point of the core/compatibility distinction: the compatibility profile provides access to the higher features of the API while being backwards compatible with existing code. The core profile does not. For example, 2.0 lacks vertex array objects, and core profile OpenGL cannot work without them.

Now, all versions of OpenGL for each profile are backwards-compatible with all lower versions of the API for that profile. So 3.2 core profile is backwards-compatible with 4.6, and everything in-between. And the compatibility profile is backwards-compatible with all prior versions of OpenGL.

But implementations are not required to support the compatibility profile of OpenGL, only the core profile. As such, if you ask for OpenGL version 2.0, then the implementation will have to give you the highest version of OpenGL that is compatible with GL 2.0. If the implementation doesn't support the compatibility profile, then this will not be the highest core profile version of OpenGL supported.

If you want to support both core and any "compatibility" version of OpenGL, then you have to write specialized code for each pathway. You have to have a 2.0 version and a 3.2 core version of your code. And since you have two versions of your code, you'll have to check to see which version to use for that context.

Which means you don't need a way to do what you're asking to do. Just try to create a 3.2 core profile version, and if that doesn't work, create a 2.0 version.